EP213: The EPIC Church Experiment

Maybe people meeting in homes together, doing church together, will give them the gift of time

with each other, and they'd be able to create real relationships with one another. The other

thing we thought was, we think this could be a really cool way, a missional way to reach people,

because instead of having five locations around the city, we're going to have 1,500, 1,600 locations

around the city, which, man, you know, I mean, yeah, they're in homes, but I'll take that,

I'll take that all day long. You know, we think reaching every person in the city starts by

reaching every person in your circle. 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, we got episode 213. Hey, it's Jeff here with the Church Digital Podcast. And excited about

this conversation bringing it here. We were at Exponential. And so I brought this church in,

brought them down to speak at one of the tracks we were doing. And just they shared so much and so

little of a time. I was like, oh, we got to dig in deep. We got to have more of a conversation. And so

excited to bring in Epic Church into the conversation here on episode 213 of the Church Digital

Podcast. I think I said all those words, right? Hopefully. But we've got, hey, we've got Kent

Jacobs, lead pastor there with Epic Church in Philadelphia. Justin De La Cruz, who operates as

the executive pastor of campuses, locations, something like that. And it was my first exposure

to this church was in COVID. Like, I knew them by name. And somehow we got connected during, or maybe

early, mid 21, early 21 in COVID. And they were thinking some crazy ideas. Oh, like, listen, a lot

of churches were thinking crazy ideas in 21, right? And so it's, they were thinking some crazy ideas.

And some of them, I was like, that's awesome. Do it. Some of them were like, that's awesome.

I don't think you should do that. But here's, if you do, here's some things to be wary of.

And it was, it was really fun just to hear maybe some of the lessons, the observations. Did the

craziness work? Where were their takeaways from that? You know, so many of us, we were doing crazy

stuff during the COVID season, but to actually take and learn something from it and try to figure out

even how to apply some of those lessons to where we are in 22 and beyond. That's really the heart of

this. And so guys, thanks for jumping on the call. Kent, Justin, appreciate y'all being on here.

Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, hey, just to open this up, Epic Church, talk a little bit about this.

What is Epic Church? What's, what's the vision? Tell us a little bit about who you are.

Yeah. So we started Epic in Philadelphia 13 years ago in a movie theater. To this day,

when I smell buttered popcorn, I'm ready for church. It's a thing. It's in me. There's no

getting that out. My favorite location, even today is the one that meets in a movie theater. I think

this is a fun place to have church. So there's that. Our name, Epic, actually, it wasn't meant

to be pretentious or arrogant in any way at all. It actually stands for something, EPIC. It stands

for every person in the city. And that's because our vision is to see every person in the city

follow Jesus. When we started the church, it wasn't because Philadelphia needed another church.

What Philadelphia needed was a different kind of church, a church that wasn't just for church

people, you know? And I, it takes me back to when I first became a follower of Jesus, I was 12 years

old. And I remember just being so amazed that you could know God, that you could have a relationship

with God. And I remember thinking, man, I want everybody to know God. Like I feel like I've had

a chance to know God. And I've just never lost that. So all these years later, we started a church

and with that same kind of heart to try and create a place where people who are far from God

would discover that they didn't have to be. So that's been our story. The church grew

over the years from one location to five locations in and around the city. And one thing that's really

cool about the church is because we're in the city, we're a reflection of the city and the church is

super diverse. So racially, socioeconomically, just in every way. And it's just a beautiful community

of people are on mission together to help reach every person in our city. So that's, that's our story

in a nutshell.

I love that. I love gathering people together, racially different people mixed together and

getting them on mission together. Like having that be the shared unified value is just a lot

of fun. Justin, you were going to say something?

Yeah. I joined the team in 2013 and got to learn about multi-site as we cut our teeth on what that

looks like and how to innovate in that direction. And I just want to say, Jeff, thanks for having us,

having us on. We love talking shop. We love talking church and innovating and we're learners.

We are learners to the max. And so we listen to all the stuff you put out there and everybody else.

And we're trying to figure out the best way to do things and experiment with stuff. And that's what

we're going to get into some of the experiments we made today. But one of my favorite, one of the things

that shows like kind of the DNA of what we do and, and even what led us into the stuff we've tried

throughout the pandemic. And what we've learned is, you know, we always wanted to create space for

the people who aren't there yet and make sure that we were going to try innovative ways, whatever we

could to do that. And so once our first venue in the movie theater got filled up, our very first

venture into multi-site was we opened up another location directly across the hall. And so at

the same time at the same service, we had two bands directly across the hall, two hosts during the

service. And then when Kent got up to speak, we would pipe that over onto the other screen

happening at the same time. And so we just tried to make the most of all the theater spaces we could.

Now's our first venture into, into all this stuff. And, and since then we've been trying to innovate

and do whatever we can in the city. So it's been fun.

Yeah. And that, that was back when it was like, you know, some bubble gum and some tape. That's

how we figured out how to stream from one location to, you know, to the other auditorium. And yeah,

it's been cool to see, you know, how things have changed.

Oh, it's, it's a lot of fun to do church, like that level church, that craziness, uh, of, of a church

in a movie theater. Like that, that, that just takes me back. We were, uh, in a story for another day,

but we were, we were streaming from one theater to another. We were like, let's create a whole other

service in another theater in Spanish. So we're like bilingual out of a theater. And, uh, okay.

So Frank Hopkins, you're not listening to this, but, but I love you. Thank you. Like he was,

he was the campus pastor at this church and the man was borderline crazy. If you're at Christ

Fellowship Miami, you know, and it's just, yeah, it was good, good times, good times back in,

back in the day.

I used to pray. This is funny. I used to pray at the end of the service. And, um, as I was praying,

I would be walking up the aisle to get to the other auditorium because I was the drummer in the

other auditorium to close the song. So I had to run, jump on the kit. I'd say, amen. And we'd jump

into the song. It's just, wow. You know, do what you gotta do, do what you gotta do, man. Listen,

if you're multi-site, that's what it, whatever it takes, it's just going to happen. And you probably

have, what'd you say, which was the line bubble gum and tape, uh, bubble gum and string. That's,

that's probably the budget to make it happen. Well, well, well done. Hey, so, so listen, we,

we talked, um, you know, as, as you said in the intro, like you guys were experimenting with some

things. So you were, you, you had told me off air, you were five campuses at one point. Um,

now you're three. So you've restricted some, some things during the COVID season, like many

multi-site churches have just kind of restructuring and, and trying to get to a place of health.

Uh, but so talk to me a little bit, like what was, uh, what is, what happened to your church? What

was some of your experiences, what's the story of your church kind of in the COVID season?

Yeah. So during COVID, there was a couple of things that were, um, uh, well, first of all,

we got thrown into online church, like the deep end of the pool, just like everybody else did. Um,

prior to that, our online church experience was just an upload of the thing we captured on Sunday

that we'd uploaded at some point on Monday. Um, and so all of a sudden we had to figure out what,

what is, what does online church look like? Cause we're not able to, to gather and meet together.

Um, so we got thrown to the deep end of the pool on that and, um, start to innovate and think about

what, what that should be and what it could be, um, going forward quickly. Also had to shift and

make the pivot to online groups and zoom groups and all of that stuff. And you had to try and retain

some sense of community and connection with people. Um, and then during COVID, another big part of,

of, of what the church looked like was it was so cool to see the church in action. Um, food insecurity

is a big challenge in Philadelphia specifically, uh, one fourth of, um, uh, residents of Philadelphia

live under the poverty line. So it's a family of four living on less than $26,700, um, a year.

And so, you know, that, that became a big priority for, it was so cool to see so many churches

come and stack hands together around making sure people had food, particularly the elderly

in our community who weren't able to leave their homes at all, uh, to access food banks and things

like that. So, um, you know, everybody kind of jumped into action. We're trying to figure out

online church, trying to figure out online groups and, uh, finally kind of settled in with some online

stuff that we were, we were pretty excited about. Um, and then which led us toward the end of the

COVID season where we could begin to start gathering again. And that's when we kind of got into some

of the, uh, the experiment. Yeah. We faced some, some challenges specifically in Philly. Um,

things were locked down, like shut down, close up shop. Um, we were meeting plus all of our,

our locations, um, meet in rented facilities, places like performing arts theaters, movie theaters,

high schools, which we were just, we're not getting into those anytime soon. And so while some churches

had options of utilizing buildings to reopen, we didn't. And so we had extended a period of time.

It was a long time. So we even couldn't even get in talks about potentially returning to a physical

venue. And so we had to, we had to get creative and that led us to some of these other things.

Awesome. So, so let's unpack some, some of the other things like you, so you're, you're all online,

you're feeling tension where you can't open up the building. You're on lockdown over a longer period

of time. Let's, let's unpack here. What were some of these experiments? Uh, what were, were we guys

trying? Yeah. So, um, uh, the, the, the first big thing was, it was all the online church stuff.

So, I mean, that came with a ton of experiments, like service times. I remember when we first

started, we were like, yeah, 10 service times, that's what we'll do. And, uh, so yeah, we like

staffed them and, you know, figured all that out. And then we're like, wait, we can leverage this

on demand thing. And, you know, so we kind of settled in on service times, um, figuring out,

experimenting with different platforms, you know, do we, do we diversify and throw our stuff over

like three different platforms? Or do we consolidate and bring it down on to one platform? We ended up

landing on, uh, YouTube as our, our primary spot. Uh, there's a bunch of reasons why we landed there.

Um, and then even experimenting with what online church looks like for us, it related to the content,

you know, like what, what does this online church service look like? Because you can't just

do what we did in the building and throw that online and expect that to, uh, you know, let's

shorten the service, uh, shorten the sermon by a little bit and think that's going to be okay.

Um, it's a completely different platform. It's experienced in a completely different way. And so

it needs a completely different product. So, uh, we did a lot of experiments with that. Um, and a,

I think the bright spot coming out of COVID was looking back and saying that really worked for us.

And I think we landed on some things that we're really proud of and some things that are,

we know are going to be a big part of our future going forward 2022 and beyond. So there's an online,

online church experiment, um, for us. The other side was we did this experiment where we, we thought,

man, what would happen if, as we're able to regather, what if we met once a month in person?

And then we had people use the online church experience and meeting homes together the other

weeks of the month. And, uh, there's a couple of reasons that kind of led us to, to saying, man,

maybe this, maybe this is a better way of, of, of doing church going forward, or at least this,

this season that we're in affords us the opportunity to experiment with this, which we never would

have, uh, had we not gone through the pandemic and, and been in that situation. So, um, a couple of

things that kind of led to that one was, uh, we just, we really sensed that, um, wanting to create

an opportunity for real community. You know, one of the challenges with a church like ours is you can

walk in the building and you can see someone who kind of knows you, you kind of know them,

you wave at each other, you have the service and then you leave and you call that community,

but come on, like, that's not, that's not real community. That's not life on life. That's not,

you know, that's, you know, real community is you got refrigerator rights. You can come to my house

and get something out of the fridge and I'm not going to fight you, you know, like, but, but we call it,

you know, we call this, this kind of, you know, thing that we've settled for in, um, in our kind of

church as community and, and there's, you know, there's just something so much more. And so we

thought, man, maybe, maybe people meeting in homes together, doing church together, um, will give them

the gift of time with each other and they'd be able to create real relationships with one another.

Uh, the other thing we thought was, we think this could be a really cool way, uh, a missional way

to reach people because instead of having five locations around the city, we could have 15,

1600 locations around the city, which man, you know, I mean, yeah, they're in homes,

but I'll take that. I'll take that all day long. You know, we think reaching every person in the city

starts by reaching every person in your circle. So we thought, man, let's, let's, let's leverage this

tool and see what could come of it. Um, if you were to ask me, did it work? So we did this for six

months. My, my answer back to you would be like, not like we hoped it didn't, it didn't. And there's a,

there's a couple of reasons why. In fact, there's probably a bunch of reasons why. Um, but what the,

the bottom line for us, what we walked away with was this, uh, number one, not as many people met

in homes together as we hoped would meet together. Part of that had to do with, you know, we were in

the middle of a pandemic still that that was a thing and how comfortable people, you know, allowing

others into their homes. Um, secondly, getting families together, honestly, can be a little bit

like herding cats as far as schedules and all that kind of stuff. We found that to be a challenge. Um,

so because not as many people were meeting in homes together as we hoped we weren't more connected,

we were less connected as a result of that. And that wasn't an overall win for us. And the other

thing that was a bottom line, um, uh, finding for us to the experiment was going from 52 weekends,

52 opportunities for someone to come and bring a friend or a family member, uh, and reducing that

down to once a month to 12, man, that just really affected our front door and really limited our ability

to reach new people. Um, and for us, that's just, it's just not, this is not okay. You know, we're,

we're driven by our mission to reach people who are far from God and people don't know him yet.

And so, um, you know, that's where we landed with those two things.

Yeah. I can totally see going from 52 to 12 being like a drastic jump. Um, you know, it's,

it's funny. Like I had, uh, just a little bit, just a little bit. Um, you know, I had, uh,

there, there's just some, some friends, like I've known some churches, um, uh, potential church

when it was a Flamingo road, I think down here in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, they went through a

stretch where it was, um, like different people were invited to the main building and then other

people were invited to watch online. Like they rotated, um, if it's your Sunday, you come, but

if not, it's others. And so it was like every other week. And, and so trying to communicate that

and cast that vision, um, you know, Aridus is a good friend of mine. He was the executive pastor

over at production. And so he would, he would tell me horror stories about how that, that was just a

bad idea from the beginning. Um, but this, I think like is, is cast in a place of where like,

there's, there's potential for this, right? Like, man, if we can get people to live missionally

within their, their environments, if we can get people to catch a vision of being the church with,

with their neighbors, of, of utilizing their circle of influence, like from a missional,

from a disciple making standpoint, there's, there's a lot of like interest. There's a lot of

potential in this idea. Um, do you, do you think they really understood the why? Did you think that

they really, the people of your church, they catch the vision of that? Like, I don't want to out

anybody, but did, did they see that? Or was it more of just the comfort of being able to watch church

on their own at home? Well, I'll tell you what, Jeff, we spent a lot of time, um, considering the

options and the strategy behind this and the wise and the benefits and the drawbacks. In fact,

we had pages and pages full, uh, with our staff of what this could look like, why people wouldn't

like it? How would we help them engage all that kind of stuff? And we tried to anticipate questions

in advance. Um, then we rolled it out to our, our leaders and we tried to anticipate questions and,

and drawbacks in advance. And then we spent an entire four or five week message series teaching on

this and why, and explaining the reason and the shift and rolling it out and saying, here's,

here's what we're going to do coming in August. We're going to do this and, um, and trying to get

the heart behind it and then meeting with people and explaining it. And, um, did they get it?

I think in general, something like that, it is, it was such a radical shift from what regular church

is that it had to keep being explained over and over again. And like, so what do you, wait, what do you

mean? What are we doing? And once a month, or this is what, this is just for this time. And what, you

know, like it, it got a little confusing for people because everyone's just ingrained like this church,

this is what church is. And this is how it happens in America. Right. And we, this is the thing.

And so the education of it, although we felt like we did a decent job of it, multiply that times five,

it probably was necessary in order to really communicate what was going on and why.

Yeah. I think I, Jeff, I totally agree with you in that. I think that the idea has merit and the idea

has a lot of potential, but I don't think, I don't think, I think it's too radical of a shift for a

church of our size and to do it like we did, which was like, Oh, here we go. You know, and in the

season in the middle, still being in the pandemic. So I think that had a lot to, a lot to play into

some things too. Um, I think this is the type of change that you either have to build to slowly

over time with a core group of people who are bought into that idea and then just celebrate

them and celebrate what's happening over time and let that, let that thing grow organically. Um,

or if you're starting from scratch, maybe there's an opportunity to, to give this idea, uh,

give this idea a run. Yeah, we're still, we're still a fan of people meeting and gathering.

Um, in their, in their homes. And we actually see that as a part of the strategy for the future

in areas of the city where maybe the location isn't right near them or something like that. But,

um, for the entire church and for everyone, it, it didn't seem to catch on.

You know, what's interesting, even with like planters and we work with digital churches and

micro and in a lot of those fringe cases, um, digital church planting, that type. Um, and, and even like

some of my, my coaching with them is make sure your people understand the vision, make sure your people

understand the vision because you may, the pastor oftentimes is coming in with a very disruptive

mindset, but that doesn't mean that the people that he's his high level leaders, his volunteers,

her audience, that doesn't mean that they still see that vision. Yeah. You can tell them once,

but there's for some of them, 20, 30, 40 years of this is what church is. And now you're changing

that paradigm. Yes. I understand that conceptually, but my default is falling back towards more of a,

you know, a consumer mindset or something like that. And so it's so important as you're doing

these experiments to keep that, um, the, the, why in front of people like this. I know I, I, I love that.

Um, let me ask you guys a question. Do you, how do you, cause so what I'm hearing is we experimented,

we involved the entire church with the experiment. Um, it didn't work like we thought it would.

We learned some lessons from it. We'll get into some of that in a little bit. How do you experiment

without involving the entire, could you have done this like in a sandbox? Could you have done this

at a smaller level? Like what do any, do any idea what that would have looked like? I'm just curious

because it's so massive with, okay, so we're like, we're going to shut down one campus out of our

three and we're going to tell the theater campus that they're online for three weeks out of four.

Like what would a, what would a phasing experiment possibly look like, uh, on this for y'all?

Yeah, I think, I think had we approached it with, um, pitching the idea, um, there would have been a

certain group of people that are really probably a little more missional minded. Um, and even those

people who just have the gift of hospitality and, you know, they're just gatherers on their own and

they just have people at their house all the time. Anyways, uh, those are probably the people that would

be like, yeah, I could give this a shot. And it had we given people the chance to opt in instead of

just telling everybody you're all in, I might've been, I might've been a better move. Um, and then

grow with those people. So I, I certainly think we could have, uh, uh, taken a slower path and,

and experiment with a smaller group to see what could come of it. And I think that we still will

going forward because there are people who loved the experiment and there's people who were like,

man, this was great. I loved that we did that. And, um, a little kind of, you know,

bummed out that we're not doing that anymore. And so, um, pulling those people together would be a good

path forward. There's also a unique time for us, uh, in Philly still is a unique time for us in

Philly, um, two, over two years later, and we're still facing challenges related to COVID and the

pandemic. But, um, you know, as we were rolling this out, we're talking August, 2021, when we began this

experiment. So, uh, well over a year beyond when the world shut down because of COVID. Right. And we

were still in the heights of everything around us is different schools. Aren't normal. Everything is

nothing was normal, nothing. And so, um, I think that those factors certainly played an effect into

it, but it also gave us the opportunity to say, well, since nothing's normal, this is the time to

experiment with something. What if everything's already broken, we're not worried about breaking

anything. Let's just try it. Like whenever do you get a chance to just say, you know what,

we're going to try something completely different than we ever did before. When, when could we ever

have stopped weekly services and said, let's try what once a month looks like and tell you why

and give you a chance to taste that and try it out. And I think it just kind of goes towards our DNA and

the type of risks that we're willing to take to experiment, to try to do things. Everyone says they

want to do things. No one else is doing to reach people. No one else is reaching, but they do their

church is exactly the same as every other church. Exactly the same. Right? Like, and so I think it

was time for us to put our money where our mouth was and say, well, all right, like we're dissatisfied

as look, if you really put the pressure point on most pastors, they're dissatisfied with the community

that's happening in their church. And they're dissatisfied with the people that they're reaching

in their church. And they're like, we got to, we've got it. Something else has got to change.

We got to do something about it. And we were like, well, if we're dissatisfied with that state of it,

and we don't want to return exactly to what it was, then let's just break the box and, and

strategically try something different over a calculated period of time with, you know, laying

it out in a strategic plan. But, um, and through that, we, we definitely learned things and we'll

take those learnings and we'll take what we experienced, um, into the next seasons that we do.

And I pull back, uh, from that season and there were some things that we walk away with like, man,

ouch, don't ever do that again, that I feel like we learned. Um, but then there were some things that

I walk away with and go, I thank God that we walked away with this because this is such a big part of

our future going forward. Um, and so like some of the, some of the ouches was, this is, this is funny. Um, I

legitimately thought that if I told everybody the dates each month and even put it on the, on the back

of their t-shirt, which we literally did, we gave people a t-shirt with all the dates on there,

that those dates would be like sacred. And they, you know, there's, there's no way they're going to

miss church on that day. Nope. I couldn't have been more wrong. I tell you what, so here's what we

learned. People take every weekend as it comes and, you know, decide what they're going to be doing

that weekend. Um, we learned that some people love, um, being in the building and they want every

opportunity to be in the building. And we learned that some people love being online and they want

to be online all the time. And we learned that there's a lot of people who like both and like

the option of both and like the, the ability to be able to be fluid between both of those things.

Um, in fact, it's funny, the, uh, the people who, who, uh, want church in person every week,

it's not that they're going to be there every week. They just want the option

of being able to be in person every week. They're only going to be there once a month,

but they want that option every single week. You can't tell me which week I come. I come

when I want to show up. Right. Exactly. Isn't that true? But isn't that, isn't that the day we're

living in? Isn't that kind of culture? Like how we do everything has changed. It's, it's,

it is a hybrid world and, uh, we do like having all the options. And so trying to pigeonhole

everybody into one thing is honest, it's a little silly to do that, which is why on demand is so

brilliant too. Like, let's go take advantage of those other 160, whatever other hours there are

in a week for people to be able to connect and grow in their faith. And, um, and those things too,

you know, so why just say it's just the one, just one hour. There's so much more opportunity ahead of

us than that. So, um, that was one of the things we learned. We also learned that it's almost impossible

to build teams. If you're only ever meeting once a month, that was tough. If you only see each other

once a month, it's, it's hard to get some momentum going on a team, um, for in-person church. Um,

but like I said, everything, everything's changed. Um, some positives though, is that because

everything's changed, we're totally sold on hybrid church and, um, what that means for people and,

and, and people's ability to move fluidly between an in-person experience and an online or digital

experience and back and forth. I think that's a, that's a big part of the future. Um, we also think

that online church needs to be platform specific. Like it, um, you can't just take what you do in

the building and throw it online and think that that's sufficient because it's not, it's a, you know,

it's, there's similarities between soccer and basketball. They both have goals. They both have a ball,

but you play those games very differently. And I think that's how it is with,

with online church and in-person church. Uh, they need to be different experiences.

So that means for us, like we've got to be a student of internet culture, our creative director

rack. I love this. He says, you know, he says, we know how to, we know how to create and have a great

church experience, but when we're online, we also need to learn how to make good internet.

That's how he says it. And I don't know if that's correct or not, but I think that, I think that the

idea is right. Is that it also has to be good. It has to, it has to fit the platform that it's created

for. Um, and then probably one more like positive takeaway is, you know, some people ask, they say,

uh, you know, aren't you concerned that if you're doing an online thing that you're competing with,

like all the other national ministries, you know, across the world, like, you know,

in North point and life church and elevation. And, and I'm like, no,

we're not competing with them. We have a distinct advantage in that we get to be hyper local.

You know, when we say we're for Philly, we talk about Philly things. We make fun of Cowboys fans

unapologetically because it's, that's, that is, that is a good godly Philadelphian thing to do.

And then that's okay. Right. In our context that it works great. And, um, you know, we get to talk

about serving our city and caring about things that Philadelphians care about. And ultimately we

want to be the church that Philadelphia never knew that they had. We want to be that church family

that didn't know they had. Um, and so the online experience gives us an opportunity to be able to

do that and be hyper local at the same time. So those are some of the, some of the takeaways that

we've had from all this stuff. My favorite part was making fun of Cowboys fans. Let's go.

I got to tell you like that, that, yes, I lived in Dallas for about nine years and, um,

they were not some of my good years in the grand scheme. Not a cow. I'm a Miami Dolphins fan. And

so like the only people who get made fun more than the Cowboys are Dolphins. So, you know, I,

I kind of liked that. We just feel sorry for you. Yeah, no, I, I, I'll take the pity. It's cool.

Thank you. Um, go Philly. Like, uh, listen, I'll, I'll cheer for anybody over the Cowboys.

That's it. Yeah. Very good. Let's go, Jeff. All right. Hey, so, uh, so much, so much good there.

So many lessons. Let me ask this. Um, you said digital, you're learning that digital is different

than physical. You're, you're creative directors talking about good internet. And that, that's a

great line. Um, is there any practical have, have you, are you guys wrestling with that now? Like

how is digital? What, what are you thinking about in the future? What are some of those tensions on

how digital and physical really are different? Yeah. So you mentioned in the, in the B and I'll

jump in here, uh, Jeff, that we, uh, have gone from five physical venue locations in the city,

in the Philadelphia area to three currently right now. And part of that is been a strategic

shift for us to make sure that we're moving our, our manpower and our staffing around to

best support where we want to go. And so we staffed a full-time pastor over online and see

that as a location and want to be able to support the people in that. And we shifted, um, my role

from overseeing locations and leading one to just overseeing locations and creative and online

to put even more, uh, intentionality and emphasis behind the strategy of what we're doing and

supporting, uh, the team that's doing it. And so, um, I think for us really practically,

we realized like, all right, this isn't, this is the future. This is the future for us as a part of how

we church. And therefore we need to shift our, our resources and our staffing and our energy,

um, and our processes around that. And so, so we've made those shifts, um, really practically.

Also, um, we've decided, another thing that we've decided to do was to create a completely separate

online experience than our Sunday one. And so that takes a lot of time and resources. Um, and so we have

service plan for Sunday services, which we call Epic live. And then we have service planning for our

online weekly episodes experiences, which we call Epic everywhere. And, um, and so we, we have to arrange

everything we do strategically in those weekly, uh, things between our weekly live experiences and our

weekly show of Epic everywhere. And, um, that's something we've had to learn and, and practically do.

And it's afforded us a lot of opportunity to be creative. And so we find that is, is actually, it's

fun. There's a lot of opportunity to be creative, creating the online thing, um, which gives you

different opportunities than you would with Epic lives and, um, trying to lean into those and take

advantage of, of those opportunities. Yeah. And so like, you know, pragmatically, you know, we think,

like I said, it's not enough to set a camera up at the back of the room and, and send that to your

online thing. It's like, no, we're going to, uh, we're going to record this early. There's going

to be host scripts. We're recording the message 10 days out. So there's time to do all the editing

and all that kind of stuff during the message. Wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry. Pause, pause, pause.

You record the message 10 days out. Yeah, we're doing the, we're 10 days out on the message.

And then we do the hosting the week of, and the reason, only reason we do the hosting the week of

is because there was a time where like, you know, every other week the world was blowing up and

there was something, something else in the news that we needed to address from online.

If we did it, if we recorded too early, we'd have to rerecord everything. So, um, yeah,

so we're doing the hosting the week of pulling the show together for each week. Um, and then,

like I said, you know, like, you know, being a student of internet culture, it changes things,

you know, so there, we call them episodes, you know, it's not just church services. Um, there's,

we ask people to, to share instead of asking people to invite, cause you don't invite online,

you share online, you know, it just, it just changes language. It changes how you approach

things, it changes how you do things. Uh, we do one song, um, because I, I don't know,

it's a little weird to stand up in your living room and sing to the TV. Um, and so, you know,

we do one song and, and that works for us sometimes too, if we're doing like a closer or something

like that. So it just, uh, being student internet culture and allowing that to then influence and

impact how we make decisions, I think is an important, important part of creating something

that, um, that will thrive when it's online. So I got to tell you, I have much more respect

for you. Not that I didn't have respect before, but it is extremely elevated you being 10 days out.

Thank you. On behalf of your creative department, your production departments and anybody else who

works in communications. Thank you. Uh, that, that will go a long way, uh, in, in helping them

do what they need to do like that. That's just beautiful. Your digital pastor, your online, whoever's

like that. That's just incredible. Uh, I, I can remember hearing a sermon for the first time

Saturday night, which didn't even go the direction that it was supposed to, um, on script and then

basically having to refilm all the, all the, we used to, we would, I would pay a contractor

to stay up overnight, Saturday night to Sunday to edit this thing out. And the fact that you guys

are 10 days out, I'm stuck on that. You said so many other great things, but that, that's just

incredible. Uh, thank you for that. Like that, that's, that's really good. Um, give me a ministry

win. Okay. So we, we've talked a lot about what it wasn't. We talked a lot about the lessons

that, that we learned from it. We talked a little bit about how it's influencing what

we're doing now. What was something that was like, yeah, but this was cool. There's got

to be a ministry story, a win, something in that, in this season.

Uh, we both got stories, Jeff. Now you're going to tell it, you know, you asked the pastors

to tell the stories. Um, one of my favorite moments was when we were actually able to, um,

to host some baptisms and we did some baptisms during the pandemic, mass stuff, I'll, you know,

try to do as much as we can. And then we hosted some when we began live again. And we've got to

baptize people that their very first time walking into a physical building was the day they were

being baptized. Um, because they've made it, they connected with us online, made the decision to

follow Jesus. And, you know, we hear the stories from churches around, around, you know, that this

has been happening and to be able to be a part of experiencing that is, is something really special.

And to know that the difference that it's making in their life, um, far, you know, wherever they're

at, um, we've had people going in from, uh, different places around the country, uh, the city, and even

around the world saying like, Hey, can you baptize me? Or, Hey, I want to follow or that kind of thing,

which is pretty neat. Um, we have, uh, we have a, uh, another cool story is, um, we've had, uh,

Philly's a very high college city. Um, so lots of colleges, a lot of young people, young adults.

And so we have a lot of college students, uh, as one college student, uh, had been connected to our

church, but her mom back home in New Hampshire hadn't been connected to a church, um, especially

during the pandemic. And so they were able to share the online experience together. Um, the daughter in

Philly, the mom in New Hampshire, watching the same churches, church episode at the same time

and have a shared experience together that brought their faith together. Um, it's such a special

thing. And the daughter actually had, or the mom, not sure which one got connected to start serving

online with our social team and our street team and, um, getting connected that way. And it's really

neat to provide opportunities for people to connect, even though they're distance wise, um, they're

having that same spiritual shared experience, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. It's, it's neat to see the opportunity for, um, um, I don't know, digital missionaries.

Is that what we're calling this now? Right. So for people to be able to share their faith digitally

with, with the people that they love, um, just this past week, I saw a dad and a daughter. Um,

the daughter had been connected to Epic and, um, her dad had walked away from church a long time ago.

And, uh, so they started watching during the pandemic together, even though they lived in

different places. And, um, and then, you know, uh, he gets baptized on the backside of all of this.

And I saw them at church. I, and when I saw them, they had come to something called a welcome party,

which is, uh, an experience that we have for people who are new to Epic, um, where they meet some of

our pastors. It's like a zoom call kind of thing. Um, at any rate, I got to hear some of their story.

And then he got baptized. And I'm just like, like, how cool is that, that this, that's her,

that's his daughter's story now is that she got to be such an integral part of him making a connection

to God and to faith again. Um, and it all happened online. I think that's the coolest thing. Um,

you know, truth is that online church is the new front door. People are going to watch online before

they ever come in person, regardless of who they are, whether they're a non-believer or they've been

a believer for forever, they're going to watch online. And so what we put online really matters.

Um, and another thing is really cool about it is, you know, the online church experience has, um,

expanded our reach incredibly because it goes beyond buildings, um, borders and time barriers,

you know, with the on demand thing. I mean, I don't know what it is about Thursday night,

but people love doing church on Thursday night. Like that's a thing. So, you know,

that we're able to leverage that for good, man, that changes the game. And then probably the biggest

one, and this is probably the biggest, the biggest win. If this was the only thing that came out of the

whole experiment and everything that we've been messing with lately, this would be worth it.

So in 2000, people went to church once a week, average regular church to go to church, uh,

once a week in 2019, that number had moved to 1.6 times a month. Um, then you take into account

the pandemic. Did that help or hurt that stat? Well, obviously it hurt it. Right. And so the question is,

can you make a disciple if they only ever engage with you and your content or your community once

a month, can you make a disciple once a month? No. And so if our strategy is dependent on people

engaging with our stuff more than once a month or showing up in our building more than once a month,

and that's a failed strategy across the board, it's a failed strategy. So something has to supplement

or change that. And that's what I think online church does. It creates the opportunity for greater

engagement because yeah, you're only going to show up once a month, but man, I'm going to get you at least

two more times that month where you're going to watch online, maybe three, maybe three,

because it's on demand. It's in your pocket. You can pull that thing out. You can do it with a fridge.

You can do it while you're at the gym. Like, man, that just increases the opportunity for discipleship,

you know, at least fourfold, you know? So, um, that's, that's the game changer. That's the big win,

I think for the church with leveraging online. Yeah. And, and even just pulling, pulling that same thread,

uh, as you're opening up and exploring more in the digital discipleship side, now scaling church into

different, um, different campuses, uh, different environments, uh, more aggressive in digital space,

more even aggressive into metaverse and VR and some of those things, because now your discipleship

system is in digital space, the opportunity to multiply these churches, but feed into a centralized

discipleship. Now you're, you're talking about these church services really being the, the front door

for, and I'm sorry, it's a church. Yeah. Church service or our, our church buildings are our virtual

programming to really be the front door that leads into this discipleship structure that's operating in

a digital space. No, I love the stuff that you're talking about here. Yeah. And, and Jeff, to be clear,

um, the, the, we've been talking a lot about our, our, uh, Sunday experience, whether that's live or

that's, uh, online, but of course that is not the only thing that church is right. That's one of the

iceberg as one aspect of the church and everything else has been revolving around making sure people

show up at this time on for this hour on Sunday. And so now we've expanded that to say, well, you don't

have to, if you, you don't have to do that now, you can access a, uh, an experience made for online at

any point during the week, but that's still just one show on the channel. There, there's needs to be

a lot of other type of opportunities for connection and community. And, um, all the community doesn't

happen by watching that together. It's usually not watched together. It's most of the time watched on

demand anyway. Um, and so, um, for us, our strategy moving forward, um, it includes and innovating around

and thinking through the best ways to build community online digitally to build community,

um, hybrid to where all of, we have an online pastor, um, that pastors, everyone who is connected

to us outline out online outside the Philadelphia area. Our other location pastors are not in-person

pastors. They're pastors period, whether you engage online or you engage in person. So they're connected

with people online and in-person. So technically all of our pastors are online pastors. And, um,

if, if they live, if you live in their region, they're pastoring you, no matter if you attend

online or in-person or a mixture of both, they're your pastor. And so our whole strategy is about

connecting people, um, in groups. Our groups happen hybrid, um, kids stuff happens hybrid. Everything

has to happen hybrid. Everything has to be run through that, even serving, providing opportunities for

that, even serving community outreach with, um, in Philadelphia, there's ways for people to do that,

or we want to resource you where you're at. And so we don't have all the answers. And I know a lot

of churches are trying to innovate and learn in this. How do we do all these other areas? Um, we've,

we figured out so far, um, a good track for us on the Sunday experience, our epic everywhere. Um,

and we are leaning hard into, all right, all these other avenues. How do we, how do we make the most

of that too? And can I bring it really personal to, you know, you guys asked about the winds before,

um, I had, um, a family member, uh, a relative who, uh, lives in New Jersey, um, and doesn't do church

ever really. Um, but saw one of our online things and decided to give it a watch. And, uh,

her reaction to that was, wow, very different. Not only, she had only been used to Catholic. Right.

And she was, she was so surprised, like, wait, this is church. This is like, I actually watched

the thing and understood it and it made sense. And it made me want to ask more. And she then had

follow-up questions, not about, can I come in person or all that, but she had follow-up questions

about real life faith stuff. Right. Like about parenting and about, uh, you know,

faith God questions and all that. And so, um, I think that online opportunities like our weekly

services and other things open up doors for real life conversations to happen where the win isn't

just to get them to watch it. The win is for, to get them to start considering their own personal

faith and taking steps in that direction. And so I've, I've experienced that within my own family

members. Um, and I know that that's happening, you know, times a thousand around.

You know, what's interesting is, is like the whole for, I mean, for you, it digital was an

experiment. Now it was a forced experiment as a result of COVID, but it was something that you had

to do, you know, for churches that are out there listening, how many other stories like that we

would be able to hear if we were experimenting and trying different things and not falling back into the

the same laurels, the same processes, the same systems, the same weekend. Um, the weekend plays a role. Um,

but the ability to do other things, to experiment into, to reach a different type of people, utilizing

different methods, empowering different people and discipling in different ways. Yeah. Like there's

an incredible opportunity for us if we would try to do something different and, and whether it was six

months of, uh, celebration or sheer terror or some mix in between, uh, like it's, it's awesome to see

a church that's, that's going for it. Um, and, and, and learn to maybe a lesson for the future. Well,

let me ask like how, what does the future look like for, uh, for Epic and, and maybe how did some of

this influence what that future looks like? What we talked about some lessons, immediate implications,

or long-term implications. What are you finding? Yeah. Um, well, I think, I think one thing is that,

um, this just underscores an idea we've had since the very beginning, since the days of the duct tape

and the chewing gum and figuring out how to stream across to the other room, it just underscores

this idea that everything's an experiment, right? And that, that gives us permission to try some things

and whether it was a huge success or we were like, oh, that's a failure. It's a, it's a,

however you want to describe that we tried it and it's a lesson learned and we're going to take that

and it's going to make us better going forward to finding the thing that is most effective. Um,

what would be a failure would be not trying. What would be a failure would be sitting back and just

say, let's do what we think is always kind of worked, but we kind of have problems with it because

we don't, you know, we think it could be better. We just don't know how, so we're going to do nothing.

I would rather be on the side of, we're going to shoot for the stars and hit the moon and we're

going to make progress and we're going to take a hill together. So I think that's part of it. Uh,

I think the future for us is, I really do believe that hybrid church is the future. Uh, what exactly

that looks like, you know, there's a lot of innovation to be done and there's a lot of

lessons to be learned. And, um, and you know, the church as a whole is going to be better as

a bunch of us, a bunch of different churches are innovating and playing in the space and

learn from each other, uh, what some best practices are. So I think hybrid churches is the future. I mean,

at the end of the day, our mission hasn't changed. It's still, we're on a mission to see every person

in the city, follow Jesus, every single person. And that's because every person matters. And so

we're going to keep innovating and keep learning and keep trying to pick up best practices from,

from, from everybody we can get best practices from so that we can be as effective as we possibly can

in accomplishing our mission. Um, you know, the old cliche, you know, it's, it's, it's the method

changes. The mission stays the same. Um, but I think really being willing to, to lay your methods

on the line opens the door for God to do things that we couldn't have come up with on our own.

Awesome. So, so true. Hey guys, this has been a phenomenal conversation. Just talking about this

experiment of shutting the doors and going online three weeks of four, uh, throwing some micro,

some, some vision, some, some why in there. Uh, but definitely love, love y'all's heart, uh,

for going for it. And, and the vision for hybrid, uh, moving forward, um, you know, a, a unified

system going in and in between physical and digital, uh, strengthened by digital discipleship processes

is a, is a strong vision for the future. I, at least I think so. Uh, well done. Hey,

as we're, as we're landing the plane here, any, any closing thoughts, Justin, you want to go first?

Sure. Um, you know, when we were, when we were planning this, we talked to everyone we could think

of to try to gain some insight and try to gain counsel in, um, is this a terrible idea? We would

ask that specific question. I think that we, we called you Jeff and we were like, Jeff, is this a

terrible idea? Just tell us, be honest. Right. Can I tell you what my answer was? Cause I remember

you asking me that question. Do you, I actually, I think it's a great idea. I've had a, I've had a

dozen people tell me they were going to do it. None of them actually have the guts to do it. Uh,

so if you do it, congratulations, let me know how it works out because a lot of people are talking

about it, but nobody, yeah, to my knowledge, no, there may be a couple. And I know a lot of places

did a push for, um, for, uh, for micro. I don't know anybody that closed the doors. Uh, and so you

may be like the ones that, that I, I would tell and say, Hey, these guys actually did it. Uh, when

everybody else was just dreaming about it. I don't know if we should be proud or like, nah.

Listen, man, we're always learning, always learning. When we asked that question to, uh,

to Warren bird, who, I mean, smarter than all of us put together. Um, we were like, Warren, is this,

is this going to work? We gave him our best pitch. And he says, you know, you know what people want?

They're going to want both. They want all of it. They want all of it. They want all every option.

They want all the flexibility, maximum flexibility. And I think that's one of the key things that we've

taken away from this. So we had to go through the process, get our scraped knees, learn that,

learn it, but, but we have felt, all right, if, if we're going to try to create opportunities for

people to know Jesus, every person city, then how do we create the ultimate flexibility for people,

create the best online experiences, create the best in-person experiences, create a mixture of

both and do it with the resources we have. Um, and so that's the challenge I think for every church to

be able to think through their strategy, do it with the resources you have, do it where you're called to

do. Um, but man, we would encourage people to not leave out online as a part of it and to be really

strategic about including it and not making people feel bad if they watch online or they connect online.

It's not a secondary less than, Oh, I couldn't get to the real thing. So I do the secondary thing. No,

you did the real thing. Like you're connecting, you're growing, you're making steps, you're taking

strides. So we never make people feel bad about that. We applaud it. We celebrate it. Way to go.

So you came to church, you joined, you texted in online, came to church. And, um, that's something

we learned. Flexibility wins in today's day and age. Kent, any closing thoughts? Yeah, I think I'd say

this and just, you know, uh, talking to myself probably more than anybody, but to other, uh, pastors

or leaders, um, who are, who are listening. Um, listen, I don't know. I mean, I've been in ministry 20

plus years and, uh, this last two years has been hands down the most difficult hands down. No doubt

about that. Um, uh, that said, I think the thing that's encouraging to me is that God chose us to

lead right now. Like of all the times in history to lead and all the times to be a pastor, God chose

us for right now. Last I checked, he doesn't make mistakes and that there was, there was, there's,

there's, there's a good reason why he chose us for now. So he chose us to take on these mountains,

to, to climb these hills, to take on these challenges. And, you know, I believe, I still

believe that, you know, um, the hope of the world is the church and, um, you know, Jesus, Jesus is at

work, God's at work. And so, um, to know that we've been tapped on the shoulder for, for this time,

that's encouraging to me. It's like, all right, even in moments when I maybe don't believe in myself,

there's a God in heaven who believed in me enough to tap me on the shoulder to lead right

now. And so if you're a leader, just know, let's go. It's go time. Let's get it.

Man, you, you, you just, you just preached. Uh, that, that may be one of the first times I actually

got a sermon here on, on the church digital podcast. Like that, that was, that was, that was

solid, man. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. Listen, there, there is so much, um, you know,

there's so much pivoting right now. Right. And, uh, it can be overwhelming. It can be taxing. Uh,

but that's what, what, what truth right there, uh, God equipped you in this time to do what you're

doing. And so thank you for sharing that. And, and with that, we're going to land the plane. Like

this has been a, a fun time. Great conversation. Thank you, Justin. Thank you, Kent. Epic church.

Appreciate you all coming in. Yeah, definitely. It's been great, but we're going to end. Hey,

this is Jeff, uh, with the church, digital digital church network and a whole bunch of other fun stuff.

Thanks for jumping on the podcast and we'll see you next time here at the show.

Y'all have a good one.