BETA41: Why My Church Should Think Digital First

All right. Hey, we are live with the beta show episode 41 here. I'm Jeff with the church digital

podcast. Once again, all of this is powered by stadia church planning. Hey, we got a great

episode. We are, we're wrapping up the beta show here a little bit. We haven't made this public

knowledge. Talk about it here a little bit, but here with beta 41 here, we are going to be talking

about why your church needs to be thinking digital first, why your church needs to be thinking at

digital first. If you've got ministry questions, digital ministry questions, we want to answer

them here on the beta show. Go ahead and text us 484-324-8724. That's literally my cell phone

number. And so I don't have my phone in front of me. One of those weird times in life right now.

So go ahead and text me, minister questions. Maybe we'll answer on beta show or something else coming

up along the way. Hey, like I said, we are, we're wrapping up the beta show. This is one of the last

episodes we're going to be doing for a while. You know, as we iterate, experiment, try,

things change. And as a result, season two is coming. Excited about the church digital season

two. We're turning the page, a new outlook for the church digital. So keep your eyes open for that

starting right around the corner, September 13th. By the way, speaking of September 13th,

I'm going to be hanging out with my exponential friends at some regional conferences. I'm going to be

meeting Tom Pounder for the first time in real life. I'm going to be in Washington, DC looking

forward to hanging out there. We're going to be doing a pre-conference. Stadia is doing a pre-conference

track on physical and digital, how those work together. So if you're interested, if you're in

the DC area, September, we're going to be there September 13th and 14th. Go ahead and check out the

website, exponential.org. And be sure to sign up for the Washington, DC, but also the pre-conference.

Going to be in other areas, Houston, Chicago, a couple of spots in California. I will be at all of

them. So be sure if you're going to be out at that area, interested in going to the conference,

stop by and say hello. Would love to hang out with you at these conferences. By the way,

42, as we're wrapping up the next beta show here, we're going to be talking about the secret

to online small groups. Yeah, there's something I may have been holding back on. We're going to be

talking about that here in the near future. But hey, you know what? Here's what I want to get into

today. Episode 41, this idea of what does it mean to think digital first. Beta 41, what does it mean

to think digital first? And I want to give you all out there a couple tips right off the bat. So tip

number one, why you need to be thinking digital first? Well, let's just be honest. Digital has too

much potential to get scraps. Okay. Maybe I'm speaking a little bit from ego right up here off

the top. I confess that, put it up here openly. But the idea is that digital just has an immense

potential just to be left over and getting the scraps. Here's the reality of it. Where we are in this

mid-post-COVID season, and I'm not getting political, don't send me hate mail. Not everyone,

the reality is not everyone, has come back to the building. You know, it seems like the average

consensus that I've heard is about 60 to 70 percent of pre-COVID attendance is back in the building.

And remember, where we were in the building, February 2020, we were at a 20, 25-year decline

where organized religion, organized Christianity lost something like 25 percent over those 20 years.

And so, listen, we were trending down. And COVID, listen, Delta variant, I just read something about

the Mu variant. Everybody keeps talking about all these Loki variants that are around. Okay,

maybe Loki's a different thing. But the heart of this is wherever we are in this COVID journey,

wherever you think we are, there is not a general consensus among the public. And there is not

churches that I'm hearing that are saying, "Oh yeah, we've got 90, 100 percent. We've even grown

in this season." So we need digital to continue to engage. We need digital to still be on task reaching

these people. Realize this, and let me throw a slide up here. Yeah, 40 percent of your people are still not

in your building. So let me ask this question. Why is digital getting less than four percent of your

budget and four percent of your energy or attention? We need digital to be on task. And oftentimes,

well, putting it as second, yeah, we're all, well, we'll get into more of that here in a little bit. But

we need digital to still be that connection point with people that are not yet in your building. If you

think that buildings are important for discipleship and your strategy leans that way, you still need

to be reaching out to people that have not made it into your building. Second reason why digital is

important, why we want to think digital first. If you don't think digital first, you likely won't think

digital. Now, there's a lot of reasons why here. I mean, let's be honest, after several hundred years

of doing church physical only or physical first, the majority of us as staffs, as leaders, as pastors,

we don't think digital. Let's get back to that building. Let's get back to normal. Let's get back

to the way that it was as quickly as possible. But the practicality here is that by thinking digital

first, we are able to work through issues upfront with digital. We're able to instead of, you know,

okay, let's just get it done as quick as possible. By paying that attention upfront, we are aggressively

working through digital challenges as opposed to neglecting it and limiting it as more of an afterthought.

So that's the challenge number two with that. Number three flying through here. Thinking digital first

will help your organization scale. Think complement. Think multimodal. Think different. By forcing

a harder conversation at the beginning, digital first, you're making, you're moving away from this idea

of physical first. And that's making you, when you're fresh, when you have that

attention Monday and Tuesday and not when you're exhausted on a Thursday and Friday,

trying to rattle through this. Look, you know, and I'm not much of a gym guy. I have been in my life,

but it's like leg day. It's very easy to ignore leg day. And you've seen these guys at the gym where,

you know, they're huge up top, muscles ripping, but their legs look like Q-tips.

And there's this intentionality of, hey, you know what, we even need to make leg day work for the digital

church. Somebody tweet that out there. You need to make leg day work for the digital church.

I had a pastor tell me here. This is a good friend, Ray Hudson from City Center Church in Berkeley,

California. Our church, this is what he says. He actually did this at an exponential, some stuff

we're doing for exponential. Our church does five things really well. You know, weekend services,

to be honest, are number five. It's the fifth thing overall in priority. Hey, yeah, the service plays a

part. But for Ray Hudson, lead pastor at City Center Church in Berkeley, it's number five. There's other

things that come first before you get to it. Why? Because you want everything to be in balance. You

want everything to be strong. You don't want that strong upper body and weak legs. You don't want

a strong weekend service and weak discipleship. You need to be thinking multiple facets. You know,

there's lots of adages kind of in the COVID season where the queen, that weekend service,

the strength of the church was gone. And we need to be using other body parts. We need to be growing

strong in discipleship in groups. We need to figure what our mission had looked like. And there was

all this challenge to do things differently in COVID. And yes, the buildings are important. And yes,

for many of us, we need to get back to them as quickly as possible, but not to forsake the things

that we've learned along the way. Ray, thank you for this. What great insight there on this quote.

By the way, number three here, it's not like leg day. Thinking digital first will help your

organization scale, complement, think multimodal. Ultimately, it's going to help you

force those muscles and grow those muscles to think differently. All right, let's go. Number four,

I promised you three. I'm going to give you four just because I can. It's not that digital needs to

be your number one priority. It's that physical church services can no longer be your number one priority.

And so the heart of this idea of thanking digital, of thanking digital first, is really this muscle

reaction that we need to move away from the church service being number one. Our buildings are losing

influence. Our services have not the evangelical outreach potential that they once had, yet there's

a ton of people in those pews ready to be activated and mobilized for the kingdom and church. We've got

to figure out how to do that. And oftentimes, and I'm not talking about by thanking digital first,

we need to broadcast our church services online. That's not the solution I'm getting to. Instead,

maybe it's more of we need to figure out what to do with these people and how we can get these

consumers activated to the place where they're being on mission. By the way, we, Stadia, we wrestle

with this all the time. We talk about Fidgetal. We've got Fidgetal learning communities.

We actually did the trademark, but if we're even thanking digital first, maybe Fidgetal, which is

physical and digital, maybe that's the wrong word. Maybe we should have instead, maybe we should be

calling it Digical. Maybe I'm joking. Actually, somebody out there needs to buy, just go buy

digical.church. Oh, wait, I already did. So, never mind. But the heart of this is, listen,

whether you're saying Fidgetal, whether you're saying Digical, the heart of this is we need to be

thanking digital first. We need to be thanking different first. We need to be breaking this rhythm

of it's all about the weekend service. And instead, realizing that weekend service is part of what we're

doing. But your church may be doing five different things. And for you, the weekend service is just a

part of it. And even like I said, maybe it's the fifth part. Maybe it's the pinky. And some of your

other muscles within your church need to shake the atrophy off and start to be more involved in this

thing. Hey, I love this quick beta show right here for the weekend. Beta 41, why your church should

think digital first. Beta 42 coming up next week. We're going to be the best kept secret to your

online small groups. We're going to hit that. And do not forget, we, Stadia, we want to hang out with you at

that exponential regional conferences, exponential.org to find times and locations. When you

register, we'll be in DC, Southern California, Northern California, Houston, and Chicago. I'm

going to be doing a lot of traveling here before Thanksgiving, and it's going to be a blast. Can't

wait to meet a lot of you in person. And when you sign up for that conference, sign up for the

pre-conference, the Stadia track, talking physical and digital, and we will see you there. Hey,

season 41 coming up real quick around the corner. See that in a couple of weeks. Next week is the

last beta show. I'm saying it publicly right here. Beta 42, and then we're calling it quits. This is

Jeff at the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Thanks for jumping on here. We'll see you next week.

Y'all have a good day.