BETA28: Four Reasons Your Church Can Thrive, Phygitally

all right hey welcome to the beta show i'm jeff at the church digital podcast once again powered

by stadia church planning want to give a shout out we're doing this live out through the interwebs

to everybody watching on facebook youtube the facebook groups a couple people are going to be

watching on twitch and periscope we've made fun a little bit of periscope in the past but

for those of you out there are watching and engaging with this live awesome hey thanks for

that here with the beta show we answer your digital ministry questions i'm literally giving

you my cell phone number right now on the air 484-324-8724 that's 484-324-8724 literally my

cell phone number is number four the church so text those ministry questions in 484-324-8724

we will address them on future episodes here of the beta show here with episode 28 we're digging in on

this topic for reasons small churches can thrive fidgetally for reasons small churches can thrive

fidgetally there's a misnomer out there that a small church has no business doing digital ministry

oftentimes i think this is propagated by the small church pastors themselves who may be locked into one

model or not understanding that really their strengths of a small church play very well into

digital ministry now you may be saying what's a small church i don't know that i'm necessarily going

to put numbers on that because for for me a small church actually might be a medium or a large size

church to another but at the end of the day i think that all churches including smalls including church

plants we at stadia we work a lot with church plants and helping them understand a lot of the same

fidgetal strategy and a lot of the same mindsets coming into it as a matter of fact in this uh season

in covid season we maybe we're coming out of covid season let's admit that in this early in this covid

season i had a digital pastor a good friend of mine at a let's call it a giga church uh let's say that

pre-covid it was 20 000 person church in physical attendance so this is a very large church a digital

pastor this is what he said to me he says jeff i really wish i was at a small church right now

where i was actually able to do tangible ministry relational ministry the giga church the large

churches oftentimes they don't have the ability to connect in with that relational component they work

very hard because of the size because of the building size because of all this really the

intimacy of that relationship is lost in physical and believe it or not in digital space and this

is where i think that really small churches thrive small churches are set up to succeed digitally in

many ways better than the larger churches but here's the deal it takes a different mindset you need to

be thinking differently than maybe the large churches are and then maybe even than how you're thinking today

so really let's focus here as we're going through this conversation let's focus on how do we have

that different mindset what do we need to do to overcome maybe some of the challenges that we have

to be able to have that different mindset here you go for four reasons that churches can thrive

small churches can thrive physically here's number one excuse number one we are so small our online

church service production looks horrible i've heard that excuse time and time again from a small church

believe me i'm at a church plant i attend reality church down here in miami carlos lolette's a stadia

church planner i i think we've done three maybe just two pop-up services like it's very new and so yeah

we can really look at the production that we're doing it in our services and realize man our church is so

small we're so new like to actually do the production it looks horrible compared to life church or any

many other churches that that are out there it's very easy to stop at that excuse the new mindset the new

reality is that honestly relationships are so much stronger than your weekend service content and once

again this is the strength of a small church the strength of a small church isn't the quality of

production it's not the quality of the worship leader honestly sir and i apologize lead pastor here it's not

even the quality of your sermon the the strength of a small church is the relationships that you can have

the friendships the intimacy that happens when you're in small and so when we look at doing digital church

let's focus more on that component on that piece when we look at at digital and understanding how a small

church can do thing do digital ministry man those content those relationships are so much stronger

than the content is and so pour into those relationships we're going to build on that here

in a little bit but let's look at number two here excuse number two you've probably heard a church say

this before we don't have any budget it's funny i've heard small churches say that i've heard large

churches say that i've heard giga churches say i i everybody nobody ever has any budget but i guess

budget is is kind of um i guess contextual depending upon what size church you are budget can be defined

differently but in a small church i guarantee they don't have you know let's go get a bunch of uh 4k

cameras hey let's let's get a new 2me switcher hey let's let's really start to you know like get a

get a quality broadcast encoder and do that oftentimes small churches they they don't have

those resources to really make that weekend production pop well i i guess the new mindset would be

uh how much budget do you need to buy zoom like not stock in zoom although that probably would have

been a good idea a couple years ago uh when it comes down to though is man zooms like 15 bucks a month

uh for an account and and and now i can build relationships i can dialogue with people i can

meet with people i can disciple people in digital space and because i'm doing it digitally the reach

is much farther than i would normally get the engagement people wanting to stick around longer because

digital is easier to have that conversation with the intimacy where you're able to process through deeper

things quicker man there's a bunch of strengths in digital that small churches if we could utilize

this if we could utilize zoom not just as a man we we i had this conversation recently with with a pastor

and they said yeah we do we do digital small groups just for you know the the people that can't do

physical like we'd rather them go physical but digital is just kind of like the the catch-all for the

people who aren't done wearing masks yet and stuff like that that may be true uh but if that's your

mindset small church there's a whole crowd of people there's a whole ministry potential there's a mission

field you're missing by just having it be the second thought instead of man how do we how can we really

tap into people digitally how can we really creative digitally with how we're doing small groups i've

i've told stories and i've told i've talked about my mom a lot here uh with the beta show and the

podcast and and my mom's leading a small group right now i love my mom my mom's 70 years old uh yeah i did

stutter through that that wasn't like bad audio uh so uh she's not the typical person that you would think

would be leading an online small group and my mom came up with this actually she leads i think two

or three at this point but my mom she has one of her small groups i think they meet on monday night

it's women her age so it's women in the 60s and 70s meeting with daughters that are displaced around

the country so it's women meeting with their daughters weekly talking about the bible so basically the only

time the majority of the time these women my mom's age get together with people with their daughters

with their family who live on the other side of the country is when they get together to talk about

the bible like this is a phenomenal concept that brings families together that it strengthens family

discipleship um even strengthening the bonds of of family because now you're definitely talking to your

daughter on that upcoming monday small group it's an incredible idea my mom came up with it entirely on

her own and when she told me the idea i'm like that's the greatest thing i've ever heard mom that's

awesome and she's had immense success with that and so rather than looking at small groups and zoom as

a limitation look at it as a strength what can you do creatively with zoom uh that you can't do in the

physical space my mom's idea of getting mothers and daughters together would never work in physical space

if only because these people live in opposite time zones so great idea there love mom hi mom my mom

could actually be watching or listening to this at some point so just want to publicly say that number

three excuse number three i don't understand digital okay no i'm not saying that i i jeff i i think i have a

have a grasp on it not always learning though let's do this pastor saying this i don't understand digital

i'm really a brick and mortar guy i don't know how to lead this uh frankly well first off if if you are

thinking that um say it own it because there's nothing wrong with that pastor a lot of times at a

small church you're trained into into one model and and that's great now coming out of this covet season

you're definitely seeing multimodal different models pop up and so now maybe it's time for for your

church to expand into a second model and just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that your

church shouldn't do it which would get you to this new mindset number three ask for volunteers ask for

help disciple those people create them as leaders and then let them lead pastor it is completely okay

that you don't understand the digital implications of of what's happening and and i want to release that

from you what i would suggest though is that you find someone in your church or people within your church

and you let them lead out a little bit here um and let them listen care for them spiritually

disciple them to the place where you trust them spiritually and then you need to trust them to

the place technologically that they can take the church trust but verify test experiment do some

stuff build it slowly but that is a great process to go through to take your church beyond where even you

can lead it yourself listen and this is this is going to be funny and maybe a little bit out of context

god actually gives us a digital strategy in in proverbs i don't know if you're ready for this

proverbs 3 5 and 6 trust in the lord with all your heart lean not on your own understanding

in all your ways acknowledge him and and he will direct your path listen like okay completely out

of context don't don't send the hate mail for for this i probably deserve hate mail for other things

not for this ultimately pastor if if we're trusting god and we're leaning not on our own understanding

like let others lead in maybe even follow god in how he's leading those people experiencing god look and

see where where god is moving around you and follow suit join him in that journey and so even as you're

not falling on your own and depending more on others and on god and you're acknowledging him if you're

doing those three things then he's going to direct your path which is really gets down to the to the

beauty of this now that's completely out of context and some pastors out there is opening up his email

so i'm not going to die on this hill but it really there's an opportunity to expand the capacity of your

church by letting others lead in to that all right look at this remember this pastor if there's one thing

you're taking away from this number three you can control or you can multiply but you really can't do

both as you're wanting to do the uh the multiplication what we're talking about here is doing digital

ministry that's separate from the physical ministry and you're looking at doing different things there

comes to this place where maybe i really shouldn't necessarily be controlling this thing tightly

as much as releasing it and letting uh giving others an opportunity to lead trust but verify

disciple to the place where you trust spiritually these are necessary things but releasing is going

to give you a multiplication opportunity all right hey let's look at this number four excuse number

four i don't want to do digital until i can staff it i i have heard this quite a bit uh and and the

answer to this honestly is is very simple you've already got all the resources you need new mindset

number four you've got all the resources you need it was funny just recently i was on a stream uh with

my good friends over at resi i was doing a webinar with them and one of the questions they asked was

what's the um strengths weaknesses what's the greatest strength what's the greatest weakness in the church

today uh and to me it was simple strength yeah church we have a phenomenal number of resources we have a

phenomenal number of people that attend that are involved the you know call them consumers call

them butts in seats call them religious hangers on the number of people yes maybe it's shrunk in this

coveted season but it is still a phenomenal large number of people and if we can move them from a consumer

get them to the place where they're on mission where they're activated um guess what we really don't need

the staff i mean honestly when you're when you're looking at like global movements and historical

movements uh paying a staff person actually like limits the growth of what's possible um paying for

that accountability often wise kills the accountability of what could be without that because it goes from

a heart thing to a man i just want that paycheck and so this idea of i don't want to do it till i can

staff it honestly there's no reason not to do it right now and you may not even need that staff

that may be a separate conversation look ultimately here church small church uh don't copy the big church

model of online don't look at the life churches and say i'm going to do it exactly like they do it

there's lessons to learn i love my friends at life church saddleback crossroads you can drop whatever

church you want to in there and there's lessons to learn from them but i guarantee a small church is

going to be successful by doing it different than what some of the the big boys are doing with it

remember this relationships win over content use the relationships um to make more relationships

content can get you to relationships it's a hard path relationships on relationships will get you

more relationships quicker a relationship to relationship is going to be far more effective

than content getting you to that relationship i had somebody tell me this just recently i was doing a

thing kevin marsico u.s director of the timothy initiative said this content does not

change values values values don't actually change until people actually do something and so as we're

looking at at our church services as you're creating this content on the weekend big churches especially

small churches you're not actually seeing it happen until we're driving people to do something

to have those conversations so really focus in on that in small church utilizing your relationships your

connections that you have with people you're going to be able to get people to do something at a much

quicker honestly easier route i would predict than what some of the giga churches are doing small church

ultimately get your people on mission fidgetally physically and digitally let that be the game

let that be the the goal of what we're trying to do there with the small church hey great so that was

what like i don't know 16 minutes four reasons why your church why your small church needs to be fidgetal

and pushing this idea of a different mindset along the way once again we would love to hear from you

in future 484-324-8724 and if this struck a nerve if you're like hey i want to learn more about

this stadia has fidgetal learning communities that are specifically set up to help churches like yours

you're a big church or your small church understand how to do this how to take people and move them and

create them into a movement physically and digitally you can see it here on the back of the tv if you're

watching the video stadia church planting dot org slash digital stadia church planting dot org slash

digital p-h-y-g-i-t-a-l check that out get connected into a learning community and let us help you take

some of these next steps digitally hey for everybody and as funny as i love this hey thanks for the chat

that that's coming in at the last minute literally as i'm landing the plane sorry my bad i gotta go uh but

this is jeff with the church digital and state church planning hey we'll be back with a live beta

show again next thursday uh but until then check out the podcast check out at the church dot digital

find me on social media and and find out what stadia is doing to help churches like yours uh figure out

how to master this idea of digital to the point of creating making disciple making movements powerful

stuff the stadia church planning dot org slash digital that's it everybody i'm done y'all have a good day

that's it everybody i'm done and i'm done and i'm done and i'm done and i'm done and i'm done so