BETA26: 7 Reasons Your Church Still Needs Phygital

All right. Hey, we got the beta show. I'm Jeff with the Church Digital Podcast. Once

again, it's powered by Stadia Church Planning. It's been a while since I've been in this

format here with you. By the way, here with the beta show, we are answering your online

ministry questions. You can go ahead and text them in to 484-324-8724. That is literally

my cell phone number. Yes, I am giving away my cell phone on the internet. 484-324-8724.

Text the online ministry questions. We will answer them in future episodes here with the

Church Digital with the beta show. We've been experimenting with some different things,

tried some things at Clubhouse, tried some things in different formats. Hey, we're going

to come back here for a while and kind of hang out doing this stream live with you.

Here with episode 26, seven reasons your church still needs digital. That's right. Hey, we're

going back to the building. Let's all do a collective yay. I had a digital friend. I'm a

digital guy. I had a pastor ask me recently, Jeff, as we're going back to the building,

aren't you upset? We're going to get more into that here in a little bit because this

isn't the end of digital in context of church. It's really the beginning, but we'll get to

it. Hey, let's talk about what's happening in our buildings right now. Collectively, this

is a non-scientific poll. These are things that I've learned and that I've observed through

some Facebook groups. 60% to 70% of pre-COVID attendance seems to be the mean. It's the average

of what is back in the building. It ranges from 50% all the way up to 100%, but at this

point, 60% to 70% seems to be the national average of that. You can check out some of the

comments there at thechurch.digital.fb. It'll get you to that Facebook group. Another one. This is

interesting. 75% of churches right now, masks are optional. This is a poll that's actually going on

right now in that Facebook group. If you want to vote for it, go ahead. Thechurch.digital.fb

will redirect you to that poll. Once again, this is non-scientific. I'm just a guy in a Facebook

group, so it's great. Hey, listen, it's not time to be done with digital just because we're going back

to the physical building. There is still a role for digital within your physical worship service.

This is a lot of what I wanted to focus on here with the stream today. Let's remember up front,

physical should not be in competition with digital. After all, physical is part of what

figital is. We need to figure out together, and this maybe even really separates. Well, let's even back

up here a little bit. Let's talk about what, when I say figital, what does figital mean? Defining

figital. Figital is physical and digital working together. It's not overlapping. It's not in

competition. It's not a fight. You know, just today, just right before I pressed go live on this, I was

reading a Facebook post of a pastor who's tired of broadcasting his services because it feels like

broadcasting services online is in competition with getting people into the building, and that mindset

is completely missing the role of digital in context of your church. So what I want to give here is

is seven reasons why physical and digital, how it can work together in a figital way, and seven reasons

why your church should be doing this today. So we're going to get started. This is going to be a lot

of fun. Hey, and we're going to do this quick. It's just going to roll. Number one, physical digital

worship services. Honestly, this weekend experience that we've created continues to lose effectiveness

for evangelism. I know that's hard to hear. The purpose, there is purpose behind the weekend

experiences. There is purpose behind that service, but I'm not sure effective evangelism is really

happening there. By the way, I'm not the only crazy guy saying this. Barna essentially is saying 80%

of people called to Christ, pre-Christian, lost, whatever your terminology is, they're not interested in

physical or even digital worship services. Like if people have spiritual questions and they are not

Christian, they do not believe in Jesus, they are not going to go to the building, 80% of them

are not going to go to the building to engage in those questions. Ultimately, figital is more than an

online worship service. So as we're thinking about what figital can be in context of our church,

what do we do with it? Let's look here. People called to Christ who have spiritual questions,

they're going to go ask a friend or they're going to go to Google or YouTube. So we talk a lot about

this here through the church digital. Your new evangelism really comes in place of training people

to have these conversations. And honestly, it goes towards utilizing better search engine techniques,

SEO, YouTube, pastor, Google did a podcast on that. So look, right up front, we need to be thinking beyond

the weekend worship services in context of figital. Number two, we can potentially reach a different

type of person in digital spaces. The fact is, reality, some of us won't make it back to the building. We

know that. Some of us aren't coming back. Fact is as well, some of us can't make it back to the building.

Let's look at this. Unchurched, de-churched, health issues, social issues, people who can't work or who

work weekends and can't make it to the building. There's a large chunk of people that are not able to

make it into your physical environments. And doing discipleship and engaging with people digitally allows

us to be the church in digital space that reaching a type of person that our physical buildings cannot reach.

Just within the past month, I have a digital pastor friend of mine. It's a digital-only expression of church.

And he saw a salvation of a guy who had not set foot in a physical building in 10 years.

And so a very de-churched crowd out there, unchurched crowd as well. And so there's opportunities abound

to engage with a different type of person than the physical building can reach. Let's look at number

three here. Traditionally, physical discipleship struggles, while digital discipleship is becoming more

and more effective. So let's talk about this. If you really look at, you know, even, well, here,

let's do this. 25% of Americans are active in the Christian church. Numbers are decreasing annually.

Within the church, we've forgotten how to make some of these disciples. What we're doing, even pre-COVID,

if we really analyze this, I'm not sure it's working. And so the heart of this gets to this place of

what does it mean to make a disciple? And are the methods and the processes that we're doing

in the building, are they working? Or are we having issues, even pre-COVID?

So if we're going back to the building, that's great. If we're going back to the old strategies,

that's great. But were those strategies effective? Is it effective in gathering people? Okay, maybe.

Even though we've seen, you know, massive decreases over time. So I don't know if it's really effective.

Is it effective in not just gathering people, but in making that disciple? Is our ecclesia

creating disciples? Or is our ecclesia gathering people that we really need to start scattering in

diaspora? Do we need to start pushing people out of the net, out of the nest, so to speak,

through that discipleship process? I don't know that it's working in physical space.

But I would say this, the strength of digital. Well, honestly, let's just go ahead and go to number

four because it's going to get there real quick. Number four, digital helps keep people on mission

using physical and digital methods. Once again here, the strength of digital is equipping,

it's training. It leans very strongly into this idea of disciple making. This is a radical concept,

but digital in itself is very strong towards making the disciple making processes,

which is really the weakness of many of our physical churches that are out there, which gets us to number

five reason why you should be doing digital. Churches report that digital is easier and quicker to go

through the discipleship process. I literally had this conversation with a skeptic lead pastor just this

past week. Discipleship that was happening in digital meetings is how oftentimes happens twice as fast.

They meet twice a week as opposed to once a week meeting physically. So my skeptic pastor friend here,

not a fan of digital, is open to different ideas and ways. And he noticed that some of the people

that were in that discipleship process that were in those meetings, they started asking, "Hey,

this is fun to do digitally. This is easier. I don't have to worry about traffic. Can we meet multiple

times a week?" And so they were going through the systems and the processes. They were understanding,

they were adapting to the culture change quicker because they were able to process it digitally

instead of physically. Number five, we're seeing that the reports are that people are able to do this

quicker, utilizing digital, which is complementing what's happening in the physical space. Number six

here, COVID season is not a rejection of digital. It's a rejection of the lack of balance. For the

established church, we need to find that balance. Yeah, listen, we can push all in on digital and

people were freaking out because they can't handle that much. I totally get it. I understand. I agree

with it. I'm a digital guy. And even I'm like, I want to sit at a sushi restaurant with my family.

I would love to get a side hug from somebody. There's a physical aspect to who we are. And going

all digital in 2021, there are churches that can, there are people that can, but it's not for

everyone. Similarly speaking, individuals, we are both physical and digital people. We operate in both

sides of the equation. And so we need that physical engagement. We need that digital engagement. The

trick is to not get it to conflict with one another. The trick is to figure out how to get it to complement,

to work together with it. Established churches, honestly, they need that physical and that digital

approach. They need both in order to function correctly and properly here in 2021. Number

seven, digital leans towards multiplication. It creates immense opportunities to scale. It helps start

a movement when it's done correctly. And this really gets down to even like Seth Godin. Many of you have

heard me tell this story. Seth Godin is probably one of, at least here in America, one of the top

marketing minds, very innovative, ingenuitive thought leaders. And so somebody asked Seth on his podcast,

maybe a year ago, "Hey, how do I get my message heard around the world?"

Seth Godin basically responded by saying, "A billion people don't care about anything that you have to

say. A hundred million, ten million still don't. A hundred thousand, ten thousand, look. You want to get

your message heard around the world?" You take your message, you craft it specifically for someone.

You tell them that message, you get them to own it, and then you get them to tell someone else.

Seth Godin, not Christian, Jewish actually, basically described the way Jesus started his church

2,000 years ago, and described what we today would call disciple making. And so the heart for us,

as we're looking at how digital can lean towards multiplication, create opportunities to scale,

start a movement, it's not working with platforms speaking to many. It's really working with individuals,

and from that point, getting it to multiply. It's not working in the mass, it's working in the small,

and creating more of those multiplying opportunities at the small level.

So did you catch it? Like, look, I just went through in record time, I can't believe how quick it was,

seven ways the church needs to be figital, seven reasons why the church should stay figital,

but absolutely none of them had anything to do with physical or digital worship services.

And so, as a church, we bank so much of what we're doing on that Sunday morning service.

We're wanting to fight for, "Okay, that needs to be done physical. We can't do it digital.

Digital is going to compete, it's going to take away from what's happening in the physical space."

Honestly, and I don't mean to demean the situation, but that's not the right conversation.

I had a church yesterday ask me, I spoke at an exponential conference and a question at Q&A, and

the guy stuck around afterwards and hit me up on Facebook and was like, "Hey,

my church, my elders, there are two elders, and they don't want to do digital."

The church staff, many of the high-level volunteers were all excited about it, but a couple of the elders

kind of get in the way and they just, they refuse to budge.

Hey, what are they concerned about? What are the elders concerned with?

Well, Jeff, they're concerned that people are going to, and I said it earlier,

people are going to look at digital as a reason not to come back to the building.

Okay, so you say to the building, you mean the specific worship service.

Yeah, they're not going to come back to that specific physical worship service.

They're going to be "lazy" and stay home online.

Cool. Listen, don't even broadcast the worship service.

If your church wants to highlight what's happening in digital space, now I'm all for

broadcasting worship services. I've broadcasted thousands of them and would encourage churches

to do that. But if they're not wanting to embrace this idea of digital because they would rather

prioritize what happens in the physical building, give it to them. Don't worry about broadcasting

services. Put all the eggs in that proverbial basket for a season and focus on that digital

discipleship and really expand that complementary approach of doing digital discipleship coupled

with the physical service and see what happens.

You see, I think so often we fight on this battleground and the act of this physical battleground

is not in the weekend service.

It's in disciples, creating disciples who are making disciples, who are making disciples.

Let's take our focus. Let's take our attention there. We can fight all day long.

And even when we talk about it, people who are fighting on the digital side towards why we need

to broadcast services, we're also at the same breath saying, "But it's not about the sermon.

It's about this discipleship and that disciple making peace." Okay. I love that. I agree with that. That's

right. Let's let go of broadcasting the service. If it means, hey, we need to be physical with the

service, but what we're going to do outside, we're going to take that scalability. We're going to take

that emphasis. We're going to take that speed that we can do in digital versus physical, and we're going

to embrace that on that discipleship side. That is the win. So here you go. Seven reasons why your church

right now needs to be fidgetal, and it has nothing to do with the service. It is all about that

disciple making peace. Once again, if you've got questions, and I see some comments have come in.

I didn't even see that blip on the screen. If you've got questions moving forward, text us at

484-324-8724. Hey, this is Jeff with The Church Digital once again in Stadia Church Planting. By the

way, check out Stadia if you've got more questions on this, on how to be fidgetal, on how to improve

your digital disciple making process. Check out StadiaChurchPlanting.org/fidgetal, P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L.

StadiaChurchPlanting.org/fidgetal. We'd love to help you on that journey. See y'all later.

Thank you.