BETA08: Five Options Better than the Connection Card

Hey, welcome to the beta show episode eight here. I'm Jeff with the church digital podcast

in Stadia Church Planting. I'm normally introducing Ray DeArmis, digital pastor of

Christ Fellowship Miami. For whatever reason, he's not going to join us today. Let's just

pretend that he is ba-la-la-ing at la-la-la. So it's going to be me, it's going to be solo,

and it's going to be awesome. Hey, so we normally do these on Wednesday. We actually had, I wanted

to take a break from doing the beta show. I just got so excited on this topic. It's like,

let's do a broadcast anyway, just me. But tomorrow, Wednesday, we're doing the Cray Show. We're going

to have some fun, kind of like trying to offer some levity in this holiday season. Tomorrow,

Wednesday, we're doing the top five, unofficial top five ranking of geek Christmas movies. So yeah,

it's the holidays. I'm having fun. We can do it tomorrow, Wednesday. But I was so motivated by

this topic. I had so many questions in such a short amount of time dealing on this one topic. It's like,

hey, we got to do a special episode just for this. Let me clear my calendar. It's crazy. Yeah,

it's the holidays. Yeah, there's so many other things to do. Yeah. But we got to talk about this

beta episode eight here. Here's the challenge. Top five options better than the connection card.

Top five options better than the connection card. All right, let's drill in some detail here. Let me

make sure we're talking about the same thing. The what and the why of the connection card. When I'm

literally talking about the connection card, in physical space, it's usually it's that form that's

in the worship folder or it's in the chair backs where your visitors are filling out things like

their name, their email address. They're signing up for a service option or signing up for a small group.

They're giving a prayer request. It's that point of engagement in physical space where you are trying

to get people information physically to get them engaged into your engagement pathway, discipleship

process, anything other than the one hour on Sunday. So that's what a connection card is. And it's brutally

important. It is so important because church is more than the one hour on Sunday, right? We know that. I don't need

to beat that up, but we want to do more ministry than just that one hour on Sunday. The goal, the great

commission is to go and make disciples. And that disciple making process is more than just the one

hour on Sunday. So we know what the connection card is. We're looking at it right here. Let's talk about

why it doesn't work. And maybe if you're interested, what do we do to fix it? Okay, so here we go.

Let's look at number one here, the first point of why it doesn't work. And simply put, it's you're

asking way too much personal information. Okay, look, I'm cold to the church. I'm cold to your

organization. I'm cold to Christ. I see some random video pop up on my Facebook feed and I'm engaging

and I'm watching this video. I do not want to give you my cell phone number. I do not want to give you

my email address. I don't want to get spam emails from you. I don't want you to blow up my inbox.

And I don't want calls. I don't like talking to people. I don't like getting texts from people

that I don't know. And so all of these personal information that you're trying to engage you,

the church, you're trying to engage with people that are cold to Christ. Well, frankly put,

they're not interested in connecting with you in those platforms because they don't know what

you're going to do with the information. How much are you going to spam them, to blow them up? How

much of a harassment is going to be? Personal information like the cell phone and like the

email address, while it's very popular for you, easy for you, the church to engage with,

it's not going to work well for people who are cold to Christ. And that's different, I would suggest,

than physical. Because at physical, people trust you enough to go to your property, pre-COVID,

even mid-COVID. I think there's a trust level with physical people. You're reaching a broader

reach of people digitally. And so some of that personal information, yeah, you want to give it

for the database, but it's not going to connect well with it. People don't want to give it to you.

In addition to that, oftentimes the connection card's requesting too much information. I swear I

clicked on that and it didn't go. Too much information too soon. I don't want to give you,

I, person cold to Christ, cold to church, cold to your organization,

I don't want to give you all my kids' birthdays. I don't want to give you my anniversary. I'm not

interested in all of this information. So often churches use that connection card,

tie it into like the database for the church. And here are the 47 fields that have to be filled out

in order to effectively create a database record in the church management system. Okay, look,

online's different. You're going to reach a lot of people. And those lots of people aren't

interested in giving you 47 records of data to put into the system. You may need to consider doing

another strategy here. And the third part, the connection card is not easily accessible on all

platforms. How do you connect to the connection card on Facebook, on Instagram Live, on YouTube?

Where is that information available? It's oftentimes it's not. Connection card strongly featured in church

online platform. But a lot of these other areas, it's difficult to get to. You've got to read through

the comments on Facebook to find the appropriate time to go to it. And so just for whatever reason,

you're not seeing a lot of engagement when it comes to the connection card. If you're honest,

look at yourself and evaluate for your church, you're probably not feeling it. Now let's keep pulling

that honesty thread. And this honestly may not be the answer that we want to hear. Online services are

struggling in context of reaching people cold to Christ. Now there is reach towards it, but is it

effective in engaging in getting those connection cards and some of that? Honestly, there's a movement

here where we're discovering, looking at data that's coming back in, that the online services overall may not

be as effective in reaching people digitally as we had hoped. Just even this week, Barna has released a

digital evangelism report partnering with Alpha. And so digital evangelism, what does it look like

interviewing 1,300, 1,500 Americans today, Christians, non-Christians, some of the stuff that's come out of

it. 70% of non-Christians are not interested in online church services. Like that's a fact. American

non-Christians are not, 70%, okay, 30% is, 70%, the majority is not. They're not interested in online

church services. This is a fascinating stat to me. This is also in that same Barna digital evangelism

report here. 90% of non-Christians after having a conversation about faith with a Christian within the

past year. So I talked about faith, a lost person, cold to Christ, had a conversation with a Christian,

physically or digitally. 90% of the non-Christians reported that the conversation went well. I think

sometimes we as Christians were afraid of the wrath of the Twitter sphere and saying something and

offending. 90% have reported that the conversation went well. So the fear that we have in not sharing

our faith online, honestly, from the non-Christian perspective, we're learning from Barna, they're

not feeling it. So, hey, maybe there is a better opportunity for us to not do the services for

evangelism, but to do something different and start to take personal relationships and through those

relationships, connect people to Christ. So that's a whole other conversation. By the way, if you want to

read that Barna report, it's on Barna.com. There's a short link at Barna.com slash Stadia, S-T-A-D-I-A.

And so you can get Barna's report there towards hybrid church that they did with Stadia,

the Alpha. It's Barna, the Alpha evangelism. Both reports are phenomenal. Super exciting

to see real life stats coming in real time. Well, hey, I've stalled a lot here. Let's get to the meat of

it. Five things that we can do better than the connection card. Five things that work better

than the connection card. All right, look, here we go. Number one, text connect to whatever. The

reason this is better is if I'm on Facebook, if I'm on YouTube, if I'm on all these platforms,

the connection card's not easily accessible. And now if I'm on Facebook on a mobile phone,

it's full screen and I've got to scroll around to try to find the connection card. I made like

disconnect from the video entirely because iOS, the video goes full screen and you can't connect

with it always and firmware and blah, blah, blah. Look, sometimes it's just easier to have a

completely separate option. So the text connect to whatever, or here's the church address.org slash

connect, make it easily accessible for people to get to the connection card, regardless of whatever

platform you're on. Now it's an interesting challenge, even here with the text to connect.

Look, I just said, I don't want to give you my cell phone number. And now you want me to use my cell

phone number to text you what I want. And so people are going to be hesitant. Cold people to Christ are

going to be hesitant to go this route. Maybe it's worth doing, but there's going to be some hesitancy

towards it. So, so know that, that going in Facebook groups to me, this is a huge win organizationally

because while I person called to Christ, I don't want to give you my cell phone because I don't want

you constantly harassing me. And there's really no way easy way for me to block you. And I don't want

to give you my email address because you're going to constantly harass me with things that I'm not

interested in. And you, you may or may not unsubscribe correctly when I, when I click unsubscribe to the

email, Facebook gives me person called to Christ user. It gives me complete power to say, I never

want to hear from you again. A couple of simple mouse clicks can block. So for a situation of dialoguing

with somebody doing this via a Facebook group, doing it via the Facebook platform is incredibly easy.

So even things like, Hey, you know what? Jump in this Facebook group. Uh, and when they jump in the

Facebook group, you get the handle automatically on Facebook. Similarly dialoguing on the Facebook

platform right now, some churches have reported 40%, um, uh, engagement response using Facebook

messenger. So in other words, a person called to Christ, I reach out to them directly via Facebook

messenger. Churches are reporting back as high as 40% of those response of those requests of those

dialogues come back 40% of the time. The person you're Facebook messaging is going to reply back

to you. That is an incredibly high response. If you look at email, you're lucky. If you get 40% of

opens, much less 40% of responses, try, try calling people and see if you get 40% of, of responses back.

Facebook messenger is very high. I've actually had industry standard. Tell me outside of the church

as high as 80% of people are responding to Facebook messenger. And so getting that Facebook address

and then dialoguing with them, getting their Facebook profile and dialoguing them through the groups,

through the messenger is a big way to build relationships. If you get people fed into a group,

now you have access to that group to continually build relationships, create content that gets

engagement, that gets them warm to the idea of Christ or warm to the idea of who you are.

And through those relationships, continually funnel them up. Here's another one talking about Facebook

and social media, follow up individually, like one-on-one on anyone who likes comments or shares your

social media posts or online service. Once again, utilizing that Facebook messenger method or Instagram

direct service, do whatever you've got to do to engage with those people, um, directly. So if they like it,

that gives you permission to reach out, ask questions like, Hey, how can I serve you? How can I pray for

you? What, what can I do for you in ministry? How can I, how can I care for you? How can I help you

spiritually? Start to really dialogue through these things and give them an option, give them an

opportunity to engage in, and follow up. Don't be afraid just because they like something that gives

you permission to reach out. They don't like you. They won't reply. They don't like you. They'll block

you. But the fact that they liked what you said means that they're already a little bit warmer

because they, they, they digested a smaller piece of content, which is giving you an opportunity to move

forward. I've had a couple of churches tell this one to me. I'm, I'm intrigued by it. And so I would

suggest maybe some of you guys experiment with this rather than, you know, filling out a connection

card. That means now I have to pick up the phone, email, follow up with that person directly. And

which means like, there's nothing accountable towards it. They can just ignore. I've had a couple

churches tell me they've had report, uh, success with this instead of just filling out a form that goes to

some email list that, you know, the mayor may not have replied to. Have them fill out the form, which plugs

them in immediately into a next steps class and to learn about the church into a one-on-one where there's

like immediate application towards it. So they're not just filling out the card to do nothing. They're filling

out the card to sign up for something. And the flip side of this, which I could see this working as a one-two

punch. If you're going to sign up for something, you need to do it frequently and regularly enough that there's a

payoff towards it. Instead of doing that membership once a month, maybe you do it, not membership,

that next steps class. Instead of doing that once a month, maybe you're doing it every week for the,

for the month of January and just regularly offering those, those steps. So as people in this Christmas

season are, are getting, maybe watching services, getting connected, there's an immediate step to get

them to sign up for these, these new next steps, new member type classes on line where they're engaging

with it in immediate time. I've had, I've had churches tell me they've, they've had a huge,

now listen, there's an opportunity here for the people, just like they're going to blow off that

email. They're going to blow off that next steps class. You will have a percentage. I had a church

tell me, Hey, 80% blew us off. And another church that's 60% of people signed up blew us off. The, the,

the fact though, there is okay, but you got 20% that showed up. You got 40% that, that actually

followed through correctly with it. Would you have gotten that 40% if you tried to reach them via email,

build the relationships? It's, it's kind of the microwave approach. You kind of skipping a couple

steps to get it in. It's not going to work for everybody. Uh, but it's, I think it's better than

just getting, asking a whole bunch of information and then not being able to follow up. Let me give

you a number five here, man. We're flying through this, right? I missed the follow-up comments from

you, man. Uh, I could really use a drink of water, but let me get to number five here. Number five,

shareable content with the asterisk of, oh, by the way, train people to personally follow up

on the digital invite. So as a church, and we, we see this also with, with the Barna report. I don't

have the exact number in my head, but P I think was 50, 50% of people are looking to be, uh, to be

trained to share their faith. And they're looking for 50% of Christians are looking for the church

to equip them with tools to, to share their faith and digital tools to, to share about, about the

church. They want resources given to them. Barna, look at it. Uh, the barna.com stadium has got the

link. They're looking for resources, give them resources, give them graphics, give them video

clips, let them share this stuff on social media. 52% of people said in that same Barna report,

52% of people said it is important for them in their faith to share information about their faith

on their social media channels. They see value in that. And for us, it's funny. I say that I don't

want to give out my cell phone number. I just got a spam call on my cell phone number while I'm doing

this. 52% of people want to share their faith digitally church, give them assets that, that look

good, that are effective in connecting the people that are seeing them to, to your church, to your

services online. But what's interesting at the same time, let's train people. Let's train the people

who have these digital assets to follow up. Hey, you had 10 people who liked that social media graphic

about your Christmas church service coming up. Personally invite them to watch one of the online

services with you. People are cold to the idea of church services largely because they don't like

the church. They don't like what the institution has become, some of the stances, and I don't want

to get into the political things, but at the end of this, I don't know that people are really cold to

Christ as much as maybe they're turned off by what they perceive the church is. You know, Gandhi actually

said this, I love Jesus. It's the Christians that I don't like. They're so unlike Christ. And so sometimes,

unfortunately in this season, I think we're seeing that people are perceiving some negativity towards

the church when in fact, um, the church maybe has an opportunity to recover from that and how we recover

from that is through individuals. So Susie sharing a graphic about a Christmas service is one thing.

That's awesome. People will see it. Susie then following up with everybody who engaged on that

social media post or Susie using that, not to put it just on social media, but to text it directly

to 10 of her friends within her circle of influence. And then personally invite via text, Hey, come be

part of a church service with me. Well, those people who are cold to Christ and cold to your organization

are suddenly warming up because they like Susie. They're not telling your, your organization who

they don't know. No, they're telling their friends Susie. No, by the way, we talked earlier through

this, that 90% of unsaved people of lost people, people who are cold to Christ aren't offended in

these conversations with people like Susie. If we want to win in this season, the future of the church is

one where we're equipping people, where we're equipping Susie and we're releasing Susie digitally

to engage with her people and point them to Christ. And so as effective as it is for the connection

cards to possibly engage people to our organization, things like this honestly are another step towards

how we should be empowering the Susies of our church, the 99, the people who are already engaged

into our church and getting them connected to, um, the church to Christ. So, Hey, this has been great.

So we're going to post all this on, on YouTube. We're going to post it over at the church digital.

Obviously look in this Christmas season, we want to see, we stated church planning, we, the church

digital, me, we want to see churches thrive. We want to see disciples made. We want to see people

take a step closer than a greater understanding of Christ. And, and all of those steps work through

relationships. So whether the connection card works, whether it doesn't, whether some of these other

things that we talk about work or don't, these next steps for your church, for it to be effective

2021 and beyond all center around building these relationships. So we'll listen, we are,

we're going to wrap here. This has been a great time. Thank you for this. Hey, we're going to be back

tomorrow with the Cray show goofing off with Ray, special guest host, Tyler Sansom from church

anywhere talking about, listen, how bad is this segue literally going from like relational evangelism to

the top five unofficial geeky, uh, Christmas movies, but Hey, you know what? It's 2020. We're just

living a crazy life. So if we're going to wrap, thanks everybody. Uh, y'all have a good day.

Thank you.