BETA06: How Can I Help Leadership See Bigger, Bolder Ideas?

All right. Hey, we're here at the Beta Show, episode six here. Jeff Reed with the Church

Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Of course, joined once again by Ray DeArmis over at Christ

Feltshire Miami, digital pastor. Ray's promoting the shirt, getting the word out. Definitely

looking good there. Ray, any thoughts today on this beautiful Wednesday afternoon on the live

stream? I can't tell you, man. We are doing everything we can to speed up ending 2020.

Christmas gear is going up before Thanksgiving. You know, we're already doing our New Year's

countdown in the DeArmis household. I'm pretty sure that by Friday, we'll be counting down 2021. So

the future is here, my friends. We are already there. That's a beautiful thing. Listen, 2020,

you know, there's a scary thought. I don't want to get stuck here. But what if 2020 is not the bad

year? What if 2020 is just the beginning of a bad decade? I don't necessarily want to like,

get stuck on that. But it's a reality of, hey, let's really hope that 2021 can turn the corner

here for us. But seven years, guys, seven years for all of our eschatology folks. What is happening?

What is happening? Well played. So that, like I said, is a completely separate conversation here.

Hey, listen, with the beta show, we answer your questions. Online ministry, church online,

digital church, digital only expressions of church, digital church. If you're doing an online

ministry, you've got questions on it. Where's your leadership getting stuck? Where are you getting

stuck? We want to help answer that. Text us these questions at, for the church, 484-324-8724.

Literally, take out your phone, text us, unless you're watching on your phone, and then wait till

after the show. And then text us your questions, 484-324-8724. Well, this is episode six. We've

been rolling through this. We're having a lot of fun with it. Here, in this episode, here's the

question, basically, that we're asking. How can I help leadership see bigger, bolder ideas? And I hear

this. This is a recurring question, at least, that I'm engaging with. For practical, this is the question

that was texted in to us. Feels like our leadership is falling in love with our old ways. It's familiar,

it's easy, and it's safe. How do I get my ministry leaders and leadership team on board with bigger

and bolder ideas? And so there's a lot to unpack there. Ray, just kind of walking into this, man,

what are you thinking about this? I think that this is something, you know, this question needs to be

unpacked in so many different ways, because different people are asking this in different

organizations, not even realizing and not giving their leadership enough credit in terms of how

much they may have pivoted in 2020. Like, it's really easy to just look ahead and say, man, my

leadership is trying to run away from new ideas, not even realizing, like, how much things that they may

have already shifted in 2020. And so before we go bashing on, on, hey, man, we want to innovate,

we want to move forward. Let's take a moment and even, and even in your own leadership, like

acknowledge the changes that your leadership has been willing to make in the pivoting that they've

done this year, because I guarantee you every leader is dealing with pressure in terms of the unknown

and the uncertainty that they've had to deal with 2020. So before we go criticizing our leaders,

let's also celebrate the pivoting and the adjustments that they've made this year, because I guarantee

you, especially for those of us that are like an online ministry, like we're always trying to push

innovation. We're always trying to push what's new, but let's also take a moment and celebrate the

innovation that they've done too. Right, Jeff? I mean, let's, let's be real. It's been a year of change.

Yeah, very well said. Every playbook, every training session, every learning that your leaders

understood up until March, 2020 was teaching towards a different direction. And it's all trash

at this point, every playbook, every strategy, everything needs, needs to get revisited. And,

and people, some people are processing that well, to be honest, some people are struggling through

this season. And, and so, and really like this gets us here to, to point one that I wanted to

acknowledge here. Recognize where your leadership is. That may not be hard, but then the next step of

why they are there. Don't just look at your leadership as saying, they're not this, but start

to unpack why are they taking the stance, the position that, that they are. And the more that you can

understand the, not only the, who they are, but why they are that way, it gives opportunities to

engage with them to, to try to get there. So Ray, you know, just what experiences have you had in,

in your ministry life where, you know, not only are you recognizing kind of like where, but, but also

helping leadership understand or recognizing why the leadership is the way they are.

Yeah. You know, this kind of brings me back to an old maxim that I'd heard back in the day that

when people don't know what to do, they do what they know. And when you have so much success doing

something a certain way and everything has to shift and then things kind of come back to what,

what we may be considering normal. Of course, it's easy to want to run back to what was. And mind you,

that is not unique to church. I mean, let me help you understand that. That is not unique to our way

of life or to our, to our little part of the world that's in business. That's in so many different

areas. And for some of you, that's even your households, right? Like we're having a hard time.

We're navigating Thanksgiving right now with, with 2020 and with COVID because man, we want to run

back to our traditional Thanksgiving, but we're recognizing, we're all hurting in the sense of,

but what if we can't and how can we protect the most vulnerable among us and doing that? And so

we have to recognize that, yeah, there's a lot of shifts and we have to recognize, and we have to,

this is going to require some open and honest conversations with leadership and just ask, okay,

so you guys were used to the old way of doing this. What is it about the old way that makes it seem so

successful? And it's not that I'm trying to win you to a new way, but you have to remember that it's all

about the mission and vision of the church. It's not just about the mission and vision of online and

digital. This is where the whole digital thing comes into play, right, Jeff? And this is where we talk

about making sure that your online campus or that your online ministry isn't separate and that you're

trying to go so far different from what the church as a whole is trying to do. You have to be

alignment in terms of where your leadership is. So if they're trying to retreat back to what was,

recognize that it's probably because there was some kind of comfort or something in that. I know that

there were areas where we tried to run back, you know, as soon as we reopened, we were like, oh man,

we need to run back to some different way, some ways that we used to do things. And even it took some

time and recognizing, oh, wait a minute, we're not there anymore. We're not there anymore. And our

leadership took a long pause and they said, hey, look, you know what? We're not there anymore. We need

to make sure that we go back and we reassess and we even retool and think through what does it

mean to minister into the here and now? Things like, hey, so, you know, coming up this week,

we're going to be doing our typical Thanksgiving serve. Oh, but not as many people are ready and

willing to serve. So what can we do to meet some of those needs and to engage people where they're at?

Those are things that we have to stop, reassess and retool and rethink instead of running back to

what was, because that was comfortable and think about what we're moving forward. Jeff, what are some

things that you're seeing from different churches out there? Yeah. Understanding that why is crucial

because there's a reason they're thinking that way. You know, it's the church may, the leader may not

understand the role of digital. He may be looking at the staff structure that's in place and saying,

we don't have the personnel to go down this way. There may be a bias of someone else that's in leadership

or an elder board or a high level donor who has a bias and an overstressing towards a physical

engagement instead of a digital. And so there's lots of, you know, sometimes we're getting into like

the political nature of church. Sometimes it's just, hey, I don't really understand this digital

thing and I'm not comfortable as a leader showing weakness in learning something different. I really

want to operate in my strengths and therefore we all need to be operating in this physical space.

And so there's, there's a why that's centered around it. And oftentimes when I have these

conversations right to your question with other churches, it's the, the, the leader needs help

in understanding it, but oftentimes doesn't, isn't comfortable asking those questions, isn't

comfortable being transparent, isn't comfortable being vulnerable, even to the point. And so this is why,

for, for you listening audience out there, people who are at that level, understanding the why,

why your leader is, is thinking the way that he is, which really gets into the second part,

figuring out how your different ideas, or the ideas that you're pushing for, can help solve the

problems, can help accomplish the mission, the vision, need to be integrated into the strategy

of your church. Don't just push a good idea because it's, it's great. Hey, listen, if you're a physical

church out there, you don't have an online presence and your solution is, Hey, I think we should start

broadcasting on Twitch. Um, yeah, that's probably not going to help the mission and vision. It's a great

idea and there's a wind towards it, but it's not aligning with the mission and vision probably

of, of what your, your church is doing. And so mirror and mold what you're doing with what the

problems and the issues that, that your leaders are facing, right? What are you thinking?

Yeah. Well, it's that, and, and let's be honest, Jeff, influence comes with small wins stacked up

one on top of the other. And so you have to go back and reassess your own leadership and ask yourself,

well, how am I coming through on the things that I'm being asked before I bring my leadership,

a whole lot of innovation? Like it's one thing to say, Hey, look, like we want to get all this stuff

in line. We want to get all these new, uh, details in line. We want to be on Twitch. We want to be on,

you know, name it, whatever kind of innovation you're trying to push, man. We want to live stream.

We want to do something else, but your leadership has asked you to come through on some basic things

like, Hey, is our message archive up online? Uh, you know, have we made sure that, that we're organized,

that things are up to date, things are looking nice or, or Hey, like there's spelling errors on the

website, you know, like, and you're over that. Or are you making sure and coming through on some of

those basic procedures before you go and bring some grandiose idea? Because if you're not executing in

the simple or to put it in a spiritual way, if you're not stewarding the small, how can you be

trusted with much more? Right. And so this is where we have to be careful because as innovators,

sometimes many folks are trying to push what's new, what's next on, on leadership, but leadership is

still back here. Like, all right, but man, how can I trust you with that? If we're still trying to get

some of the basics now from what they may perceive, what they may perceive as the basics. And to you,

especially if you're, you know, a reckless creator in the sense of, man, I just want to break stuff and

I want to try new things. That doesn't sound as sexy to you because man, that's maintenance,

but I'm talking about leading down a new front. Okay. But your leader may need you to go back

and help solve some of those problems. Exactly what Jeff's talking about. Solve some of those issues

that they're saying, like, you may want to innovate in a specific area, but they're still trying to

figure out, Hey, but we're still trying to transition people to online giving. How are you helping us

with that area? See, I saw Jeff smile real big right there. I know I must have tweaked something

there. Go ahead. Well, and it really does come down to understanding. This is part of it.

Understanding where the leadership is. Leading from the second chair was a book. I don't know,

I've read a decade ago, but it talks about get the wins that you want, but to do that, you have to give

the wins that your leadership wants. And so like, if, if the challenge is online giving,

how can online groups reinforce online giving? How can streaming online, how can online discipleship

reinforce this change the way that you're, you're pitching this in such a way that it meets the needs

of where leadership is? By the way, Chuck Brady comments in through Facebook, love this modern

technology thing. He says, I fully agree, meet them where they're at and how to help them move into

a place of, of understanding. And so like, listen, I've been the guy, thanks Chuck for that. I've been

the guy over the years that just like, like with a sledgehammer tries to bang in ideas. I'm always the

bleeding edge tech guy. I'm always talking about the thing out of left field. And so lots of times

people don't understand that. And there've been seasons in my life where I just keep hammering the

same nail over and over again, thinking that it's going to work. And you know what, at the end of

the day, it really, it doesn't, it doesn't work. When you acknowledge where the people are and change

the approach that way, that's where you really start to see engagement. When you talk to them,

when you engage with them, it's, it's honestly, it's the whole two-way engagement thing versus a

one-way just kind of talking at them approach. Yeah. You know, Jeff, and this is kind of,

it takes me back in time to when, when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad before his passing, he talked

about how the iPhone was setting up for that moment, you know? And, and I remember that because

they had to get that so right in order to help transition people over that it had to be a way

that wasn't just innovative, but it had to work. It had to work in every facet. It had to execute on

the simple. It had to be a phone that you could use and then it could become so much more. And so the

same thing for us, Hey, innovation is wonderful, but you have to execute on what it is that you're

promising. You have to be able to tell people, Hey, look, we're creating something simple. We're going to

come through on it. And then from there, we're going to innovate and we're going to build on those

wins. Definitely. And if you're Steve Jobs, you can execute. It's okay. Hey, listen to this up front.

And if you're Steve Jobs, maybe this doesn't apply to you. I'm sorry. No offense. The majority of you

out there are not Steve Jobs, uh, doing this well, figuring out how to speak to leaders, figuring out

where the leaders, where their whys are doing, it takes more than one person dialogue with other

people on your staff, um, high level volunteers, and also be willing to reshape the idea. Don't come in

once again, trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, recognize it's a round hole and treat

it more like clay, treat the idea more like fluid to massage it, to get to where that accomplishes what

the leaders are looking for. And also accomplishes what you're trying to achieve through it. Find ways

to work together in this, which is true. Go ahead. Anything? Yeah. And, and it's not about getting a

higher position at the table. I need to be sure and kind of state this because so often when, when

people feel like, Oh man, my ideas aren't being heard or, you know, we're not innovating the way

that I want. It's not necessarily that you need a higher position at the table. It's that you need to

expand your influence with the people that are there making those decisions. You need to make sure that

they see that your wins are their wins and that it's all of us winning together. Um, and so this isn't

about, Oh man, I need more political power within the organization. It's about, are you leveraging the

influence that you have? And are you growing in that influence one win at a time? Totally. And

completely be willing to be wrong. Once again, if you're being transparent, you're bringing others,

people into, into the conversations, be willing to be wrong. Maybe that square peg just does not need to

fit into that round hole, but also be willing to make others the hero of the situation. Um, and it's funny

with that humility, with that, that relational leadership approach, you'll find that others will get more on

board with ideas in the, in the weeks and the months and the years ahead. If all you are is the grumpy guy

who's screaming about the bleeding edge tech, you're never going to get there. But if you're part of a team

that's working towards something and if you're making others, the hero in that operating and humility,

my gosh, you're going to see such a difference in pushing those ideas forward, right? You had

something else? Yeah. And part of being willing to be wrong is admitting when you are wrong.

And so you have to make sure and have the humility that, Hey, if you lead on a project and it doesn't

work out, or if it doesn't work out the way that it was intended, obviously you don't want to over-promise

and under deliver, but if you projected something and if it doesn't come through in that kind of way,

you have to be, you have to be humble and go back to your leadership and say, Hey, I know that we

thought it was going to do this. Uh, you may have had data saying that it was going to be the biggest

thing, you know, since sliced bread, but the execution just didn't come through. Okay. Be humble,

admit it and own it because that is once again, how you grow in your leadership and how you grow in your

influence is when you can actually admit that you're wrong and not just move on to the next thing and act

like that thing didn't exist. Yeah. And part of making sure that you don't go wrong is this next

slide right here. Experiment, iterate, fire the BBs before you get to the bullets, fire the bullets

before you get to the bombs, like grow the thing slowly. So often, especially in this COVID season,

it's easy to look at scenarios and say, the end of the world is here. We have to pivot everything.

We've got to burn our buildings. We've got to go a hundred percent digital. We've got to,

and you live in this world of extremes because right now in 2020 fall, it's an extreme world that

we live in. But I want to challenge you guys, pump the brakes, slow down, iterate, experiment with

something. Did it work? Did it not work? And what's happening is not only are you fine tuning,

like the idea of, of what you're trying to achieve to make sure that it'll work by iterating,

by firing the BBs before bullets, you're building culture. Cause at the end of the day,

you can have all the technology that you want. You can have all the functionality that you want,

but if you don't have a church culture that's supporting it, that is understanding it,

that's utilizing it effectively out there with the, with the people they're engaging with,

without that culture, it's your, the idea is going to die. And so by going slowly,

by taking leadership, by taking your staff, by taking volunteers through these experiments and

letting them speak into it, by firing the BB before the bullet, you're going to find that

you're changing and developing the culture as well as fine tuning the ideas on this.

Yeah. And you know, this is where it gets tough, right? Because so many times people are thinking

about bombs. They're thinking about full blown, full scale measures. They're going to cost a lot

of money and this kind of thing. But what if for once you thought through how tech could save your

organization money, as opposed to spending a lot more money, you know, for us coming back from

COVID. Um, and you know, we had an opportunity to really hone in. We're a note-taking church here at

Christ fellowship and the thought process of pre COVID of getting rid of the written worship folder

was scary because that was something that was very, very difficult to move. Um, but with COVID in play,

we had already established a note-taking section within the app that was already robust. That was

already working fine so that it was already kind of firing the BB while we were closed and that we got

people to use to doing this so that when we reopened, guess what? We can't hand out physical

worship folders anymore anyways. So now the cost of printing, we're saving our organization money

on that end. And at the same time, we were able to help transition this out. And we've got a great

reason as to why we can't hand those things out either. Um, now on one side, we're saving the

church, a lot of printing costs. And I hope that our church, you know, our, our church recognizes that

on one end, because guess what? Printing those worship folders out week to week. Some of you are

probably thinking that like you're either doing that yourself or you're going through a service

that costs a lot of money versus the one-time cost of the app that we just, you know, encourage people

to download every week. They can engage in so many different ways on our church, but at the same

time, they can take those notes, they can save them. They can share them with a friend. It's digital.

They can go back to them instead of losing those worship folders week to week. It's a better option,

but it took firing the BB during COVID to make sure that by the time we got to the bomb, when we reopened,

it was fine. And thank God it was. Very, very good with that. So experiment, find, and even things,

you know, short of, of, uh, you know, COVID, a global epidemic, um, getting rid of the worship folders

at Price Fellowship Miami would have been very hard to do. So there are things that you can wipe, uh,

with a big slate and, and blame the global pandemic for it. Uh, but there are probably some things that

it's like, Hey, I need to, we need to do a trial run on this. Um, let's, let's try doing the mobile

app thing, but let's just try it on one campus or, Hey, let's, you know, for a couple services,

let's just not print the worship folders and see what happens, what the, what the feedback is.

Try to figure out, once again, the show is called beta. We need to figure out how to beta the ideas

that you're wanting to do. What are small, simple approaches that can give you a basic amount of

information, feedback from people that will allow you to make a decision to iterate, to build on the

idea again. And so once again, now it's, let's find this idea that you want to do, figure out how to

do it with a small number of people to pull in the data that's necessary for you to iterate and figure out

what the next step is. So definitely love this idea of beta of experimenting, of, of wrestling with this

stuff within the churches that, that you are. There's, there's no idea that's too bold in 2020

that your church should not consider. But if the first step is we need to blow up, we need to bring

in the bombs. We got to explode this thing and we need to rebuild it from scratch. Leadership ain't buying

that. If it's, Hey man, here's an experiment. Let's try this. Here's the little bit of money.

Here's the little bit of personnel. Here's the little bit of volunteer support. Here's the plan.

And now you're iterating slowly on those ideas. That's how a church wins. That's how a church changes

culture here in mid post COVID 2020. And so I would challenge all of you out there. I think that's

really the challenge we should look at. So, Hey Ray, as we're landing the plane, um, any,

anything on your end? Absolutely. Leadership is not the enemy in this. And I just want to make sure

that that's understood. You know, it's very easy for people to draw lines when they want to innovate,

like it's an us versus them kind of thing. Listen, it's a team, it's a together thing. And so make sure

and work with your leadership as best as possible. And granted, you know, it, the greatest technology

innovations may not come from the church anytime soon. That might not be our job, but it can be

our job to leverage them for the purpose of what, for creating community. And the way that that happens

is first with the community of your collective leadership, you've got to win them over within

community and then slowly build on stuff. Last time we have, we heavily publicized, uh, Craig Groeschel's

leadership podcast, Jessica did a deal about leading up. Let me encourage you once again,

if you've not checked out that episode, uh, you need to check that out simply because you need to

understand that your leadership needs you to lead up to it. That's why they brought you in there.

You are there to lead up. I'm here at Christ fellowship to lead up in digital. Are, is it always

going to be a hundred percent accepted or as a win? Absolutely not. Have I had room to fail? Yeah,

I have. And so this is where it's my responsibility. It's your responsibility to stack one win at a time,

but to do it together with leadership, not to rebel and go off into my own corner and do it

separately. Very true. It's working together as a team and it's, it's breaking down some of those

departmental organizational silos that you guys may have within the church, working together

as a team, casting vision, and then attacking it with that approach, being flexible, uh, all along

the way. So well said, Hey, listen, we're, we're going to wrap here. If you've got questions,

text us 404-324-8724. Be sure to check out beta episode five as Ray was talking about, but Hey,

we're going to, we're 2020 is crazy, right? Like it's been an insane year. It's been nuts. So we're

going to pivot a little bit here next week. We're not beta. We're, we're debuting cray. So it's crazy.

Same similar format, but at the end of the, we're talking about crazy, crazy things because listen,

we need a break at the end of this. We need to figure out cray. We need to figure out how to be

crazy, relax, have a little fun. So we're bringing in some guys, Ray. We're going to be joined by Andy

Mage, Mark Brandt, some digital pastors around the country for Cray01. We are figuring out what the

perfect Thanksgiving dinner is. So heading into the Turkey holiday here. Sorry. If you're in another

country here in America, we're debuting Turkey and celebrating that next Thursday. So the Wednesday

heading into it, Turkey day, Eve, the perfect Thanksgiving dinner broadcast live here. Yeah.

Cause I need a break and so do you. So, Hey, Jeff for Ray, this is Jeff with the church digital

stadium church planning. Thanks for being here. And we'll see you next time here on, well, I guess

Cray. Have a good one.

On Cray.