EP088: Matt Lombardi - What Do You Mean Your Church Won’t Experiment?

Hey, episode 88 of the Church of Digital Podcast, powered once again by Stadia Church Planning.

Jeff here. Have you noticed in this COVID season that all the playbooks got thrown out?

Like all the plans, all the vision 2020s? Hey, raise your hand right now. Even if you're driving

in a car, raise your other hand, one hand on the steering wheel. Raise your hand if you had a

Vision 2020 campaign. Like every church I knew of was doing Vision 2020. And I'm just curious,

in this year 2020, where are we with all that? Like none of it matters. None of it's stuck. None

of it is relevant even at this time because COVID, God bless it, changed everything. And so in this

new season, in this new reality that we're in, mid-COVID, coming out of post-COVID, maybe we're

going back to the beginning of COVID, depending upon where we are. We here in Florida, we've got

problems. Yeah. So the idea is for church, we need to learn lessons, yes, but we also need

to experiment. We need to move on. I had a church tell me, Jeff, I can't pause ministry

anymore. I need to get started. We need to get going. Church is stuck and we need to get

unstuck. How do we do that? And really that's where this idea of experimenting comes in.

Iterating, taking small steps, seeing what works and what doesn't, learning in the season.

There's no solid answers. Maybe there were solid answers pre-COVID, but now that COVID is happening.

Church, if you're going to survive, we need to be experimenting in this season. And so often

churches are asking me questions like, Jeff, who should I hire? Jeff, what should we do?

Jeff, what should our org chart look like? And these are important questions. But oftentimes

there are churches that are asking them, it's the wrong question because they don't know what

they're doing yet. And you're going to hire somebody that's not the right person because

you yourself, church, don't have clarity on the road that you're on because you haven't developed

those plans with COVID. And really this brings in this conversation that I wanted to have today

to talk about church. Maybe we should be experimenting with things in this COVID season.

And to that reality, maybe we shouldn't be hiring staff people. Maybe we should be contracting.

Maybe we should be working with volunteers or bringing in experts in a short-term project based.

Instead of hiring a long-term solution, maybe we should be experimenting with something a little

smaller of a project that's a safer sandbox really to play with. And really this is where we are.

We wanted to bring into the conversation Matt Lombardi. Now, Matt is a digital strategist for a church

out in the Texas area, Wimberley, Texas, if you're keeping up with that. But Matt also runs a company

called Share. It's literally a company designed to help churches get connected with creatives. You know,

those video editors that you're so desperate for, those graphic artists, those social media people,

those illustrators. Yeah. Like he bridges creatives and churches together so that they can work

together, not in a staffing basis, but at a contract level. You know, it's contract level where it's safer

to really experiment with. And so that's the heart of the conversation here. We're bringing in Matt and

myself and we're talking about, hey, how can we experiment? How can the church experiment with

this? What are the issues that the church struggles with pre-COVID or mid-COVID when it comes to

experimenting with trying things new? And how can we overcome these things so the church can have freedom

to experiment, to test things out without having to release staff, move things around, and just get

entirely messy as an organization? So here's where we are. We're bringing in Matt Lombardi from

Share.work. S-H-A-A-R.work. We'll put a link in the show notes. And myself, Jeff, with the Church

Digital and Stadia Church Planting. In a conversation that I'm simply calling, what do you mean your church

can't experiment during COVID? Okay, everybody. Here you go. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Tell us what Share is. It's interesting. Like you pronounce it Share, S-H-A-R. There's some

uniqueness with that. There is. Walk us through a little bit about you and Share.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to. So yeah, it all starts with the funny name that looks like it should

be Shar. It's actually from the biblical Hebrew word, Sha'ar, which is the gate to the marketplace.

And we're a tech company, so we had to do the trendy thing that every tech company was,

which have a weird spelling for their name. So we pronounce it Share. The biggest reason just

being that we are that kind of online marketplace for churches to connect with freelancers and kind

of contract workers who can help them build a remote team. And we really want to push on that

marketplace idea, right? We really want to lean into the fact that really anything a church could

need can be found on Share. So whether that's video production, whether that's a graphic designer

on the creative side, or that could be something like an accountant or a bookkeeper, or, you know,

every church, the bane of their existence is keeping their CHMS updated well, right? Like someone to help

with that kind of stuff. So that's really what the product is. And I had spent the better part of the

past decade working for in around churches and also as a freelancer. So I'd seen both sides of it.

And, um, really the two big experiences for me that I can think through that kind of started this,

uh, one was in seminary. Um, I was trying to put myself through seminary, pay the bills,

uh, with my wife and I would go to thrift stores and I would buy old suits and I would flip them on

eBay to try to make extra cash to just like put, just hustle on, right. Put myself through seminary.

I remember thinking there's gotta be a better way. Like I'm learning Greek, I'm learning Hebrew,

I'm learning all this great theology. And I'm in this area where I can't really apply it in a local

church setting that much because we're in new England, right? Not a lot of evangelical churches.

And so I remember thinking, I wish I could actually use what I'm doing to like make money,

uh, and like serve a church somehow. Uh, so that kind of always was in the back of my mind.

And the other one was when I was serving at a church up in new England. Uh, and it was this old

200 year old church, um, of about 15 people. Right. And we just flat out did not have the talent we

needed or the resources or anything to actually start to grow the church. And so, um, from that

experience, I actually ended up kind of having a mini burnout very early in my ministry career from

that. Um, that made me think through, okay, why is it that we have this amazing body of Christ?

There's all these amazingly talented people all over the world or connected with technology.

Why can't we figure out a way for a local church to work with someone who isn't in their local

congregation? Um, so that's kind of where the idea initially started. And we launched, um,

launched really our product about three months ago, um, after kind of working on it for, for about

three before that. So, um, yeah, that's a little bit more about share a little bit more about,

about our story.

Really the heart of the conversation that I really wanted to get into is, is the fact that churches are,

are hesitant, are fearful that don't know, or they don't know how to,

to really experiment. Um, you know, I've had, I've had some side conversations recently with this

idea of, and it's going to be a technical conversation. Maybe it applies to churches,

but it's a hardware mentality versus software. Apple comes out with a new iPhone once a year

and they spend so much time and there's so much rigidity into developing that hardware. The goal is

you've got to solve everything from the beginning and design this thing to perfection.

And that's great. But then there's like the developing software mentality of,

Hey, we just want to launch this thing as soon as possible. We're going to learn some things

through that. We're going to adapt. We're going to change. And it's much more agile as opposed to

more of, of like a, a waterfall structure towards it. And it's, and it's really, and even tying in,

into your business with, uh, with, uh, contractors coming in and, and utilizing some of that. Hey,

church, don't try to hire somebody with, you have no idea what even road you're on,

what you're hiring, get somebody on contract, experiment with it, try out what you want to do,

try it, see if you like it. And then if, if you do cool, develop the full long-term plan to get

somebody on staff and grow. And, and so even what you're talking about here, how churches are hesitant

to, um, to explore, to experiment, like kind of what's your, what's your heart, what's your

experiment, uh, what's your experience? What are you kind of learning in this season through it?

Yeah. The, the first phrase that comes to mind is one that, um, gets thrown out a lot in kind of

software tech space, which is fail fast, fail often, right? Like that, that failure is not something

to be feared as a church. Oftentimes as church leaders, cause you know, I work in a church

currently and also am founding this company. Uh, oftentimes in church world, we're so afraid of

what everyone's going to think, right? Like, well, what if we launch this program and it fails? Or

what if we try this new thing and it fails? And the people in our church care far less about that

than we do. Oftentimes they aren't really judging us that hard on it. Um, but what, what you do is

you actually figure out who you are, what you do really, really well, what your team does,

the more you fail, like, and the only way to like, there is no short circuiting that there's no

hopping around failure to get to the good stuff, right? Like you have to fail in order to do that.

Um, and I love your, like the way you're thinking through hardware versus software. Cause that's

with what we're building with share. I mean, so many of the things we've learned building this

have come directly from just launching something before it was ready, being open and transparent

about that saying like, Hey guys, this is a beta test. It may not, it's, it's going to break,

right? We know that. Um, but things like, for example, uh, we have the ability to add an

introduction video for yourself as a freelancer. We didn't come up with that idea. That was something

that we just launched the product and like one of our freelancers was saying, Hey, it'd be really

cool if I could upload a video of myself talking to churches. So cool, let's build that. Like,

let's see how that works. And then, um, the ability to, Hey, you know, churches would say,

we'd really love to find someone based on our denomination because we're pretty unique with the

way we do things. Cool. Let's try that out too. And I think more churches having the ability to

just try things, see if it works. If it doesn't like not every process or system you build needs

a funeral, like move on to the next thing and just keep going forward. Uh, because ultimately

those, those little actions are going to teach you more and those little failures are going to teach

you more, uh, about who your, your kind of church is and what is going to be effective for you than

it would ever if you were, um, if you're just trying to master plan it in a room on a whiteboard

session. Awesome. So like, just tell me, so you're working primarily with creatives, um, designers,

video people, uh, right. Is that, is that primarily the focus of, of share of who you're,

who you're serving, who you're helping to serve churches? Yeah. So early right now it is, uh,

because so many churches, uh, mine included are all trying to figure out how do we do this,

this digital world, right. That you talk about all the time. How do we get more content out there?

How do we make those processes quicker? Um, how do we make sure we have an excellent online product?

Because in the past, like that's been a nice addition. Now it's, you know, front and center for

everyone. So right now that's been the big focus. Um, but there are, our vision is really that

we're going to actually be able to start to connect churches with even skillsets they've never

imagined that they could use before. So for example, the average church pastor right now

probably doesn't have a sermon research assistant. That's kind of the thing reserved for those like

mega churches and like the pastors with the big stages, but we're trying to figure out, man,

there are thousands of seminary students across the nation. How can we connect them with a local

church pastor who needs them for two or three hours a week? How can we democratize a lot of the

things that help churches work smarter, uh, by using technology?

I love that. And by the way, even research assistant acital, that that's really interesting

down the road. I could see you having that grow more and more as, as churches kind of regrow out of this

COVID season. But even the idea of, of the creative right, right here in the season of COVID where

churches are, are struggling to create the amount of content they need or spending people who are

better off in the ministry context are now trying to edit videos on their own. Like there, I don't

know how many times I've heard a lead pastor tell me, yeah, I've had to learn video editing in this

COVID season. And I'm like, why? You've got other things you should be doing as a pastor than editing

video. Let's go find somebody to edit video for you. Well, Jeff, we don't want to, we don't have

anybody on staff that's, that's good to do this. And so who else is going to do it? And it's like,

contract some guy, bring somebody in, find somebody local, a volunteer that you can train up. There's

a thousand better answers than I lead lead pastor now edit the videos for, for our church. Um, so

this, this is, this is a phenomenal thing. Like the, is it, what's been the, the response from

creatives? Like you were, you were doing this pre COVID, right? This was not, this is not a response

to COVID. So like, how has COVID affected your, your business overall from a church standpoint,

from the creative standpoint, like what has that done to the conversation?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously it's changed it significantly. Uh, so when I would pitch,

you know, what we were building pre COVID, uh, the response is always a very, oh, that's neat,

neat idea. Right. Uh, and now the response has been, oh, that's a necessity. That's something

that we have to have. Uh, and so for our business and kind of God's province, the timing just worked

out, um, really, really well, uh, to, to be frank. And so what we've started to see though,

is, is more churches say, okay, we see content creation as a priority. So the things you're

talking about video content writing, right? I mean, as much as there are social media companies

out there that you can hire, do content for you on a daily basis, the voice of your church

is so unique. Every church has a unique voice. So you really almost need a, a human being who

can understand that, comprehend that, ask questions and then craft messaging appropriately. That's

not something that you can necessarily just automate away and say, oh, well, they're going to give us

30 free social media posts a month. That's fine. But for a lot of churches, they're saying, no,

we want something a little bit more than that. We want to really create content that's discipling

people. That's not just filler. So we can say we're doing social media and that's where they've

seen the value of having a person like we can offer on share. Um, so for the freelancers,

it's also been great because now for the first time, they have kind of a central place where

they can set up their profile, put their portfolio, uh, and then churches come to them, right? Like

they aren't going and scouting a million Facebook groups, always having to comment and say, Hey,

I can do this service for you or, you know, cold calling anyone. It's just, Hey, it's all in one

place. Churches come to them and they're able to get, get kind of extra juice in their, in their

business. Uh, and then also for churches, churches don't have to post those. Hey, we're looking for

someone, anyone know anyone? There's just real transparency now in the process because of it. And so

we're just really fortunate that, um, that God's timing worked out the way it did.

That's amazing. And it's just so much demand right now and people are willing to jump in. But before,

before I even met Matt, um, and I've, I've told you the story, uh, I, I was one, I'm trying to find,

I'll just be honest through the church digital. I was trying to find somebody to contract to bring

in on video editing. I've got some people that I've used in the past and I was like, Hey, I'm really

interested in finding somebody towards this. And I just, I made a comment, I think in a zoom

to a buddy of mine who's at a church and he's like, Oh, I'm looking for somebody too. And so,

uh, I, I just, I threw out on Facebook, Hey, I'm, I'm looking, I'm looking for somebody who can edit

some videos, uh, simple stuff, not complex editing, just, you know, it's going to be consistent

meeting somebody come in and do this. Like if, if you're interested, reach out, send me a,

or whatever. I'm thinking I'd get, you know, two, three people, honest to God, I probably had 30

people before I stopped counting. And what was fascinating, even on top of that was I was getting

direct messages from churches, like a dozen churches. Hey, when you're done with compiling

that list, could you send it our way? And I'm like, wait, I'm not trying to like do a thing here.

I'm just trying to find somebody. And my, my friend here was looking for, and suddenly I'm like,

well, crap, I'm going to have to like assemble and put together. And in my mind, I'm like,

I don't want to do this. There's got to be a better way. But as I was looking around,

I couldn't find anything. And the irony is, is literally the next day I have a meeting with Matt

and he's telling me all this stuff that he's, that he's doing this. And I'm like, thank God that

I literally, I, the night before I was building a Facebook group that was going to function as a,

as a, like a contractor type of thing. And I'm in my mind, I'm like, this is going to be horrible,

but this is the only solution I can have to try to help churches. I didn't even know you were out

there. And so you like doing this and trying to connect, you know, there are churches that need

to experiment and they're, they're fearful of experimenting because they're afraid of commitment.

And there's, there's an opportunity here for them to separate from the commitment to, to work through

contracting people, contracting experts that can come in and be, and can speak into how the ministry

works online and can help you get places. And the good news is, is if it doesn't work out,

it's on contract. You figure out how to move and try something else on. You can get to,

to rent the experience to lease it instead of feeling like you got to move somebody across the

country, you know, and just deal with all that mess in context. So love what you're doing here.

Let me ask you what, as you're, as you're talking with churches and engaging, because you're engaging

on the contract side, you're engaging on the, on the, the church side. Is the, is the general approach,

like, are they, are they pro contract or are they struggling? Do they, do they look at it like an

experiment? Like what's the posture and speak to that kind of the posture of churches in this season?

It really is. It's across the map. I wish I could say there was one, you know, kind of central,

how they all kind of feel this way. But as you know, every church is a little bit different.

Some have had experiences contracting the past and so they're more comfortable. They say,

oh yeah, we know what this is. Some are, hey, we've never really hired someone outside. How does

this work? Like, are they going to be shady? You know, like, like so many questions that come up

with it. We'd have to do a lot more education. So it really has been across the map. One of the

central themes that has come back though, time to time again, whether it's a church who has used

contractors before or not though, is that by having kind of a service in the middle, it is clarifying and

simplifying the process. Right. So, so it's, it's, it's becoming a process that instead of,

okay, well maybe I'll find someone online and I hope that they really are who they say they are.

And I hope that they really have the skills. And if they don't work, like how am I going to pay

them? Do I send them a check? I do a 1099. If you're in California, that's a huge pain. Right.

And so every, it's just always different. Whereas what we're able to do is just say, hey,

here's one central, easy to use process. We're going to make it, if you've never used a

contractor before, really simple to get up and running. We literally do an onboarding call where

we help figure out what are the two or three big projects that can free up a ton of time for your

staff. And if you've done it before and you just need to scale up your team for a season,

you can do that too. And we make that possible by just saying, hey, you know what you want?

Cool. Let's add another video editor to your team of video editors so that you can get a little more,

a little more help in seasons where you need it. Because that's, that's the other thing about

staffing. You know this as someone who's in a church, Jeff, is every season of ministry is

different. So leading up to Christmas, right? Things are extra crazy and you need more hands

on deck and leading up to Easter, you need more hands on deck. And oh, that mission team project

popped up and now we need extra help with that. So ministry is not this just like throughout the

year, steady state of, of, uh, of like almost staffing energy. It's always in flux. And so by being able

to scale up or down, exactly like you said, on contract when you need it, it's, it's experimenting,

but it's also giving you just complete flexibility in your staffing to not be rigid, uh, in any way,

shape or form. Where do you find the creatives? Like tell me, tell me the relationship, the experience

that, that share has with that. Yeah. So, uh, when we started, it was, and this is just kind of the

way I do think, we just cold emailed like 250 freelancers, uh, just saying, Hey, this is a crazy idea.

We have, would you be interested in signing up? Um, and we, we did some, uh, some early,

just like LinkedIn data scraping. So we just figured out who were people who were already

doing this, who worked for churches, who had great experience. Uh, and then we would just

reach out to them, cold email. And then that started to build kind of this organic sense that,

you know, creatives kind of have their own community, right? Where they know someone who

knows someone who knows someone. And so then since then it's just been word of mouth and kind

of really nice organic growth. Um, you know, we post on Facebook and we're active on social

media. So that's attracted some folks. Uh, but really a lot of our growth on the freelancer

side has been organic word of mouth. And we've tried really hard to foster that community,

uh, by making, you know, Facebook groups, making that a place where we can really be the,

the central, uh, organization that's trying to speak into this issue of being a Christian

freelancer. Cause it does. I mean, it's, it's its own set of issues. Like there's its own

set of ethics that come along with that of working for churches and its own set of challenges.

And so we want to be there to walk alongside those freelancers. We see them as just part

of our team. Uh, they're really a community that we, we value and love. And so, um, we're

just trying to pour a ton into them.

So with, with share, it's, you're logging on and scouring a database where you're seeing

potentially videos you mentioned, audio profiles, um, portfolios to see examples of work, things

like that. And, uh, and so you, you find the, the, the, the fit that you think, or I guess

you can dialogue and engage with to try to find, you know, somebody that really has the,

the voice, the feel, the connection at the church level. That's exciting. You know, you

said you started with around a couple hundred or so, like how many artists, uh, creatives

are you up to at this point?

Yeah. So when we sent emails to about 250 early on, and that's gotten us up to, you know, we're

a few months in now. So right at last count, I think we had 232 users, uh, as of this morning

that have signed up. So that's been exciting for us. So, uh, you know, most of those are

freelancers that are on there and, um, have profiles kind of, they're setting up and, uh,

everything from, like I said, social media managers to video editors to, um, you know,

accounting and bookkeeping, really anything. We have, uh, 16 different categories, uh, for

the church. And so, yeah, a little bit of, of everything, uh, on, on the creative side

though, that's really where a lot of the magic is happening early on.

What types of churches are working with you? Are they, I mean, there's, there's everything

from Giga to church plants that are listening to us. I can tell you, you know, highly urbanized

areas. I can tell you, um, bucko five rural type environments that they have dial up still

for, for, uh, internet. So like, what's, what's the feel, um, uh, for, for you guys?

Yeah. So we actually recently did a pretty big kind of survey, uh, trying to gather some

data on, on what churches would be using us. Uh, and, and the results were pretty interesting,

uh, of that survey, but also what we've seen so far. We see a lot of churches who are approaching

what I'd call growth barriers who are starting to see, okay, we could use some outsourced

staffing. They're, they're looking for ways to grow their team. So whether that's a church

coming up on 200, right there, 150, 160 people, they know they need more staffing, they need

more capacity, but they're not sure. They don't have it in the budget yet to actually do that.

So they're saying, huh, well, what if we outsource someone and brought in the extra talent on a

budget that works for us, a timeline that works for us, and then we can scale up or scale down

as those growth barriers kind of break through right before that thousand range. We've seen

that a lot too. Um, and then really, uh, one of the kind of key niches that we we've tapped

into early are churches who are in more remote locations, but are larger churches. So there's

churches over a thousand that happen to be, you know, in an area that let's just be honest,

probably doesn't attract a ton of creative talent because maybe it's a smaller town. Like

maybe they're not in San Francisco or Austin or, you know, some big city that has a huge

influx of creative talent. And so they're saying, well, we, we have a larger church. We need the

staffing. Um, but we don't have the people here in our town necessarily to do what we want to do,

or it's really hard to find them. So, so those have been kind of some early sweet spots for us,

those people around growth barriers. And also there's churches who are in locations that just don't

naturally attract a ton of creative talent. Let's swing over to the church. Um, because at the heart

of this is, is the idea of, Hey, let's experiment. Let's, let's try something new. Um, what, what are

the obstacles that, that, that hinder a church from, from experimenting? You know, even as, as we're

looking, people are trying to get back to the building, possibly hinging back over to trying to get to

whatever the way that it used to be. Talk to me a little bit like, Hey, what, what's, what's some

interesting concepts? What do you think some church is doing at possibly exploring, experimenting,

doing something new or different with some of these creative, uh, tools that you're offering?

Yeah. So, um, just kind of break that down. The first question I'll answer for why churches aren't

maybe experiencing what, what are some hindrances that keep them from experimenting? Um, I think the

biggest one is just, uh, there's this sense, uh, that we have, I think for too long cultivated in

the American church of performance, uh, that performance is the key metric to everything. And

if you don't, if you don't perform consistently every single week or everything isn't a success,

then somehow that means that, oh, you failed. And that's a reflection on you personally,

right. Uh, our creative friends always say this, you are not the work you make. And so I think church

leaders, we have to get a little more comfortable with, okay, cool. We, we tried this thing and it

failed. That's not a reflection on me as a leader. That doesn't mean that like I'm a failure. It means

the idea failed. Um, early on one of our advisors told me, he's like, don't fall in love with your own

children. I was like, that's a weird thing to say, but his idea, he was talking about ideas,

right? He's talking about don't, don't fall in love with your own ideas so much that you won't

abandon them. If you realize this is a bad idea. And I think as leaders, it just starts with,

I mean, a spiritual posture of humility. I'm going to try some ideas. They're not going to work and

they're going to fail, but that's okay. Like that's part of growth. Um, and so it's, it's sometimes

just a cultural spiritual issue of you gotta be okay with, with your identity, not coming from you

just being a success all the time, but in you actually just being a child of God and a disciple and

a follower of Jesus. So that's a, that's not a really highly technical answer, but I think that's

a lot of times what's going on behind the scenes for us as leaders. Uh, and I feel the same tension

that most pastors out there are going to feel, uh, as far as what we're seeing with churches starting

to experiment. Um, some of the big things that we're starting to see, um, are the church going

from this idea of being a place to a platform. Uh, so no longer is it just, okay, well, it's a place

where people show up or even just a gathering, you know, in homes or anything like that. But now churches

are wanting to, to test out this idea of, could we be a true platform for, for content in all

different forms of discipleship, uh, in a digital sort of a way. So what that means is practically

churches have to start staffing up in the area of content creation and what they're building out

through the platform. Uh, and so you're seeing this with, you know, every church now is, you know,

if you've experimented at all with like the church home app, which I know has been really,

really popular, uh, up here in the Pacific Northwest, at least. Um, a lot of churches are thinking

through how do we create a ton of content around discipleship. And, um, and so I know for example,

the church I work for, we're thinking through a lot right now, how to create custom curated content

so that we have different discipleship journeys for every type of person who would come in. So

in traditional marketing terms, we talk about customer avatars, right? So, you know, your church

may have a customer avatar of, or a target, you know, a Tinder avatar that is the, uh, the dad,

uh, who is 40 years old and has 2.5 kids and lives in the suburban neighborhood. Right.

And so you may have an entire discipleship pathway online for that particular person coming into your

church online for the first time, and you're going to have customized content for him. So I'm seeing a

lot of churches think more about platform in that way. And how do we create custom curated content on

our platform that can hit people exactly where they are in their stage of life?

Yeah. I, it was funny. I love the example. We we've had Mark Venti, uh, on the podcast at least

once. And, and, and he's a friend that we talked a lot about the success. He's the XP over at church

home. Yeah. And, uh, just really have loved watching that church kind of thrive in this season. Two

years ago, I mean, literally Fox news is running articles, calling Judah Smith, like crazy.

Judah Smith thinks he can pastor people via mobile app. And now like every church in America is trying

to do that and wants to be them. And it's like, how dare you get such a good headstart on this? But

and those that are trying to copy, you know, this, this whole church home model. And I know the story

of how Mark, and we will put a link to it in the show notes, but how Mark connected up to launch the

platform and, and, and kind of what that process is and the people that are involved in it. And like,

it's not, it's not a cheap, nor is it an easy thing to do. And so it's, it's fascinating for me when,

when I talk with churches and they're like, yeah, we want to, we want to develop a content platform

like this. And we want to be the next, we want to be the Christian Netflix. Right. And, you know,

and all this sort of stuff. And I'm like, okay, Hey, cool. And they're already starting on like

wireframes and software development and all this stuff to build a flat platform. And I'm like,

Hey, so the platform is built. That's actually the easy part. Right. That's the easy stuff.

The hard stuff is actually creating the content. Do you guys create content? No. Do you like

creating content? No. Does your lead pastor thinking content? No. No. Okay. So like, let's start

there. Like look at YouTube. Let's contract some people, try to get familiar with it. See if your

church actually likes creating content. Yeah. Yeah. I was on staff with the church and it was the same

thing. They're like, yeah, we want, we want to be the content Kings. And it was like, okay, well,

let's, let's actually see if we like creating content. So let's, let's create some videos. Let's

create a discipleship pathway for a type of person. Let's create regular, I couldn't even get the church

to like blog. Right. It's like, can you watch her song? Right. I mean, it's one piece at a time,

but it was interesting. It was in that, in that discovery period before we invested a ton of money,

it was like, no, let's stop. And let's figure out if we actually like the way this feels before we

really go down the road. So let's experiment before we pave the cement pathway and start writing giant

checks and hiring people to come in and do that. This is, this is so crucial to this idea of what

share is doing with, with contact connecting with, with contractors to just test the waters and learn

with experts in the season. This is so cool. Yeah. And, and I, I want to touch on some, an idea that

you brought up earlier, which I love, which is this idea of, of software versus hardware thinking.

And so I'm going to throw something out there. I think the future of church staffing and the way

that we work as church is both. I think there are going to be hardware pieces that are always in

place, right? So that's your on the ground ministry pastors. Those are your, you know, that like,

I'm probably not going to do pastoral care via zoom if someone has just been through trauma,

right? Like that's just not, I don't know that that's the wisest way to do it. There are certain

things you're always going to have that hardware based, but what if you're able to have a hardware

team and a software team, that software team being the ones who are constantly rapidly evolving and

you're changing them out. So just like a new operating system or just like Adobe releases their new

products and it's different than the last one and it's iterating. Cool. So you have your hardware team

great. It's on the ground, but you have an entire software team too. It's constantly changing pieces,

or maybe you have some core pieces there that then are going to get upgraded every year or so,

or every two years, but you have to have the ability to run hardware and software. Otherwise the

computer is useless. And so your team has to be that same sort of, yes, you're going to have on the

ground. You're probably going to have physical again, hopefully at some point. But if you don't

have a strong software piece, then that's really, I mean, that's where the magic happens for your

church. And that's the thing that's going to drive everything is having the software that's

constantly able to adapt. Yeah. I mean, you use the language, fail fast, fail hard earlier

towards that. You know, I had Gary V quote in marketing out here locally, if you're not aware,

I'm not going to link to them in the show notes. But he said a line a couple of years ago,

it really impacted me. It's like version one is better than version none, you know? And actually,

I use this podcast as the example. I, for three or four years, I was mulling over in my head,

hey, I want to do a podcast. And I, even to the point I was like talking to musicians about creating

like this custom core at the beginning. I need somebody to score this and I want to buy like

all the right gear up front because I'm a gear head. And so like, I just, I had this vision for

what I wanted. And honest to God, I stalled for almost three years because I couldn't get all the

pieces together for this perfection idea to happen. And Ray DeArmas is a co-host on the podcast a lot.

And I've said this before, Ray's actually the reason I started because Ray basically slapped me

over the head, said, stop being an idiot. You're losing impact by not doing this. Just get started.

Get started with what you have. Like, and it's funny, this mic, if you're on YouTube, you can see

the mic. This is actually the fourth microphone I've ever used on a podcast because I had one and it was

nice for a season. And then I was like, you know what? I'm going to upgrade. And that was nice for

a season. And once again, I'm rotating. Ray actually is using one of the mics that I used to use. I just

pass them on, on the different people, but it's like, get started with whatever you have with it,

learn through the experience and then grow into it. I had a church tell me recently, you know,

in the midst of this COVID season, uh, they, they were, and I think we talked about it on the podcast,

but they said, Hey, our, our lead pastor just told us that three weeks from now, uh, maybe it was four

weeks from now, four weeks from now, we want to launch our, our, our micro location, uh, watch party

set up for the church COVID it's, you know, a thing. And so we're, we're, we're trying to gear up for

four weeks. And he says, well, actually we got to communicate to the volunteers what's happening. So

four weeks is actually probably three weeks. And then like, we've already lost three or four days

this week. So it's really like two weeks. So we've got to figure out a long-term strategy for our church

and how to do micro locations in the next two weeks. Can you help us get started? I mean, that's literally

the conversation that I walked into and I was like, okay, timeout. You don't have to solve the world's

problems in two weeks. You've got to figure out how to like get two weeks in two weeks. So where do you

want to start? Uh, and it just kind of coach them through. Okay. You get to that point, you start

there and then you build on top of it. I'm like you, like I'm in the trenches. I work at, I'm

director of digital innovation for a church in Texas and I do that remote. So in some ways, like I get high

on my own supply, right? Like I am doing the thing that like our business is all about, but, um, we feel

that pressure all the time. There's such a pressure on us as church leaders right now to feel like we

have to get everything done tomorrow. And oh my gosh, like this pandemic and it's urgent. And

I just try to encourage our team, but also any church leaders out there, just breathe,

like breathe. It's okay. God's still in control. He's not driving an ambulance. He like your church

is going to get to where it needs to be. Um, but there are so many steps between where you probably

are with your platform right now and content creation and church home. There are like a million

steps between there. So don't try to think you need a national audience tomorrow. You need to pass

God's already given. You need to create content for the audience you have. That's like number one rule

of social media. You know this, Jeff, right? Like you don't, you don't wait to engage until you get

an audience. You engage with the people who show up day one. And so if you're a church leader right

now, if you're not faithfully using digital content to shepherd the people already showing up to your

Facebook live streams or already showing up to your Sunday, you know, online gatherings,

you're not going to do it. When you get another 10,000 people, you're just going to have chaos.

And so it's, you've got to take the first step and it's not going to be great right away.

That's okay. Your people love you. That's why you start with your own church first.

Uh, they'll give you a little more grace than people who don't know who you are.

Uh, and so, yeah, that would just be my encouragement for pastors out there. Don't feel like you have to do

everything all at once despite the tyranny of the urge.

What are the challenges that, that a church would have with contracting? Like I'm, I'm even just

thinking conversations that I've had, uh, maybe it's, um, okay. So I'm contracting somebody that's not

in the same city. I'm not breathing in the same space. How do I hold them accountable? How do I know

that they're, that she's not going to disappear on me? Kind of when you're having those conversations,

what obstacles are you feeling? And then maybe like organizationally, how, how can we overcome

that to get to this place? Yeah, that's, that's a great question because there are, uh, you know,

I try to be fair about that. It is not, uh, using 1099 contractors is not, you know, this

mythical thing that just solves all your problems. There are definitely, uh, challenges. The biggest

one is communication. If your team doesn't communicate well right now, um, then you're not

going to communicate well with someone who's 1500 miles away. Yeah. Communication has to be

the key to everything with working and someone outsourced. Um, so that's, you know, for,

for a lot of ours, we're going to encourage it minimum, if they're working on more of a long-term

project at minimum, a weekly check-in, um, ideally a Slack channel where they're communicating almost

on a daily basis, uh, where it's, Hey, this is what I worked on today. Uh, here's questions about

this. And it's just a constant communication, just like you would if that person was in the office

right next door to you, they just pop in and Hey, question about this or that have Slack open,

and have, you know, use a text chain, use an email, whatever you want to use. I prefer

Slack, but, um, be in constant communication with that person. Uh, and you can do that even

on share with our, we have like messaging as part of it. So you can constantly be communicating

with them on platform. Uh, so communication is the number one thing. The second one is setting

expectations, uh, setting expectations for exactly what's the work to be done here. The number

one challenge most churches I see face outside of communication is that they don't know what

they really need. They say, Oh, well, we want social media to be better. And you ask, well,

what do you mean better? Well, just better like them, you know, like this other church

that's doing it really well. So you have to kind of drill down and take, ask those second

level questions of, okay, what does better mean to you? Like, how do you want to communicate?

Um, you really do have to get some clarity around what the job is to be done because what you realize

when the person isn't in staff meeting with you every single week is that they don't just pick up

naturally on the culture immediately because they just hear it in the air all the time. So you really

do have to go a little bit overboard with setting expectations early of here's exactly what we're

looking for in this. Um, so that there's no sort of tension around, oh, well, you know,

you didn't deliver what we thought. So like on share, the way that we do that is we have a section

where you post a project that you have to outline as a church, what the clear deliverables are.

So these are the things we expect to get. So if it's, you know, if it's a social media person,

we expect to get three custom design graphics each week and five posts on Facebook and seven on

Instagram. Like you clearly define those so that it sets the expectation early on of this is what's

going to be delivered for this price point. Um, it can be an awkward conversation for churches

because a lot of times we don't like to talk money in churches, but you kind of, if you're working

with someone, you need to set those expectations just to be honest and fair up front is, is 100%

the biggest key. I love that. You know, and, and, and having that consistency, um, there, is it,

is it, is it per project? Is it, is it, is it like regularly recurring? What, what, what types of,

of, uh, deals are you working with? So we do both. Um, and that's kind of to, to work with

the needs of churches. Um, because I know that there are certain roles, like you were talking

about with the video guy or video gal where it's, Hey, I just need someone every single week. It's

super consistent. It's the same thing every time. And I need that until we decide to completely change

our strategy and not do content anymore. Right. And so we have it so that you can do recurring jobs and

you hire the person, find them. And then every single month you can just set it up so that

automatically takes the same amount out of your, your checking account. You're good to go.

It's just on autopilot for you. You work with that person. But then we also do understand that a lot

of times churches are going to want to try either a one-off project or it's just a big push. So,

you know, uh, a church the other day I was talking to, they have, you know, they're trying to do this

online kids VBS thing and they want to do all the branding around it. And their graphic design and

video team is just strapped right now. Have no flexibility to add that onto what they're already doing.

So they're saying, well, why don't we outsource that specific project? All the creative elements

that need to be done for this online VBS. And so they're able to use that one-time project and say,

great, that was a good experience. Helped our team in the, in the short term. If they decide to come

back and use it for something else in the future, they can. So we have both, uh, just to, to be as

flexible as possible for churches. And so you're, you're learning churches, church out there, you're,

you're learning things along the way. Uh, you're building relationships with artists. You're discovering what you

like and what you don't like through that. And so, um, I mean, you're, when you initially,

when you eventually hire somebody, or maybe you just even keep it contract. And I've actually known

creatives that were on staff who wanted to, Hey, you know what, instead of being on staff and dealing

with this, you don't, you don't need staff. You need a contract. Let me step back to be contract,

give the artist even freedom to do that. And then it gives you the ability that as a church to,

to, to pick up multiple contracts with different specialties instead of just the one person that's

carrying all the weight that does not, it probably is not aware of all the different specialties

and nuances of the things that they're doing. Yeah. One of the perfect examples of this is we

talk to churches all the time who are like, I need a graphic designer. And what they really need is an

illustrator. But what they don't realize is that graphic designers are not the same thing as

illustrators. And so they'll ask a graphic designer, Oh, well, we want this cool illustration done,

this cartoon sort of thing. And the graphic designer quickly is saying, I don't do illustration. And

they're like, wait, but you're a graphic designer. And it's like, it's a different thing. And so,

yeah, you're right. Be able to hire exactly who you need, not just, Oh, well, he's our jack of all

trades, creative guy or gal is super important. Yeah. So definitely love that. Especially,

you know, when you, when you ask your, your illustrator to edit videos, you know,

that's where it gets, it gets a little fuzzy right now. Probably need to find a different plan towards

that. But I tell you what, man, Matt, this has been, it's been awesome. I've loved hanging out. I

love what I'm seeing over at Share. And I've been pushing, even as people are approaching to me over

to Share to get connected, churches to get connected with artists. Artists, you know, continue. If you

really want to resource churches, cook up with organizations like Share that are, that are going

after churches and that are being kind of that middleman through it. So tell me this, if somebody

wants to get connected either on the artist side or the church side, how are they getting connected to

you? Yeah, super easy. Go to www.share, S-H-A-A-R dot work actually. So dot W-O-R-K dot work. Super easy.

If you're a freelancer or an artist, creative or admin, anything like that, it's going to take about

10 to 15 minutes to set up your profile. Because we're going to ask for what categories you're in

and your portfolio and experience so that churches really get a clear picture of who you are. For

churches, it takes less than two minutes. There's no signup fees. You don't pay anything. It's

literally just, hey, here's your name. Here's what we're looking to do. And then once you set up your

profile, you can post your first project. It should take, I don't know, five to 10 minutes to actually

post it. But really, the work is going to be on, hey, figuring out exactly what your needs are.

So yeah, that's where churches and also creators can go and sign up.

Share dot work, S-H-A-A-R, which comes from, you said it earlier,

Char, which is that. The gates to the marketplace.

Yeah. The gates to the marketplace. That's phenomenal. That is a deep cut right there.

That is. That's my seminary days, man.

Hats off to that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm like, how am I, what is this? How am I supposed to pronounce this?

Yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So there's a historical context to Char.

Yeah, absolutely.

I thought you were quoting Klingon or something.

That's another podcast that I really care about.

That'll be our Star Trek podcast.

That's awesome. Well, hey, Matt, as we're landing the plane, any closing thoughts or anything

else on your side?

Yeah. I mean, I would just encourage churches and pastors out there with the same thing we started

with, right? Like fail fast, fail often. Don't be afraid of failure in this season. The only way to

approach uncertain times, uncertain futures is by being willing to adapt and change on a daily basis

if necessary, right? The more nimble, the more flexible and agile you can be, the more likely

you're going to come out the other side of the stronger. And so that would be my encouragement

for leaders out there.

Awesome. Church experiment. Learn in this season. First off, coming out of mid-COVID, post-COVID,

whatever your opinions are where we are right now, the rule books still aren't valid. Like

whatever the playbooks we were operating in the past, the past is not going to operate for

tomorrow. And so we're going to have to develop new plans and new strategies. And Stadia is doing

a ton of work towards digital and helping churches gain the strengths of physical and digital.

But the stuff that we're talking about here with experimenting and learning, all of us,

all of our churches, we need to be wrestling with that. So work with checkoutshare.work and start to

experiment, learn, bring some wisdom in. Don't try to hire, don't try to develop the four-year plan

until you can figure out kind of what the next four months looks like. And what better way to wrestle

this up and down season than by bringing on some contracts, developing some projects, learning from

that, and start to get more wisdom for what digital, for what communications can look like in the

coming weeks, months, and years. So, hey, Matt, thanks for jumping on this. For Matt, this is Jeff with

The Church Digital.

Glad you were here for the podcast.

And we'll see you next time here on the show.

Y'all have a good day.