EP078: Kristel Acevedo, Women's Ministry Online & Creating Community Around Content

All right. Episode 78 of the Church Digital Podcast, once again, powered by Stadia Church Planting.

Jeff here. All right. We're coming out of this COVID season. Maybe. We may be coming out of this

COVID season. It's too soon to tell. I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel, although

really this could just be like one tunnel and there's a whole other COVID 2.0 tunnel coming up

soon. Who knows? God knows. Okay. God knows. God knows. We can say that, right? Other than God,

who knows? But one thing that, of course, in this COVID season, this podcast and other resources,

we're learning things throughout this season. And one of the things that we've learned is the

importance of community. We're seeing small groups created online. We're seeing churches

wrestle with this idea of digital community and engaging in those areas. And I love those

conversations. One thing that I really have not seen a lot of traction with, or maybe it's just

I'm not hearing these conversations, but it's someone that centers around like women's ministry,

felt needs, creating community centered around those community online. And so with this podcast,

I just wanted to shed some light on, hey, maybe there's some opportunities to engage in already

existing communities online, like a women's ministry, which has just has a phenomenal rich opportunity,

as you'll explore in this podcast. So we're bringing in Christelle Acevedo, longtime friend of the

podcast here. She's been friends with Ray DeArmis and I for years. And she is currently on staff at

Transformation Church, TC. You're going to hear it referenced a lot on the show that way, TC. But

she is one of their content creators. And her husband's a storyteller, video editor on the communications

team, Alex. And just they have a really rich family DNA when it comes towards creating content and

helping the church tell more effective stories. And so we wanted to bring Christelle in because

Transformation Church, TC is doing some phenomenal stuff, some really interesting stuff in women's

ministry, maybe some of these other groups. But more than even just like the felt needs, what I think TC

is starting to really scratch the surface on is how do we take content and how do we build community around it?

Like how can the content fuel the community that allows for engagement? And what does that community

most effectively look like? And so to that end, we're bringing in actually, to be honest, like I didn't

even be part of this conversation. Ray and Christelle have a great friendship and I had a scheduling

conflict and I bowed out. So in this conversation, we're bringing in Ray DeArmis, who's effectively host for

the church digital podcast in this episode. And Christelle Acevedo, once again, content creator for

Transformation Church in a conversation that I'm calling Online Women's Ministry and Creating Community

Centered Around Content. Okay, everybody, here you go.

At TC, my title or role description, if you want to call it that, is content creator. And I love that

because it sounds like a fake job. It sounds like a millennial job. We're like, what's a content creator?

Whatever I want it to be.

Exactly. That's the beauty of it. So it looks like a lot of different things. I work very closely with

Pastor Derwin. He is writing books. He just, we're getting ready to release The Good Life, which is his

latest book. And he actually started writing another book today because he's just ready for it. Then the

Lord has illuminated his mind, you know. So I help him with his book writing, writing questions, just

helping him in general with all his writing projects because he also writes articles or has different

things going on with different places. He also has a podcast called Marinate on That. So I basically

produce that podcast and just help steer that and cast a vision for that. So that's all Pastor Derwin's side

of things. The other part of my job is equipping and discipleship. So creating resources for our small

groups or for individuals who are wanting to learn more about the Bible or learn more about what it means

to be a Christian or a lot of our most of all of our small groups are sermon based. So we create a sermon

based study guide for all our small groups. And that's what they walk through so that they can. So we

equip our group leaders to lead their groups. And we're in this space now where we're just trying to

create a lot of digital resources and figure out what it looks like to disciple people online. So we've

been on the front end of that trying to figure that out and creating resources and content for that.

Yeah, what really caught my eye is specifically what you guys have geared in towards women in the last

few weeks, particularly with Vicki, because what Derwin does is great. And I think Derwin's got a vibrant

personality, you know, and for those of you don't follow him on Twitter or on Instagram or any of the

socials, you should, because he really demonstrates like a pastor's heart and like how to shepherd people

through some really tough topics online, which is great. But the other side of that,

is Vicki, his wife, and what you guys have really dug into here in the online space. Why don't you

explain to everybody what you've been doing for the last few weeks?

Yeah, definitely. And something that I love about Vicki is that she is just an amazing

disciple of Christ in her own right. Most of the times when I introduce her to people,

I don't say she's the pastor's wife. I lead with, she's our executive directional strategist,

because that's what she does. She's a very integral part of TC. And so she's also a very gifted Bible

teacher. And I think for a long time, she was, had her hands and her head and all these other things,

and couldn't focus on the teaching side of her giftings. And now she's just in a space where

God has just called her and said, it's time. So we have been wanting to create a women's ministry.

And this is something that we have been talking about pre-COVID. And so we were thinking about what,

what does it look like to start a women's ministry at TC? Part of the tension is that our vision is to

be a multi-ethnic, multi-generational, mission-shaped community. Therefore, we really focused on having

all our groups be multi-ethnic, multi-generational. We didn't want to have all these like sub

things like, this is a group for just women. This is a group for just moms. This is a group for just,

you know, dads who love motorcycles. We wanted it to just be all multi-ethnic, multi-generational. But

we realized that we were just in a place now within our, as we have grown, we just celebrated 10 years

where we wanted to start a women's ministry and a men's ministry and still keep the multi-ethnic,

multi-generational vision within that. So we had been talking about that and we had been planning

for our very first women's event and then COVID happened. So we had to cancel it. So we said,

okay, what are we going to do? Because we have all this momentum and all these plans and we don't want

to lose that. We don't want to lay that to the side just because we can't meet in person. So then we

decided that we wanted to provide an online space for women for this ministry, which we're calling

For Her because it's for her, for anybody, any woman, any age, any ethnicity. And so at first we did not

realize how big this was going to be. And so we had planned to just host it on Zoom and we thought it'll

be fine. We'll have some, you know, a few women jump on, Vicki will teach. We'll go through the book of

Esther together. No big deal. We opened up registration and it was like the floodgates had opened up. And

there were so many women who wanted to sign up and it got to the point where we decided to cut off

registration because it was too many women and we were not going to fit on a Zoom call. Well, they didn't

like that. And even it's funny because Pastor John said from the beginning, you can't, this is not how

you guys meet. This is going to be big. There's going to be a lot of women who are going to want

to do this. We're going to want to hear from Vicki who are going to want to connect with each other.

And Vicki was like, no, it'll be fun. And so, you know, we tried it, but then we realized it,

it wasn't fine. So we had to, we had to pivot all of a sudden. And that's when we decided to use Facebook

Facebook and we created a Facebook group called For Her and decided to host teachings, video

teachings on there, create a watch party so that we could all watch together, be chatting. And then

we created subgroups that would be like small groups. So we had, we tapped like 21 women on the

shoulder and said, Hey, can you lead a small group? Cause we all of a sudden we're just trying to like

make it happen. And we have just amazing women servant leaders at TC. And so we created, I think

21 or so small groups from that. So we had, uh, groups for those smaller, uh, small groups and then,

yeah. So then we would watch the teaching together and they would go to their small groups

for discussion time. At the same time, we still couldn't get all the women into small groups

because it was too many women. And so we host, we would host a, um, like a chat within the large

group for all the women who couldn't be in small groups. And that's just kind of how we've been

running it. And that I think last week was the final week of the Esther study. And now we're trying

to see how we're going to move forward with this group. That's good. What was the strategy in capping

the small groups? Like what did you guys decide to cap those groups at that you were like, man, we can't

fit everybody in a group. And what was the reasoning and thinking behind that?

So Vicki's heart was really to keep the group small because we realized that when a group gets

too big, it's just not conducive for conversation. There's going to be people who don't feel

comfortable to speak up in a larger group. And we wanted it to feel intimate and just like a little

tiny family, you know? So we wanted to keep the group small. And then at the same time, there was

only so many women leaders that we had because we honestly, like this was just like within a week,

we had to just change our whole strategy from Zoom to Facebook and figure it all out. So we were able

to find, like I said, I think 20 or 21 women to lead groups. And we wanted to keep maybe like 12 women

per group, which is still kind of big. And then just go from there. And so that's like the reason we kept it.

But that's also why we kept the large group open. And one of the other girls and I, we would chat with the

ladies in there.

21 groups, 12 women per group. It's over 240 people. I mean, that's a lot of movement in a very short

period of time. And really, let me ask you, what were your expectations versus, hey, if you guys did a

women's event in person, like, what was that going to look like versus doing it online?

Yeah, so it was basically going to be a night for her. So just go get a babysitter, you know, have come

hang out with us, forget about everything else, and just have this time for you, you know? Right.

And we were going to have teaching, we're going to have music, it was basically going to be, we had

these Wednesday night services. So it's going to be basically like one of our Wednesday night services,

but for women only. And then we were going to point all these women to small groups. So we were still

going to do small groups, but they were going to be in person in people's homes, etc.

So the plan was still going to go to groups, but this obviously made a big shift in terms of, hey,

we're going to do a big night versus, hey, we're going to do this consistently, like on a week to

week basis. It's a big shift. That really is a big shift to be considered. What were some of the

things that you would look at and say, well, this is what we're losing out on by doing this digitally

versus having it in person? Yeah, I think there was just, I think just that in-person

connection, being able to see people and hug people and all that. I know that that's a huge

deal. I think one of the obstacles was that not everyone is tech friendly. And so that was a big

obstacle for us because again, we are multi-generational and sometimes older folks and sometimes even

younger people just don't know where do I go to see a watch party and how do I click on this and

where's my small group and how do you join a Zoom? And so I think that was just one of the biggest

obstacles. And in the beginning, it was a lot of helping people figure it out and putting out little

fires all over the place of things not working properly. And so I would say that was just one of the

biggest obstacles. I don't think we would have had that if we met in person, right? We wouldn't have all

these technical difficulties, hopefully. Sure. But one of the amazing things is that we had women, even though

there were only 250-ish women in groups, we had 800 women within the large group. And these are women

from all over the country, not just local to TC. We had women from Canada and from Africa join it. Like,

it's just been amazing to see these women connect from all over the world. And so I think that was

something that we saw as a plus. Like, we are reaching so many more women in an age where they

feel very disconnected. Right. So illuminate me a little bit more to what's going on with that. The

800 people, is that how large the Facebook group overall has grown? Like in this four-week time,

it's boom, blossomed over 800 people. That's huge. Yeah. Yep. Yep. A lot of women.

That's good. And so give me an idea. Like, in terms of your Sunday morning makeup, in terms of the

different services and this kind of thing, how many women would you say attend TC versus, man,

what's happening here within for her since you guys have done this now?

I have no idea. I think on a Sunday morning regularly, like before, like COVID, when we would meet in

person, there was about 2,500 people in general that would meet adults. I don't know, half of those

are women at least. Sure. And to say that now 800 women are involved in some kind of discipleship

process, I mean, that's huge, you know, and granted, not all of them, they're there, you know,

where TC is, but still like, it's, it's a big thing to say that, you know, you guys made this shift,

which was big. And, and even to see all these different people kind of forming community from

different places around the world, sharing their story. And it could be, let me ask you, are there

any stories of like evangelism that kind of came out of this? Like, Hey, my friend or my relative who

wasn't connected to church is now digging into for her. What's going on there? There was this one

woman who said that she, her husband had just taken his life recently, and she moved to Texas, because

that's where one of her kids lived, and she wanted to be close to them. And she had felt just, you know,

obviously, that's a tragedy to have to live through as a wife. Yeah. And so she was just obviously going

through a terrible time and just feeling disconnected in a new place with no real community, no church

community. And somehow she was, she got connected to the for her Facebook group. And it was just

a blessing to her. And she like wrote this long message to us, letting us know how much she

appreciated it, and how it was just a blessing to her in that time of her life. And I love those kind

of stories, because we're making an impact on someone's life, and they don't even live within

our state, you know, that's awesome. No, I think that's tremendous. And she's obviously very integrated.

She's very much part of the community. She's that willing to share her story with you, which it's

hard. We've talked about this before for people to pass online from anonymity to community. It's very

difficult for people to kind of break that barrier and say, here I am. I'm watching you guys. Here's my

story. And I want to stay walking with you. And she's done that. And that's a big deal. So now looking

ahead, what is for her look like? And I'm sure you guys are thinking about reopening, you guys are

thinking about all sorts of things. What does this look like on in the future? Because you were looking

at this as once a month. And now it's gone once a week, and growing. So obviously, there's big plans

for this down the road. Definitely. Yeah. So we've been thinking a lot this week, meeting and praying and

dreaming together. And so like I said, Pastor Darwin's new book, The Good Life is coming out.

It releases June 2nd. As a church, we're going through the Good Life series, a sermon series,

and that starts on May 31st. And so all of our small groups are going to be reading the Good Life

book together and going through a conversation guide that we're creating to help facilitate

conversation about the book. And so what we've decided to do is, within the Facebook group,

we're going to host a watch party of our Sunday services. So that women, if they want to watch

together, they can all congregate within the For Her Facebook group to watch the service together

every Sunday. And then we are going to, we have a few women that we're asking to be servant leaders

in the group as moderators. And they are going to be creating conversation using the questions from

the guide to have conversation within the large group of women. Like just making posts, like sharing

their own insights, encouraging the women to read the book along with them and share what they're

learning, what God is showing them. And then we are also pointing them to our Good Life groups,

since all of our small groups are going to be walking through the Good Life. We're saying,

if you want to be a part of a small group, you can be, it's not going to be a specifically like women

only group, but it's a small group that is going to be walking through the Good Life together.

So you guys are looking at this as a way to on-ramp people towards regular small groups,

not necessarily to keep them in For Her small groups.

Right.

Understood. So if that's the case, is there hope to revamp or to re-up For Her down the road? Or

is this just, hey, this is a one-off, we're going to leverage this to pull people into small groups,

and then we're going to keep moving on?

Yeah, no, I think we definitely want to keep it going. We see the desire of the women within our

church to have this connection with other women. And so we want to keep the For Her Facebook page

going. We're creating like a content calendar for the group specifically so that we can always be

sharing things on there. And we want to be just creating that space. I think the more we engage

on it, the more other women are going to engage, if that makes sense. And so we just want to keep it

going. And then we're just asking God to show us like, as we move, like we're taking it step by

step. Like we did the Esther study together. Now we're going to go into the good life. And then we're

going to see how it goes, how it moves in the fall as we begin to reopen and all of that.

That's cool. That's really cool. And I know there's a lot of it that's still very ambiguous.

Like we don't have a really well-defined sense of whatever kind of church future is going to look like

anywhere, really. I know some churches have reopened. Some have not. Some have not stopped

meeting. They've just kind of worked through whatever guidelines are there. And even with small

groups in particular, this is a pretty big struggle because everybody's talking about big church

reopening. Nobody's talked about small groups reopening and in terms of what that's going to

look like. How much of that do you feel like in the immediate is going to continue to be digital at TC

and how some of this is going to be effective? Oh yeah. No, everything. We're encouraging all our

small groups to keep meeting online throughout the series, the good life series, which is an eight

week series. So, I mean, we're just, we don't see, we would rather keep people as safe and healthy as

possible than risk reopening to have to close down again because an outbreak occurs within our church.

Like we don't want to risk that at all. And so, and the same with our small groups, like we,

we are just encouraging everyone to meet through Zoom, meet online.

And hopefully they can continue to do that.

Let me ask, has there been a shift in terms of the thought process at TC as far as online

discipleship and all this, since all this has started? Because I know like at times, like you and I

talked before and it was like, not necessarily on their radar on the onset. Part of the reason is

because, and this is a whole lot of churches, this is no offense to anybody, trying to reach their local

community, but obviously now all of our local communities have moved online. And so, you know,

how has that affected TC's discipleship strategy just kind of moving forward, looking at all the

success that you guys have had, especially with this? Oh yeah. It's all changed. It has all changed.

I think that, I think this was the wake up call that like our leadership team needed. And it's funny

because our communications director said at the beginning of 2020 that this was going to be the year of

digital. So back way back in January, he was talking about this has to be the year of digital. We're

going to ramp up our, our online presence. We're going to change our website. They're working on a

total website revamp. Right. And, um, and that was their foot. We hired a digital strategist who is

just amazing and is so smart. And so we had already been moving in that direction. And then just when

this happened, it just, Ooh, our digital strategist is very busy now. She has a lot of work to do. Um,

and which is great because she's so amazing at what she does, but yeah, I think we are, um, just really

trying to shift everything. And I think a lot of that is going to be reflected in our website and in the

opportunities that we give people, even when it comes like the, for her was not the only online

connection group that we created at the onset of this. We also had, um, started doing TC kids

online, which we had never done before. And like zoom, like TC kids, zoom play dates. Um, we did a

brain health awareness month in May. And so we had brain health chats every week, um, for the month of

May, where we had different brain health experts at the last week we had a panel where they talked

about brain health and they talked about what it means and like, like what it means to rest, what

it means to stay healthy mentally and physically throughout this quarantine time. And it was great

because we could point people to, we still have resources. We're still here for you. We're still

providing care for you. We'll, we're still providing connection points for you, even though it's all

online. That's good. And you feel like the church is really kind of absorbing this and tuning into it

and feeling like they're part of this, right? Like this is a big deal where it's not to say we're

putting content out. Are you guys getting feedback as far as like how it's going? Yeah, I think people,

what we always try to do is create, um, ways like relational opportunities. And so a lot of that is just

like, let's say in the chat, everything, every video that we premiere or go live with, there's always

a chat and there's always engagers within the chat, asking questions, pointing to, uh, websites, um,

giving information so that people know that we're not just, you're not just watching a video. We're here,

we're watching it with you. We're having a discussion about it. If you have a question, I'm here to answer

it. Um, so that's a big part of it. And then, um, like, so one of the other things is we are now doing

membership online, which we had never, ever done before. And so, um, one of the biggest things that we

wanted to make sure was that it wasn't just, all right, watch this video and sign a, sign a little

thing at the end says, okay, I want to be a member of TC. Like we wanted it to be as relational as

possible. So again, we had like a large group where we did like a teaching and then we broke up into

smaller groups where there was a basically like what, what used to be called table hosts, but there's

no table now. Cause it's online. So a chat host, let's say, or a breakout host where, um, they would

kind of lead in some discussion questions and, um, facilitate questions. And that was a relational

touch point. And we had the same group, like the same host with the same group week to week so that

they would create a bond. And then we're having like a social distancing drive by. Cause usually at the

end of our membership classes, we, they get like a little gift. So we're going to do a drive by where

they come to the church. We're going to stand six feet apart and wear masks and gloves and give them

their gift because we, and say like, hi, and wave to them and say, we're so glad you're part of TC,

you know? Um, so it's all about, um, I guess Jeff always uses that digital word, which sounds weird,

but we're trying to figure out how can we be digital and physical at the same time?

I'm mad. Cause I was the one who gave it to Jeff. Oh, were you the one? Oh, okay. Sorry guys. It was

Ray DeArmas. I'm just going to take it away from Jeff. Just like I'm taking away his podcast right now.

But yeah, no, it's it. And I'm glad that you guys are wrestling through all this stuff because it's,

it's a challenge. It is a challenge. And, and really the challenge kind of moving forward that

we've been talking to a lot of folks in a lot of churches is what to keep and what to go and how a

lot of that's going to work out. But it sounds like you guys are wrestling with a lot of the right

questions. Um, now mind you, I know not every, but every church is excited about these digital

processes and these digital tools. I've dealt with a lot of pastors who are a little bit antagonistic

towards it. Um, how are you guys handling, getting people to those next steps? Cause that's what I

keep telling them. I'm like, part of the reason why you're antagonistic is because you're not thinking

about people taking their next step beyond the broadcast. And so how have you guys done that?

Because for her, it would have been great on its own in terms of content, but you guys stepped it up

another level by creating the community around it. So how are you guys bridging that gap between

content and community and getting people there? Man, that's a great question. Let me think.

I feel like there's so, I just feel like there's so much, it's such a, like an interweaving of

different things and a lot of collaboration between teams. Um, I think it's always, so we have like

even a care connection card, let's say, or a connection card that we do that, you know, like the

regular connection card that you do on Sunday mornings usually, but we have like a digital version of

that and beyond that, we have a care version of that. So we, we create these, um, forms, these cards that

people can fill out. And that just doesn't go into outer space. Like that goes to a person that reads

through them and then makes contact with them, whether that's email or phone or a zoom call. And so we are

still trying to, like, we respond to every email. We respond to every phone call. I know that like,

unfortunately there's some churches that are not that way. Like they, someone sends an email and just

goes somewhere and then people ignore it. And, but we don't do that. Like we really care. Like we

really respond to every single email, you know? And so I think that's a huge part of it. And I think

even when it comes to social media, because I'm really involved with our social media as well,

I'm very passionate about responding to every comment, every message, every DM that we get,

because I want them to know that they're, that we are a family, that we are here for you. We're not

just wanting you to consume our content. We want to help you in your discipleship process or in your,

in your life. No, that's helpful because a lot of people, especially people who are,

who are obviously connecting with you guys online there, if they're connecting to you,

it's because they are longing for that piece of community, right? They're not just connecting

simply because they dig your podcast or they dig, they dig Derwin or they dig Vicky and the stuff

that you guys are doing, but it goes a step beyond that. And transformation, mind you,

I know that transformation tried multi-site and that didn't work out. I know we've talked about that

in the past, just privately, but in the future, you guys have really exploded online. How do you

see online kind of taking a greater emphasis as things move forward? Oh man, it's just, it's like,

it's everything. We're trying to, I think one of our biggest strategies right now is that we're seeing

ourselves as an online church, huh? Not as like a church that has a broadcast online. Like we are

an online church right now. And yes, we have a building that we, that we will use someday.

That's a huge shift from conversations that you and I have even had in the past in regarding TC.

That's a big shift. How do you guys arrive at where a church, you know, in, in the Carolinas too,

we're an online church. Like that's a major jump. I think just seeing the impact, like seeing the

numbers of people who are watching our broadcast online every single Sunday, watching our midweek

services who are like, even our follows on, on Instagram and Facebook have grown so much. And we

see where people are watching from. And it's just amazing. Like we just understand now the impact that

we can have not only in North Carolina, South Carolina, but beyond. And recently, even on our

Instagram, we shared a story about a woman who lives in Maryland, I believe. And she watches Faithfully.

She's a transformer. So she does not live in North or South Carolina, yet she's a part of our family.

And so we wanted to feature that story to show people like you see, like, it doesn't matter where

you live. You can be part of our TC family. Um, see, I know this is true because my mother-in-law

is now a self-proclaimed transformer. She's loving it. She's digging it. Yeah. I love, I know we

talked on the phone the other day. She's like, I'm a transformer in Miami. I'm like, yeah, girl,

we're going to do, we're going to do a Miami campus, TC Miami. You know, I'm, I like that.

She'll be the first one to show up for sure. There's no question about it,

but that's, that, that is the power that you guys have created this great community. I mean,

granted it did start with, with phenomenal content. There's no question about it. It's great content,

you know, but then there's the community that's created around the content that really makes it

more compelling. Yeah, for sure. I think, I think showing people that you, when you show people that

you care and you show people that you're willing to walk with them and willing, like, you know,

if someone, if someone messages us about, you know, I'm, I'm struggling with this or that,

we don't just say, okay, we're praying for you. We say, okay, please, you know, fill out this

connection card. Someone from our team is going to be in contact with you. And then they are,

they email them or they call them. And then we set up a zoom care meeting with one of our care

shepherds. Like we walk them through it. You know, we don't just abandon people. It's like,

oh, did you watch Sunday? Okay, cool. See you next week. Like we want to see people all throughout the

week. That's awesome. That's really good. How else are you guys keeping that contact throughout the

week? Cause that's, that's a challenge for a lot of folks. I mean, I think that always social media

where we update every day and we encourage people to interact on there. The, the for her group has

shown us that it doesn't have to be just a for her group. We can have groups about anything and

everything. And so I think that's probably a move that will make more Facebook groups because there's

more engagement within groups than on pages. Ooh, talk about that. Talk about that. I agree.

Yeah. Talk about that. Why do you say that's the case? Okay. Well, this is something that I learned

from Nona Jones who works at Facebook. She's like their faith, uh, initiative person, partnership

person. Anyways, she's a genius. And I've listened to a lot of her talks and she always says how Facebook

pages are more of like a drive-by, like it's like your front door and people just kind of like see what

this is. Oh, this is transformation church. Oh, okay. They have, okay, cool. See you later. But groups are

where people get into community and get connected. And so, um, it's just, it's just easier. It's, it's,

it can be smaller. You can, you can just, you're going to receive more engagement within a group than

on a page. And so, and you can, I don't know. It's just, is there just something about a group?

It feels safer. It feels more intimate. It feels closer than a page. A page is more public than a

group is. Yeah. The thing I've noticed about groups within this is the user's ability to add content to

it, which is good and bad. Like it depending, right? Yes. We learned that. I mean, I've seen some, some

weird, horrific content that as an admin, I've had to like, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing

that here or we're not promoting that or no, you cannot promote your multi-level marketing scheme

on our Facebook group. But, but it's definitely been an opportunity though, for people to drive

content and even to give feedback in a good way. You know, like a lot of people take feedback as,

oh, they're going to do, they're going to do the negative thing. They're going to say, well,

why doesn't our church do this? Why don't you guys do that? I've not seen any of that. What I have

seen more of is, man, I love this week's message. Hey, how can, how can I pray for some of the

different people at our church? That's been pretty powerful and transformative to see in a group versus

just a brand page where it's just us talking at people. Yeah, I think that's good. I think that's a

really good point because even within our for her page, we see women saying, Hey, I was reading this

devotional this morning. I was reading the Bible and I, and I saw this and it reminded me of something

Vicki said, or, you know, and then it's, it's encouraging is what it is. It encourages people

within their own spiritual habits, within their own spiritual walks. And it's, it's good because it

feels like you're doing it together. It's good. That's real good. So now, I mean, obviously,

as you know, you talked about like the good life book and all this stuff is for her done or is for

her relaunching in the fall or what's next for that? No, I mean, I don't think it's done at all.

This is something, like I said, that we were planning even before all of this happened. And this is

something we have a vision and a passion for. And so it's definitely not done and it will keep going.

Like right now it's going to look differently than how it did while we were doing our Esther study. Now

it's more of the good life and it's more us as a church, you know, coming alongside pastor Derwin

as he's releasing this book that we all like love and believe in. And then from the fall, then we'll

see, you know, where it goes from there. That's really good. And something that I'm hoping to see,

I'm hoping to see, and mind you, she's being really humble. I'm hoping to see Christelle start

teaching it for her online. I'm really looking forward to that kind of stuff. I know she's not going to

tout her own content, but I'm telling you right now, she's a Bible teacher and I think she would do a

phenomenal job at it. So that's just me. All right. Welcome. Hey, look, I got a long history

with Christelle and I'm very, very happy to see you leading people here online and to really be

driving this transformation because what I had seen a lot of in the past, and this isn't a critique,

it was just an observation, was just some hesitancy because there had always been this ability

to have this kind of influence online from transformation. And now that I see them embracing

it, I just love it. Yeah. Phenomenal. And I see a thriving factor in it.

Yeah. I think I believe that too. And I, and I'm, and I'm so thankful to see it.

You know, my husband, Alex also works at TC in the communications. He's so gifted at storytelling

through video and photos and all of that. And so he's also very passionate about this. Like we,

we have to do things online. We have to like tell these stories that what's happening and put it

out there. And so having him, having our communications director, who also, who called

2020 the year of digital before COVID even happened, having our, yeah, having our digital

strategies, like where God is building this team. Like God knew what was happening even before we knew

what was happening. And he was already putting people in the right places. And it's just like,

our eyes were all opened and everyone's, everyone's eyes were open to like, okay, this is happening.

And we're seeing so many more opportunities come because we have started opening up the,

the ideas of like, what does it mean to be an online church? What does it mean to go digital?

And so we just see so many opportunities coming and we know that's God doing his work.

So anyways, now to land the plane, uh, Christelle, you know, do you have any closing thoughts as to

how you would encourage churches to move in digital strategy and digital discipleship in this kind of

direction as to what you guys have done for women? I mean, it's powerful.

It can feel overwhelming, especially if you're not, um, well-versed in digital and online and all of

that. It can definitely feel overwhelming, but there are so many people within your church who

know how to do this. Like there are younger people or maybe even like moms and moms are amazing on

Facebook. Like you don't even know there's so many mom Facebook groups. They know how to run it

like better than anyone else. I know there's like younger people who are, who just have like a knack for it.

You know, there are people within your church, you know, even if you don't know how to do it,

there's somebody in your church, even if it's one person who knows how to navigate online spaces

very well. So it's time to tap them on the shoulder and say, please help me like show some

humility and be like, okay, I don't know what I'm doing. Please help me with this. And they'll do it.

They'll be so excited and they'll love to help navigate this new arena for you. I think that's like

step number one, like, and if not, then ask God, you know, pray and ask him to show you who that is

or to bring that person to your church. Because I promise you, there are so many people out there

who know what they're doing when it comes to this. That's so good. That's so powerful. And I agree.

You know, if you're out here listening and you're thinking to yourself, well, this is great, but I

don't have a dynamic speaker or I don't have the kind of personality that transformation has on either

men or women's side. How in the world can I get started? The reality is, is your willingness is

kind of the first place to start. And if you're a regular listener on the church digital, we talk

about this all the time. It's okay to fail. Like it's okay to mess up in this space in the sense of,

yeah, I tried something and it didn't work out, but get back up and try again. Because as we're

seeing here and what's happening at transformation, this wasn't planned. Nobody went into this saying,

hey, this is going to be a sensation. We're going to get 800 women into a Facebook group and over 250

women involved in small groups in four weeks. There was no plan that kind of went into this in motion,

but there was the willingness to say yes to God. And even when the plan on zoom fell apart,

there was the willingness to get up. Yeah. And that wasn't even, that wasn't even the last fail

because we had other fails after that. And we had to regroup and, and, and, and like, I think the

very first week that we had the video teaching, we, we said we were going to do individual watch

parties in all of the different small groups. That was a fail because so many people were like,

how do I do this? Where do I go? I don't understand. And so we had to just simplify like one watch party

in the large group, then go to your small groups, you know? So you, you, you, uh, something Pastor

says is sudden change, which I guess is a football thing. I don't know.

What was that? What was that again? Sudden change. Sudden change. Okay. Yeah. Like,

it's just like something happens. Now you have to rethink your whole strategy. It's a sudden change.

So just move and just do it, you know? So that's what we had to do.

That sounds good. And that kind of, I think that exemplifies maybe church ministry in general,

but definitely church online is sudden change is just part of the norm. Um, and it's, it's tough

to embrace, but it's definitely something that needs to, needs to be embraced, especially when

we're in the business of faith and working for God, because every hero I've ever had in the Bible

has had to deal with sudden change. So. Oh yeah. Yep. Very cool. Well, Christelle,

thanks so much for taking the time to join us on the church digital podcast. Look forward to having

you again, because I definitely want to talk about in the future as to after you've reopened and

what's happening in terms of transformation church, being an online church first. That's that I'm sure

is going to take on a whole lot of other meanings, uh, come the fall and, and come on into 2021. So

look forward to hearing from you guys again. That'll be great.

Thanks Ray. I love you guys. And I love this podcast and everything you guys are doing. So

thank you. And then make sure if you're listening to go pick up a copy of the good life when it comes

out, because it's going to be awesome. There it is. Yes. By Derwin Gray, uh, phenomenal pastor has a lot

of great things to say and definitely, um, is very engaging online and then follow at Christelle ace.

She's a great follow, uh, make sure I'm plugging with her. All right. That sums it up here. My name

is Ray. I'm here for the church digital. We'll see you all next time.