EP076: Lee Coate & Digital Engagement Pathway for Your Church

Episode 76 of the Church Digital Podcast powered by State A Church Planting. Jeff here. Once again,

we've got a great episode for you. Digging in here, getting into the individual, getting into

the one, getting into the smallness of Church Online. Really, when we talk about Church Online,

we often think of it as this big, massive, huge thing, but really the success of Church Online

is not found in its large reach as much as it is in a much smaller engagement. And so we're going to

talk a lot about that here within this context. We're bringing in Lee Coate, executive pastor

of the Crossing Church in Las Vegas, a large church. By the way, he also does some work with

intentional churches, if you're familiar with that. But in context, we talk a lot in this episode

about individuals, not the mass of what's happening, but the smallness of the individuals

and how we as a church can reach them. By the way, we're not talking about individuals that

are just within the physical church building. We're not just talking about the individuals that

are in a digital-only environment that are not attending the physical building. We're actually

talking about both and how to develop an intentional discipleship pathway, or as he calls it, a digital

engagement pathway that your church can utilize the technology component to start to engage and track

with people in digital space, sure, but also engage and track with people who are going to your church

for discipleship in the physical environment. Once again, digital. It's this combination of physical

and digital working together to get this digital placement. And this here, this is what we really

wanted to talk about. How do we engage people? How do we meet people? How do we build relationships

with people who are just watching church online and get them to a place where they are fully engaged and

they're activated in ministry in your church, whether physical or digital only? Fascinating conversation,

really, really deep level stuff here. By the way, his engagement pathway, Lee's engagement pathway,

we've got a link to it in the show notes. We're going to talk about this a ton. So swing over to the

show notes, check it out at thechurch.digital. There's a blog there. If you can't find it, go find,

search for it and find it there. But access that information, have it available because we're going to be

talking a lot about this pathway through this podcast. So for the conversation, I'm bringing

in Lee Coat, Executive Pastor, Crossing Church in Vegas, Ray DeArmis, Digital Pastor, Christ

Fellowship Miami, and of course, myself, Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning in a

conversation that I'm calling Digital Engagement Pathways for Your Church. Okay, everybody, here you go.

So what's interesting about the crossing, Jeff and Ray, is that we would say that for, as long as I can

remember, we really had an online presence that was there as either an introduction for people or a

placeholder for people, maybe a substitution or a supplement for people that were unable to make it

to our physical locations. And that was fine. That was actually a strategy for us. So our online presence,

I would say, outside of social media, really was limited to our Sunday worship experience being

broadcast. And so the way I would describe it is, we would bring our auditorium into your living room,

but you would definitely feel as if you were watching our auditorium in your living room. There was small

small acknowledgements that you might be watching from somewhere else, but generally, the content and the

tone of our gatherings would have been directed towards those who were physically in the room. Obviously,

with COVID happening in March, we made a pivot. And the pivot for us was not as dramatic as probably for some who

literally had no online presence and had to pivot to figuring it out with iPhones and learn things like

black magic and 720 and YouTube and things like that. But our pivot was more towards how do we begin to

build content towards an online audience? And what does that look like? And some of that was technology and

technical things that we don't need to talk about that's way outside of my lane. But more so like what

is to your question, what are what is that audience? And frankly, I think the question that I hope a lot of

churches are have asked that we began to ask early on, which I'm grateful for is, are we just going to

build a platform that holds our people over for as long as they are sheltering in place, or not physically? Or are we

going to build a platform that continues to reflect our values of, you know, helping people discover

Jesus and their own personal journey of faith? And that word discover is a big word. We'll talk about it

even a little more later. But this idea of we wanted a platform that we could continually see people

come to Christ and come into community at the crossing. And so that really drove our decisions,

obviously not within the first 48 hours. But within the first week or two, as we started to get our feet under us off the

pivot, and started to get organized, then we began to ask those questions moving forward. The funny part is we

initially told people we're going to be online for two weeks. And as of this recording, we are 12 weeks and no end in

sight as far as no physical gatherings for us here in Vegas.

What kind of changes did you see? And I know that you guys had some discussions and you guys talked

about it, but what would you say are some of the greatest changes that you've seen in terms of how

you've adapted to this? Because I imagine a lot of churches are experimenting with different types of

adaptations. And so, you know, what has been the secret sauce for the crossing?

Well, I think, I think I would say, Ray, a holistic approach pretty quickly was important for us.

And we'll even drive some of our decisions post-COVID. What I mean by that is we pivoted initially,

obviously, to bring our worship gatherings. And those took on a little bit of a different form,

obviously, two camera, a little bit more compressed service times. Things that were directed to that online

audience, action steps, those sorts of things, engaging in chats, empowering our staff to be

very present and engaging in those rooms. But I would say even beyond that, making sure that our extended

ministry also began to have a presence. I'll give you one example. So we have a recovery ministry

that meets every Monday night, as many churches do. I won't name the recovery ministry,

but initially they did not want us to take their content online. So we immediately pivoted and our

recovery ministry became Crossing Recovery, which we call CR. And we started recording music and

testimonies slash devotionals. And we've had that going on for since the beginning, especially for those

people that really need that 12-step process, right? If that goes away, that can be life-changing for them

and life-altering. So that would be an example of thinking that went beyond Sunday. What do we need

to be doing to create not just an online audience, but really an effective online picture of what the

church should be?

Yeah, Jeff sent me a photo of the funnel that you guys are using. And why don't you just tell some of

our listeners about that funnel in terms of how you see somebody moving from all of that online content

that you guys are putting out there to actually being engaged in your church?

And I think that that focus, the idea of a pathway or a funnel is kind of our narrative of our optimum

narrative of where we would want to see people move. We realize people do what they want to do and the

timing they want to do it. But we believe it's important for us to have an optimum narrative because

we want one to work that, scrub it all the time, see what's working, what's not, and really measure

movement off of that. So if someone links to the picture, which I'm sure Jeff will, one of the words

they see is movement. These are not programs. I want people to understand we're not taking all of

our programs and pressing them into a narrative. We're really saying what are the key things that

we want to produce movement towards someone getting connected to Christ and getting connected to the

crossing. And we say that over and over again. So within a week or two, we started pressing in,

and we have a physical location pathway that looks similar to that, but would include other elements

that are for the physical experience. And so we just basically said, what would a digital virtual

experience of movement and connection look like? And the top of it is really our reach. We started

asking the questions around how do we reach people who are far from Christ or far from church community

and started looking at that and then moved our way down. What's interesting about it is there are

handoffs as well. If you, if you look at that chart, there are certain places where there's a,

there's a handoff as far as who will be responsible for that person's care, that person's movement,

that person's growth along the pathway. And it all starts from our people just spreading and sharing

to their, to the ones in their life, to use that term, and then beginning to see those people take

steps. And so that was really the fruition of it. It was taking what we were doing already

and pushing it into a, an online context. And now that will continue to lead to live for us, um,

indefinitely because it's, it really, what has shifted our mentality towards that.

Yeah. And I'm glad you said that. Cause that was going to be my next question was what's going to

hang around off of this post in terms of reopening, like what's going to stay.

Yeah. And that's the question, Ray, right. That everybody's asking, right. Is what's permanent and

what's temporary and everybody has ideas and you can spend all day reading blogs and, and websites and

listening to podcasts like this, you know, where people are telling you, uh, you know, on two sets of the,

one set is saying, everything's going to eventually go back to normal. The other sets saying, you know,

sell your building, you never, nothing's ever going to be the same. We've taken kind of a last 10%

approach where we've said, we're not sure, um, how quickly, but we believe that, uh, 85 to 90%

of things will return to some degree of normal for us. People will eventually come back and want to

gather and hug each other and do that. Um, so what our team has been really scrubbing is what's the last

10% that is forever changed. Number one, or we want to forever be changed that we're going to make sure

stays changed. So with the pathway, we have discovered one, that there's some personal touch that we need

to get back to with our guests. That's beyond just them, beyond that mentality that they just want

anonymity forever. And so we've learned that once they identify themselves, that some personal touch

is appropriate. Um, secondly, we've, we, we're using the term integration, which means like our discover

step will be, be a physical step again, that people can come to campus. They can have lunch, they can

walk around, they can talk face to face, but we'll also always maintain a virtual, um, presence that

people, whether online or whether they just choose to take it from the comfort of their home, will be able

to always access, um, as an integrated alternative. So those are, we're still asking and answering those

questions, Ray, but that's part of what has been the light bulb moment for us, as far as our movement from

church, just showing up online when you want it to, this is an experience that integrates, um, in an

omni-channel type way with our church. So you can physically show up sometimes, or digitally show up

sometimes, and you can play in both of those sandboxes and still grow in your relationship with Christ and

your relationship with the crossing. Yeah. I love that omni-channel. We've

talked a lot about that, uh, on the podcast going, going back about how you're through omni. You're

trying to get a consistent messaging across multiple platforms. Typically it's more like social media,

making sure you're, you're consistent across, but I love your approach of physical and digital,

both being a consistent messaging. Um, one of the things that I'd love to know is who's watching,

like when you're looking at UK, so you've got 85 to 90% who are physically going back to a building

at some point, at least that's a guesstimate of what I understood, what you're planning.

What do you know of, of the 10%? Are they people that are in Vegas? Are they people who used to be in

Vegas and moved away? Or are they people who just are connecting with your church through, who are they?

Like, where are you seeing these people come from? Our best way to, um, first of all, that's,

there's some data that we have obviously Jeff on that, but it's also pretty tricky. Like everything,

the, the one, one of the reasons why we have these conversations is the, the nuance of the digital world

is it can be pretty hard to really nail down what's really going on. There's a lot of,

a lot of, uh, uh, challenges there, but what we, I'll tell you what we're learning about that audience

is, you know, and we're learning it a lot through our, through our, our pathway because we're,

as people are moving through it, that's a really good identifier because I think there's so many eyes

on everybody's thing, right? I'm watching other churches. I'm, I'm peeking in on my friends or

people I'm coaching. And so I know there's a lot of dialogue around numbers and how many do we think

are watching and which platforms are best. Um, what I really see is as people start to move from

the wider end of that funnel and they begin to actually take movement steps into connection is

where we're really looking at going, okay, this is an integrated model because even if someone,

I was on our discover lounge three weeks ago and there was a gentleman in New York outside of

Manhattan who had been watching our service for four weeks. And I don't think this story is just

anecdotal. I think it's, it's at least an idea of where this can be. And he showed up in our discover

lounge to take the next step. And he's going to get in an online group from New York and he's going

to be with people in Vegas and people from elsewhere. So I think what we're learning is if you will lean

in towards the one in your digital environments, not just as a supplement for your 99 who show up,

that you will begin to open up the audience much wider, both locally and even beyond that,

because the tone of what you're doing will tell them they are welcome there versus the tone of I'm

watching a service that's for a bunch of people that live in Vegas. They can pick up on that. But if

the tone is, man, we're glad you're here, wherever you're watching, that's key. I will say the caveat is

we're not treating it as a broadcast and I'm not sure I'm using the right word. So correct me,

Jeff, in your world, but we're not looking at creating a crossing broadcast channel or a Christian

network of content. Nothing wrong with that, but that's not our directive. That's why this engagement

funnel we're talking about is so important. Because I think when you see broadcast, they're not really

looking to move people into that kind of community. And we're looking to see people engage in our church

digitally. You know, it's interesting. I just came out of a meeting, a conversation just before we did

this recording and we were talking about physical first and we were talking about digital first and

kind of the challenges back and forth with that. And somebody made the observation, hey, shouldn't we

be face to face first? Like, it's not about the building. It's not about the technology. It's about

the relationship piece. And I was like, oh, that's good. I'm going to steal that because it really is.

It's about that relationship, that aspect of it. And you hinted at it. And I want you to dig in a

little bit because we've not exposed the podcast to this yet, but I'm going to very quickly in

subsequent episodes, talk to me about the one. You talked about how, instead of doing a broadcast

reaching, you're really interested in kind of reaching into and finding the one. I would love to

hear it and maybe explain a little bit. What is the one for crossings?

Right. So there's a lot of different terms and I don't want to, I don't want to make people crazy

who might be listening because you have to, you have to filter this conversation through

the great commission, right? That our strategy drives our vision through our values towards our

mission. And our mission is the great commission. And whoever's listening from a church context, we all have the same

mission. Even if we have a cute statement that says something a little different, it's all based on the

great commission, right? So then we back up into values and vision and strategy, which can get

very diverse, the further you get into strategy. And so for us to have the one in mind, Jeff, is

crucial and key to the tone at which we set. And so we have conversations around things, as many churches

do, like primary target. Who is our primary target? Doesn't mean the other targets don't matter, but who

are we primarily thinking is on the other end of either sitting in a chair or has their device open and is

watching us communicate and what is compelling about that experience for them. So you have churches all

the time that'll talk about, you know, 35 year old married male with two kids, things like that. We

have some variants of that that we talk about, but I think what's interesting and you bring up a great

point because I think it will be interesting going forward to look at. And one of the things that

online does allow you, right, is a little bit, even an easier way of looking at

demographics that are viewing, especially with Facebook and some of those things,

we're able to see who is watching. Who are these people that are watching? What kind of content are

they interacting with? And I think we will continue to tweak to answer your question. I'm not sure right

quite yet who our one is online. I know they're there, but I think we'll continue to tweak as we can

define that more and start to start to say. And we're having the conversation now around do we go back to

basically streaming what we're doing in the room or do we continue to create content that I would say is

modeled after what we do in the room, but it's not an absolute mimicking of what we do in the room.

And that conversation is ongoing right now because we're talking resources and staffing and all of

that. But that conversation is about the one. Like, how are we going to reach the one that catches us

online, whether they live in Vegas or in Long Island? And what's the best way to do that with

the content we're giving them? So that's a long answer to, I think, a pretty important question

that is yet to be answered for us in its entirety. But I think we're asking and you're asking

the right question for sure. Yeah. And that's a hard question for so many churches right now is

do we create content just for online, especially planning for reopening? Where are you guys,

I know you talked about how you're back and forth in the process, but what are you guys considering

as far as what that would look like in terms of, hey, we're going to continue, but we're going to

treat this almost as if it's a separate campus in a unique neighborhood that we're trying to reach.

Yeah, we've taken the bold step of actually reintegrating one of our locations that we had

that was in a portable school because we just aren't even sure about their ability to meet.

And so we made the preemptive step in the last few weeks to have them integrate back into one of our

other locations, that group of people. And we made a staff change and moved that lead location person

into an online lead role. And it's interesting, Ray, as I talked to him, he started

thinking, what does that mean for me as far as content creation, all that. And the conversations

we've been having is you don't need to worry that much about that. You need to pastor the same way

you would pastor a physical location. Do that, create steps, make sure people are being cared for,

make sure movements happening, be online, right? So we'll do some live things with him and all that.

But I didn't put him in that role so that he could create content. We have people that can do that. I

need him to be a pastoral, to Jeff's term, face to face as much as possible for those individuals that

choose to be part of our online campus experience. So that's a preemptive step that we've already taken.

We've also slowed our re-entry, probably more than some, we're not as anxious for re-entry.

I just think that I've seen a shift in the last two to three weeks where there was a lot of language

around the church is not a building and it's all good, you know, a church in multiple living rooms and

thousands of, and it was great, right? And all of a sudden now re-entry has become a thing. And I feel like the,

the rush to, to close has now become the rush to re-entry or reopen. And I'm, I'm a little concerned

that even for us, ourselves included, that we're rushing to re-entry and we're going to miss the

opportunities that God to make it, which it is a spiritual thing that God has given us in our rush

to get back to what we knew as normal. And we're, we're slower, partly because we have to be in our

context right now, we, we can't meet. And secondly, one of our guiding principles of re-entry is we

don't want to reopen until our physical locations experience can match or exceed what we're doing

online. And right now we could not even touch what we're doing online, even if we had bodies in a room.

So we've taken a little bit of a harder stance on, we're going to go slow to try to continue to maintain

a hard online presence that will continue beyond re-entry. And I just caution guys out there that

have kind of said online, online, oh yeah, that thing over there. You know, I, I don't think it's,

I don't think it's going away. Here's what's cool. We've exposed people while they were captive,

they were sheltered at home. We've exposed people to something that in January, they would

have said, eh, I don't really want to do that. Right. I like to be in church. I'm not saying they

won't come back to church. I think most of them will, but when the suggestion is made or when the

opportunity is now made for them to either attend or invite to an online presence, they're going to be

way into going, yep, that's a great, we did that for three or four months. It's an awesome way to

attend church. I'm not afraid of that right now. I'm feeling a lot of people going, I'm done. I want

to go back to a physical thing, but as things start to settle in, I think there's going to be a lot of

openness to that online experience. I want to lean in there real quick for a moment because reopening

to me is not evangelistic. It's a little bit self-serving in the sense that we're rushing back,

but really to get our own people in the door because non-believers don't care to rush to

church right now. No, this is not an environment where people are going to be inviting their

ones into the building. It's just not, but you can still invite them online and there's a pipeline

there, Ray, for sure. Right. And part of the reason I believe, and this may be unfair, and I don't want

to caveat this part, this may be unfair of different folks' church, but part of the reason I believe

that is because they don't have that discipleship pathway for online, which is why they're in such

a rush to reopen. And so can you talk about how that is affecting your decision to slow the process

down because you're still carrying people through this process? I think it's a valid point you make,

Ray, is if you're now, let's say, 10 to 12 weeks into the online almost exclusively, and you don't have

some degree of an understanding of how we're going to move people in an online environment,

then I would say you are probably very desperate to get back into the building at this point because

you've kind of stopped at the hour on Sunday experience. And I think your point is well taken.

I think that as we develop an understanding of how we can actually disciple and move people and reach

people, which we've talked about, through an online experience. Again, I think it can be cooperative. I don't think

it has to be a destination model. I think a destination model is valid. And if that's what God's called

people and given them a vision for, go for it. I don't think it has to be that. I think it can be

an integrated or even a entryway type model, but it needs to have that reach factor in order for it to

be worth the resourcing that people are doing. I've actually encouraged a lot of people, Ray and Jeff,

to not go full online campus. I've talked to guys that are like, oh, we're going to be an online campus.

And I'm like, I'm not sure that you're quite ready or have the understanding of what that really means.

So it's okay for you to just go back to a re-entry model or an entryway model that just sort of is a

front door for your one. That's totally valid. It's okay to do that, right? To create an environment

where people can see before they come. Totally a valid reason to have an online presence. I just think we

have to make those decisions and then create that pathway that will allow people to not just be at a dead

end, which I think is what we're experiencing right now is kind of a dead end.

At worst, hopefully we're learning in this COVID season that online can complement what happens in

the building and the two can work together. Maybe not as a holistic carbon copy. And I'm even fascinated

with one of the things you said earlier where you were like, yeah, there's some things that we do

digitally, but we just opted not to do it in online. And so there is a place for online to function,

maybe in tandem or complementing and filling in some of the weaknesses of online at minimum. But there's

an option for part of what I think that could be is in this role of discipleship. And you listed online

groups and community response and some of these things within your digital engagement pathway. And these

are very strong words. These are very strong ideas that sometimes the church struggles to get a large

majority of their people in groups, because it's another thing. And the one hour small group is

really three hours of dragging my kids all around the city and trying to get things. And I'm exhausted.

I can't handle that. When we're starting to discover, man, online groups really isn't that bad. And yeah,

I'm digitally exhausted, but it's not digital's fault. I'm digitally exhausted because I haven't had any

physical interaction. If I had a balanced life between digital and physical, maybe this stuff would

actually really work better. And so talk to me a little bit, you know, talking about the crossing,

how the digital and the physical really complement each other or how you're planning to have a

complement and work together to get people to where you want them to be.

Yeah, we're leaning in hard to the integration. We're using the term integration, which is that,

you know, omni idea of we want as much as possible to have some sort of a relationship between the

physical. So I'll give you some examples that are all still obviously in a lot of beta forms, but

you know, um, you mentioned groups. I think one of the things that we've discovered is again,

that captive audience where we were able to not only pivot groups that were meeting physically

to online, but also we were successful. So pleased with our team, because I know this is harder than

I'm making it sound. We were successfully able to launch, um, quite a few groups, just strictly online

groups that had not existed before that people were, you know, shelter in place. And we said,

what we did is we pivoted to a four week message based group model for the duration of this time.

And our idea was you can give it four weeks and if it doesn't work or life changes, you're out and

it's all message based. Nobody's got to have a study. You don't got to watch a video. You just attend on

Sunday, which helped drive that show up on a Tuesday night, have a conversation around questions we've sent

out. It's not rocket science. Church has been doing it, but to be able to do that online and say four

weeks. And then in four weeks, we're going to do another launch or you can stay with your group.

The thing we've heard a lot is what we're calling a hybrid, which means we're going to have a lot of

groups that are going to start meeting physically a time or two a month. We're going to have dinner

and meet because we want to, but man, think about childcare. You mentioned it. Like that's the big

thing with groups, right? Is what do we do with our kids? Imagine groups that meet once, twice in

person, but then on a Tuesday night, mom and dad put the kids to bed and at eight o'clock on a Tuesday

night, there are group meets virtually online. And so you can actually meet more consistently because

you can meet more conveniently. And we believe that that will be part of what we do going forward.

We're also looking at shifting things like alpha. We've got groups launching this week with alpha online.

Things like FPU is creating a lot of digital content. So we're partnering with a lot of these

organizations that we will continue to have physical options for that down the road, but there will be

a, again, there will be an integrated digital opportunity there for almost everything that we

have on our campus. We're still trying to have conversations around things like next-gen ministry.

What does that look like? Those converse, right now they have an experience that's there and available.

We'll have some conversations around what that looks like in the new normal.

So if somebody attends a physical small group, but they decide they want to attend services online

forever. I mean, like that's, that's no pain point. No, like not being in the building.

How did your church get to that place? I mean, this is, I mean, yeah, COVID may change some things, but that,

that's a hard pill to swallow sometimes. And it's, it's a hard place for, you know, a senior pastor standing on stage,

who's used to identifying with people in the room, uh, you know, who needs that, that energy to speak

to, like, talk to me a little bit about how, how your church got to this place where you're okay

doing this, really this hybrid, this digital model.

Yeah. I think you mentioned that. I think I would caution guys again that are listening to this,

like, you know, Lencioni just came out with his book about motives. And sometimes in this reentry

time, I I'm, I'm just wanting guys to just kind of at least pray through what are you, what's the

motivations that are going on right now with your timing? You know, how much of it is, is motivated

by something other than, um, an authentic need for people to gather during this season. And again,

I, I'm not trying to answer that question. I just think, I hope guys are asking it authentically

and making decisions based on that. I think for us, I think we're, um, fortunate enough to have a team

that sort of, uh, lives in that. What's the, you know, give me some fresh meat. What's the next hill to

take? Um, and so I realized that not every team is, is comprised that way. Um, but I would say,

you know, uh, it might be time for teams, no matter how big or small your church is. Um, I love that

three box solution. I can't even remember the name of the guy who wrote the book, but maybe we can

reference it there had nothing to do with church, but he basically, I'm going to mess it up. But to paraphrase,

he talks about how really successful organizations always are maintaining their core business or core

thing. They're eliminating things that no longer are effective and they're innovating. But he talks

about how those boxes don't necessarily, um, touch or interact all the time that you can have your primary

business. It's like Apple, right? They're over here selling you an iPhone while they've got a group

somewhere in Northern California. That's already created the next thing that we don't even know about yet.

And when it's ready. So I think I would encourage churches to make sure that they at least can take

some people and put them in that innovation box and go, what are the things that we aren't doing?

We can go ahead and stand in front of the people and preach and do all that stuff. But do we have

somebody over here that's thinking about what's next and we're giving them at least enough, uh,

enough gasoline poured on it that they can start to create and, and start to integrate that stuff

into what our core model is. And I think we've, we've tried to do that as much as possible, um,

to use somewhat of that concept of going, yeah, we got to do what we do, right? We got to do what the

Great Commission calls us to do, but let's, let's keep this going over here and let's see what works

and let's integrate it into what is the core. And so I don't care how small or large you are. I think

churches can innovate in their context and their demographic if they will allow the guys, if it's

not you as the senior leader, but you've got people on your team that want to do that, put them tech,

quote unquote, in a box over here and let them innovate a little bit and see what it might do

as far as your kingdom impact in the context that God's placed you in.

Yeah, that makes for a very agile church, but it also means you're not worried about tomorrow,

Matthew 6:34, tomorrow worry about itself. You're just putting trust in today with that, but you also,

Matthew 6:34

you have to let go of a lot of the, the tensions and control because you're now trusting the guy

that's in the innovation box. By the way, it's Vijay, uh, yeah, I cannot do it. We'll include the link in

the show notes. I Googled it real quick. It sounds like it's a really interesting box.

Yeah. He's got a Ted talk that if you don't want to read, you can just watch the 10 minute Ted talk

and you'll get the gist of it. It's really good. Sounds good. We'll link to that too. Cause,

cause I'm all about the 10 minute Ted talk. That's awesome. But there's a piece of this where you're

letting go and you're trusting the guy that's in the box. Um, and so suddenly I have like Brad Pitt

flashes what's in the box right now going through my head. So apologize for that. Don't,

we won't link to that in the show notes, but, um, at, at, at the core of this, you guys are starting

to, to, uh, to, to utilize this digital pathway to connect with people within your, within your

physical location in a hybrid model. But you're really also starting to pave the way for a digital

only crowd, people who are not attending the physical church for, for whatever reason. And, and you've

talked about how you're okay if somebody does a hybrid of a physical, digital approach and a, and a digital

uh, only to even to, to that extent. So when you, when you check the extremes of, of your pipeline,

I'm even thinking like, uh, you know, within this funnel, I'm seeing the, the reference to community

responses and things like that. What does this extreme look like in a, in a digital only environment?

How is somebody getting involved in the community if they don't, they don't live in Vegas? What,

what does that look like for you guys?

I think that'll be really important for us to continue to press in value. That's beyond, um,

where you are physically. That's, it's not about where you are, but it's about the value that

supersedes all of that. Right? So, and again, that's a tonal change for us. So obviously the

large majority of people who attend the crossing, even if they're digital, but local, which will be

still a large majority will be able to respond to the Las Vegas community. But we are beginning to have

some push into going this value of community response, partnership, love, love thy neighbor as

thyself. If you're in Long Island, if you're in San Francisco, if you're watching in Wisconsin,

we want to empower you and to push you through messaging and through, um, influence to engage

that way where you are. Um, because, you know, I think we all would admit there's an institutional

vision that we all have that caused us to start churches and to lead churches, but that any good

institutional vision should lead to an individual vision, right? Where the person now starts to see

the church's vision as my own, right? It's the person who goes and feeds somebody with the church

and then realizes my neighbor's hungry across the street and walks across the street. So

in the digital world, especially for those that are outside of our direct, um, uh, physical location,

that we're going to need to lean in more to helping them understand this is an institutional

vision. This is a great commission. Then it's a crossing vision, but then it becomes your individual.

We can't tell you in Grand Rapids, Michigan, what this looks like for you.

But man, if you're really living out fully what it is to be in Christ and to be in community,

you better figure it out. Right. And I can even see a day where we'll feature a lot of

those things in our social media. You'll start to see pictures of people outside of our immediate

area, living out their faith that we're talking about and telling stories about in these places

that we've never met except online. And to me, that is freaking amazing.

So at what level, um, would you consider somebody to be not just fully engaged in the church who watches

online, but actually involved into such a degree that you're considering them almost key leadership

in the church because you're, you're pushing some barriers here, which is great. But you know,

I don't know if you guys do membership for instance, at the crossing, but if you guys don't do something

like that, then at what point would you take the outside, uh, consideration into major leadership

decisions that you guys are making? So you just reminded me of something that I'm going to answer

your question with this, um, and push on me if I don't get to the answer, but, um, we, we use the

term activator. Um, we don't have a membership. I I'm not, I'm not, not a fan of membership for us.

We just use this term activator and we define it somewhat by an individual's movement through that

narrative of the pathway, right? So it's not just you're an activator because you serve in the nursery

once a week. It's a, it's a much more holistic understanding of, you know, you're, you're gathering

with others, you're in community with others in a smaller form and you're, um, living selflessly.

That's kind of how we define it. You're living selflessly in the way you give, you go, you use your gifts.

So we, we have, we, you know, we've got t-shirts that say activator. So if you've got a t-shirt,

that means you've got a thing, right? Um, and during this COVID about three weeks ago, we decided we

need to touch base with this people because normally we would have a gathering about three times a year

with a meal and rally and, um, you know, cast vision. So we did a webinar and we put it together

and it was crazy because we tried to do a webinar that was, um, kind of live slash pre re it was,

it was technically, it was crazy, um, for rookies like us, but it was amazing. Had over 400 people,

RSVP show up. Um, we don't know how many viewers that met and just able to check in and cast more

vision and share stories around that. And so I can see now again, Ray, to your question, someone in

Grand Rapids, I don't know why I'm picking on Grand Rapids, but somebody in Grand Rapids who really

connects with Christ, they consider themselves part of our community and they're living out that selfless

living. They're in an online small group. They're attending that they were going to create an

environment where if we're live in the room with our activator night, you better believe that you're

going to be able to join that in a digital way. Um, when that's happening, um, in real time is my

expectation, not, Hey, catch it later, but in real time so that the Grand Rapids activator will have

the same experience as the Las Vegas activator. And I, it's funny cause that sounds really amazing.

And it really doesn't sound that far reaching to me now. Yeah. In January, I would have said,

what's the point? So, um, I sound very confident. I need to tell the listener, like,

this is all stuff that's blowing our mind over the last three months. So, um,

it's okay to, it's okay for me to sound like I'm really confident when really I'm just learning

like the rest of us. Well, and it gets back to where we're driven or motivated by face to face,

which calls out the individual. Kerry Newhoff just recently posted like his seven trends or seven

changes or seven something that you have to do to be effective. Oh my gosh. I only have three. He

always has five. He's always got more, always more. He's a content machine, man. You know,

he's got to have lists. He's got lists in, he's got lists in the next year of five this and six that.

Dude's got more content than Netflix, man. Like he's just crazy.

Awesome. Well, the thing that, the thing that I want to draw attention to is because he said,

he said like the old, like he's like analog is the old way. Digital is the new way. It was like

one of these types of things. And he's like, global's the old way. Local's the new way.

And it's amazing to me how many people have come back around and they're like, that doesn't make

sense. Local's the old way. Global's the new way. And it's like, you know, you don't,

you don't understand the heart, what, what we're, where we are right now. It's about the individual

and the church's role in empowering that individual to be on mission, to be an activator where they are

in their local community. The global approach was my church has to be everywhere.

The, the approach that Kerry Newhoff was hinting to is I don't have to buy the church, don't have to be

everywhere. I need to be connected with people and I need to be empowering them where they are, which

were other of his big buzzwords, empowering and connecting to get that individual to, to be that.

And the story that you're telling in, in Grand Rapids or, or any of them that we're dealing with.

I've got to find somebody in Grand Rapids right now.

Evidently, man. You're listening and you're in Grand Rapids right here.

That makes me happy. I was the guy listening to like preachers and they always told you,

write to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we'll send you a book. And I was like, Grand Rapids.

It's probably in my subconscious, Ray, somewhere that that's like the address that you got to mail

your check to.

Zondervin is based out of Grand Rapids. I'm just saying there's, there's

gotta be something up, up there in publishing.

It's interesting. I think, you know, Jeff, you mentioned Kerry and he's obviously a great

asset to churches. And I love what he writes about. One of the things he's been discussing

that's been a bit of a, uh, uh, attention for us is that most people are, most churches are now

experiencing a flattening of their digital attendance, however they were measuring it.

And we could have a whole nother podcast around that, but no matter, no matter how they were

measuring, I think most everyone would say they've seen a flattening. Um, and so it's interesting

because Kerry has continued and others like, like our, us have continued to say there is a future

for digital. And I think we're also experiencing in my conversations, guys that are going, man,

I want to buy into that. But the numbers I'm seeing now are starting to make me nervous that maybe,

um, I'm not ready for that, right? That you're saying it's digital, but

people are flocking or flying away like crazy. Why should I lean into this? It sounds like I'm

asking you guys the question, but why should I lean into this? Why should I resource this

when I'm seeing people start to back away? Um, and so I'm concerned, concerned people are going

to respond to that inappropriately. Yeah. What I've been telling a lot of folks who've,

who've been dealing with that too, is I remind them of nine 11. You know, if you planted a church,

like the week before nine 11 odds are your church that week two was packed like right after nine 11,

uh, in terms of people like culture, especially running to the church, just looking for a place

to go, looking for answers, looking for comfort, call it whatever you will. And then slowly trickling

off. Like as that event subsides, as we kind of come to a better understanding of normal, that's how

I've been explaining to my leadership in terms of man, those first few weeks leading up to Easter were

spikes, man. What was going on there? And I'm like, yeah, everybody wanted a piece of Jesus. Cause they

thought the world was going to end. Now they're kind of living in this and they're thinking, well,

maybe things in, in the apocalypse aren't as bad as I thought. The world didn't end. So what am I

doing? Well, and I think the captive audience has now become less captive in most places, even if

churches are not, um, you know, starting to open up their physical locations again, people are out

in most cases, however you feel about that. It's true. Right? And so, you know, I think, you know,

eventually soccer practices will happen again, tournaments will happen. And so I think I agree,

Ray. And I think we're just seeing also a normal attendance patterns start to take hold in the

digital world. Lee, I actually think you got the answer here in this graph. Cause a lot of the times

that we're going to lose people if all we're doing is providing content, because if all we are doing is

providing content, there's going to be better content. Jay Crand over at Saddleback tweeted a

stat and actually it made me explode. My head exploded. I literally, I tweeted the emoji like 140 times of

the head exploding. When I saw this stat 10% of people have swapped to churches in this COVID season,

10% of people have changed the churches that, that they're going to because the content ultimately

wasn't good enough. And if the content that we're watching isn't good enough, they're going to go

somewhere else. People leave on content unless we get them on mission, unless we get them engaged,

which is, which is the heart of this thing. Church online is, is the first step of a service, which

leads into some sort of a content where I'm interacting in a chat room or, uh, or the church is

communicating with me via a welcome text. I'm now engaged in, in a two-way conversation,

which is leading towards a connection where there's different things with Facebook and a

discover class and, and a personal gift from the church where you're starting to stair-step people

who are cold to the church or even cold to, to God into a warmer relationship with the church into a,

ultimately into a face-to-face as quickly as possible interaction. If we, the church cared

about the face-to-face, we wouldn't be worried about investing in digital. It's pennies compared

to what launching a campus is. And at the end of the day, it's the more that we can engage people in

community and create this movement that you've described in this chart. It's how that we, the

church can, can thrive and multiply even in this season. So I'm sorry, Lee, I cut you off. Go ahead.

I was cutting you off. Yeah. Um, I think what's interesting is that I popped on our discover

lounge last night. Uh, and just, just cause I wanted to, you know, it happens every Tuesday

night in a zoom room and we have people that are facilitating that, but man, it just so inspires me,

you know, and we've moved a monthly environment to a weekly environment. We believe that things move

faster in the digital world that I'm not going to sign up digitally for something that doesn't happen

for three more weeks. That I'll sign up on a Sunday for something that happens tomorrow night

or in 48 hours. And I think that's true, but we'll see, but man, I pop on there and you know,

there's a dozen people in as there's a dozen, uh, little squares. Like we're looking at in a zoom

room with couples, both sitting around a table, staring into the camera, single people staring at the camera

from both Las Vegas and other places, watching the values of the crossing go by in a presentation,

facilitating a Q and a, um, talking to them about getting connected in an online group. And I'm just

like, man, like this is amazing just to see this, you know, and again, we get enamored by rooms of

hundreds, right? We want, we get these, these sort of numbers of man, our first step, we need to have

50 people show up this month or 75 people show up. But what's cool about the digital is they become

so story-based like we've all talked about. So you're literally dealing with people one-on-one

and you're seeing people in, in, in, and it's just, yeah, it's different than physical. It's different

than eyeball to eyeball, but there are some things that can happen virtually that I'm not sure would

happen at the speed that they happen if it was based on a physical, a physical, um, a setup.

That's awesome. Well, Hey, I have, I've loved this podcast. I've, I've loved this conversation.

The idea of creating a pathway and engagement pathway like this. And once again, I've said it

dozen times in this podcast, click the link, look at it, take, take a look at this and, and even start to

figure out how your church can, can kind of pivot towards this or develop something like this. Well,

Lee, let me even ask this question as we're, as we're wrapping up here. I don't have this. I don't

have a plan like this. I may not even have a plan like this for my physical church. Like how do I even

get started in developing something like this for my church? Yeah. I think one of the things that's key

on that digital chart that I want to mention as I, as I answer that is if you look at it on the left,

there's some core foundational words, contact connect community. Those, those are words that we believe

in as far as those, those are the, the movement steps. The reason there's those lines and the items

on the right is because those are, those are, um, the methodology behind the objective and those are

very interchangeable. So even right now, seven, eight, nine weeks in, we're still working on those

things on the right. And I've told my team, we're not going to spend months. Like if something's not

working towards connection or towards community, we're going to scrap it and we're going to innovate.

And so right now, everything you see on the right is still in play, but I can't guarantee you that in a

month that some of those things won't shift or change or be eliminated based on effectiveness

towards the objectives. So I wanted people as they look at that chart to understand, I wouldn't, I would

be able to tell them some practical things we've learned, but I wouldn't want to be the guy telling

them, follow this model exactly. And your world will blow up with engagement. Um, but you know,

I've developed these tools alongside our grow minimum group and, uh, working with some other teams.

And, you know, I'm sure you'll link to me, um, along with my day job. I'd love to talk to people if we

could be of any help or make some suggestions, obviously we'd love to do that. And the stuff

that you guys are doing in the forums that you guys have as well, we'll continue to help people.

Um, I think it's key time, man, Jeff, Ray, I think, you know, as people reenter, um,

stating again, what I stated earlier, I just think this is the core time for us to make some decisions

around what is online going to look like for us because, uh, uh, it, it, it, those decisions will

have a huge impact on your church's, uh, ability to really fulfill the great commission at its peak

that God intends in this next, in this next season.

Very, very well said, by the way, I'm assuming in this funnel,

like you've got six or seven steps, church online, contact connection, community online groups,

community response engaged. Like I'm assuming that's your metrics. That's what you're measuring,

right? Where people are. And so like, it's not just the butts in the seats number you're,

you're measuring at each level of the funnel through there, which is giving you

the number you're looking for, which is a more, more balanced approach. Go ahead.

Yeah, for sure. Like a, um, a percentage number is generally how we're doing it. So I give you the

first month, which I haven't got recent numbers, but the first month we had a hundred people,

105 people who, um, RSVP for our discover. One of the things we didn't talk about is we killed our

digital connection card in the first two weeks because it was a response and an ask towards nothing.

And there, and so we thought let's, let's just immediately move them to this lounge,

which totally violates our physical principles that we would do in our physical locations.

So basically when they RSVP for the lounge, they're giving us the same information they

were giving us on the connect card. They're just RSVPing. And so we had 103 people that RSVPed,

we had about 60% who actually showed up. Um, and we had 30%, um, I'm sorry, we had 50% of that 60%

that, so we had a hundred RSVP, 60 show up, 35 who ended up in an online group.

Those were our, those were our main, um, April to May numbers right after Easter.

Yes. And we feel really, I mean, if we had that, honestly, you guys, if we had that in a physical

month, um, we would call that pretty effective, um, engagement and moving people through the pipeline.

So we felt pretty good about that. But to your, to your bigger question, yes, we can see data wise

where things are working or where things stop working potentially and where we need to pivot with our

methods. Yeah. I, I love that. And accountability is so crucial with having something like this. And

people are asking me, well, how, how do you count? They're trying to compare like the,

the physical and the online, and you start to get to the, the multipliers, which my gosh,

that just complicates things so much when you had those multipliers and all of a sudden you,

you starting to get false stats coming back in where you don't really know the true story.

If, if you put your metrics on this and you hold each level accountable, not for,

you know, some multiplier, which producing these awesome numbers, but the ministry of what's

actually happening and you're able to evaluate and adjust in there. I love what you said about how,

man, the stuff that's on the right side of this graph, like it may change. If it's not effective,

if, if, if chat rooms and welcome text is not effective ways of contacting, then let's change.

You know, I can tell you in my own experience, like Facebook messenger cold calling is hugely

effective right now. Now for, you know, three months, six months, 18 months. Sure. At some point,

that's going to change. And when the numbers drop, because you're evaluating that you'll,

you'll move to the next thing, but you, you have a more balanced kind of dipstick approach across the

entire thing, as opposed to just kind of watching that one number and celebrating when, you know,

the Facebook ads are to your benefit and you get more traffic that way.

So to be honest, the top of the, the top of the funnel measurements is where you really begin to

measure. I mean, if we're honest, it's when that contact is made and that real engagement starts to

happen. That's really the number that matters. Everything else is just eyeballs that are difficult to

really ascertain what, who is that and why are they watching and how long are they watching?

But man, when they take a step, when they self identify as, Hey, I'm here and I'm interested in

engaging, not just clicking on the thumbs up or the heart, but I'm literally interested in engaging to

me. That's when the numbers really start mattering because they really start reflecting lives and

movement and life change. That was a great line to end. I love how that was so well said. Thank you.

It does. It's, it's when you get to that next level, when you get to the contact, that's where,

where they self identify themselves. That's where, that's where the challenge starts. That's not where

the challenge ends. And so Lee, man, thank you for that. Ray, as we're landing the plane and any closing

thoughts, what are you thinking on your side? Lee, I love this. You know, just the fact that you were

so open about this pathway. And I think a lot of people who are going to look at that link in the

show notes are actually going to discover how much of this they're going to want to either copy over

or how they can really adapt their own strategy into this, which a lot of folks aren't necessarily

thinking into. And if you're leading a church and you're not thinking through pathways, then the

reality is, is you're still just thinking of Sunday morning, even if that's online.

As we're landing the plane, Lee, any closing thoughts on your side?

Just encourage guys and gals that are leading, you know, where, where you are in this season to look

beyond just the replication of your Sunday experience and pushing into people's living room,

but to begin to take the, the, the great commission we've been given and in your context and in your

way to begin to see how can I leverage digital moving forward as people have been exposed, as people have

been embracing, um, as we move forward into this new normal, well, how do I reshape what I'm doing

in order to see life transformation happen? That it wouldn't just be a supplement to what we're doing

physically, but that it would become really a catalytic thing for your church to begin to

stretch their influence and see the kingdom of God advance. That would be in whatever way,

shape or form or strategy you use, that would be my strong encouragement to anyone that's listening.

Yeah. Love that very much. And the, the marriage of the two of, of the physical and the digital

working together, um, going with a digital strategy does not mean that you're abandoning the building.

Now I'm, I'm a cutting edge guy. If you want to talk about a digital only church, I would love to have

that conversation, but for the majority of churches out there, you're not ready for it. And, and, and

a matter of fact, the culture needs the physical aspect of it too. Like, just like we're in the

middle of digital, um, frustration and burnout, we need that physical engagement, even in this COVID

season. So figure out how the two can marry together and create that discipleship strategy,

this decide, this digital engagement pathway that we were linking to and talking about to help figure

out what the next steps are. Uh, and also to hold accountable for the, for the path of, of how your

church is doing in the digital space. So Lee, man, I want to thank you for jumping on this and sharing

that. So very much appreciate you, um, for that, for Ray, for Lee, this is Jeff at the church digital.

Thanks for jumping on the podcast again. We'll see you next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day.