EP075: Adrienne Feldmann & Launching Watch Parties Quickly

Episode 75 of the Church Digital Podcast, once again, powered by Stadia Church Planting.

Jeff here, and I am excited about this episode. I seem to be excited anytime we talk about

microlocations or watch parties, and so this is a great episode here. COVID's crazy, right?

Like some buildings, some states, churches are meeting, and everything seems to be getting back

to normal. Other areas are slowly starting to kind of open the doors again, and there's lots

of stringent rules about how we can gather, and then there's other areas that it's like,

yeah, the governors, there's no way. We can't even meet like five people in space because

the governors are more stringent on what the rules are. Needless to say, it's a very confusing

time for the church, and even if we can meet, churches find themselves asking, well, just

because we can, should we? Is it the socially responsible thing for us to meet in those

gatherings, and we're seeing the reports, the news reports coming in where COVID is continuing

to spread as a result of some of these churches that are still gathering in this season? It's

a confusing time, but we feel called, we feel drawn to meet together physically, and to this

end, I wanted to bring this conversation into play because I think there's an option for us

to missionally connect together into smaller locations, micro locations, watch parties,

house churches, use whatever vernacular you want, but it's an opportunity for the church to stare

step to meet physically without having to go all the way back into the building, and to get our people on

mission, connecting relationally with people in maybe ways that they hadn't done before.

And to this end, I'm bringing in Adrian Feldman into the conversation. Adrian is an online pastor at

Northeast Christian Church, and really, just in a very short amount of time, has spun up these

micro locations. As a matter of fact, this week, they have just launched with almost 100 micro locations

at their church, with even more coming up down the road as things get better in Kentucky when it comes

to the COVID season. Phenomenal stories coming out of this. And so, if you are interested in micro locations, you're

interested in watch parties, if you're not wanting to open up the building yet, and you're trying to figure out

what's next, what you can do in the meantime, take a listen to this episode. I think you'll get a lot out of it.

As a side note, I tell a couple minute story at the beginning about my caffeine addiction. You can skip past that if you

want, but really, really stay around to hear the heart of what this podcast episode is going to be.

So, for this conversation, I'm bringing in Adrian Feldman, once again, online pastor from Northeast

Christian Church up in Kentucky, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning,

in a conversation that I'm calling Launching Watch Parties Quickly. Okay, everybody, here you go.

So, I wanted to tell you just real quick, this is my dirty chai latte story. I didn't make this up. Like,

you did say your favorite Starbucks drink is the dirty chai? Yeah. Okay. So, there is, I'm doing bad

math in my head. Go back a decade. 2010, 2011, the dirty chai is my favorite drink. Like, I'm drinking

at minimum one, if not two to three of these a day. Okay. And so, it's a venti, dirty chai, chai, you

know, hot, chai milk, chai tea, with quad, four shots of espresso. And I would get at, like I said,

at least one, if it was a hard day, two, if it's like midnight, three. And this is when I was working

crazy hours for a church production director, multi-site, crazy, just crazy lifestyle. If you know me,

I don't sleep at night, that drink was what kept me running. Well, I was living in Miami at the time

and I took a church job in Austin, but I just, I got really sick. And like, I was coughing and always

phlegm and always cold. And like, just for like almost a year, I was going to doctors and they

couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And what it came down to was I had esophageal reflux.

I had so much chai, so much espresso that it burned a hole in my throat and stuff's coming up into my

system. And like, and they were like, Jeff, you got it. You got to give up. You got to give up

Starbucks. You got to give up to try latte. I'm like, what, what, what, what? And so cold,

I mean, cold Turkey. And it was, was amazing. Cutting, cutting Starbucks out cold Turkey.

I dropped like almost 30 pounds right off the bat.

I bet. Also that drink costs $9. So that's a lot of money.

Oh yeah. Well, I mean, my wallet kind of got heavier, I guess, going, going through. But when I drink that,

when I drink that dirty chai now, I don't sleep for like 36, 48 hours. Like the amount of caffeine

that's in that, it keeps me up like multiple days straight, straight through. It's crazy.

I will. So I always, that's, that's my, like, whenever I have a free drink at Starbucks,

that's what I get. Cause I don't like spending all of the money on it. It's like really frustrating

to me. So I've started drinking the blonde espresso. Um, but just as an Americano. So it's just only

caffeine and water. I can't even feel it anymore. What's wrong with me?

Well, Hey, we, I wanted to, I want to talk about, uh, the, the home gatherings, the micro locations.

What, what, what do you guys call them?

We're calling them watch parties, watch parties. Okay.

Yeah. And we were really intentional with that verbiage because it was starting to get really

muddy. You know, you can call it a house church, you can call it, um, micro campus. We can call it

a million different things, but watch party was not intimidating. And so what we are, our messaging is

very, it's as easy as pressing play, invite your people over and press play. So watch parties.

Well, and you know, and it's the, the language is interesting because there's even some, some, um,

implications, even in the language of a, the house church versus a watch party, the complexity,

the expectations. You got, you were thinking about doing this, this, this house gathering,

the watch party stuff pre COVID, right?

Yeah. You know, it was on my docket. It's part of my like vision board for 2020 was to start trying

to get these off the ground. The coolest thing about 2020 for me personally, as an online campus

pastor is that 2020 saw everything in my five-year plan delivered, um, within six months. So, um,

it's a big win.

So that means six month vacation. You're, you're done. You can kick back and relax.

It doesn't work that way. Darn it.

You know, I kept thinking it did, but apparently it doesn't.

That's awesome. So like what, so you, what, why, why did you guys want to do, um, the,

the watch parties? Like what was the thing, even pre COVID, this was not on people's radars pre COVID.

You, you were already trying to track in that way. What was it about your church and kind of the

culture that kind of got them thinking about this? Or even what was the view of,

of online, even before COVID? Like tell me your church's story, how you guys have grown through

this COVID season.

So it actually starts a few years ago with a really, really brilliant videographer on our team

who went to leadership and said, Hey, we got to start putting our church services online.

There is such an opportunity there and we really, we need to, to make it happen. Um, so they started

streaming services and it was a very, it was very much just streaming. There was no full church experience.

It was just a stream. Um, and, and it was good and people were watching it and that was great,

but about, I guess a year and a half ago now, maybe before that they started dreaming about it becoming

our online experience, becoming a campus, becoming a true expression of the church online. So actually

they, they didn't hire me. They brought me in as an intern last January. And my project as an intern

was to write a plan. What does it look like to take us from a stream to an online campus? What do we need?

What do we need to implement? What, what needs to change in the way we see church online for this to

be a full expression of the church online as opposed to just something that people can consume. So I

started working on that project and when I was done, I'll put that in air quotes, but when I was done

with my project, they said, great, do you want the job? And I said, um, yes, of course I had no idea

that this could ever be a thing. So I set to work in kind of implementing this plan the best that I

could inside our existing structure to start building out actual church online, not just something that

people watch. And so as I studied, and of course, um, getting in touch with people as shout out to a

church it network conference and getting together with people and learning what that looks like,

right? What does discipleship look like online? What does community look like online? Started having

those conversations with people and realizing that our absolute goal was for people to connect with each

other because that's the best way for people to connect with Jesus. And so whatever that was going

to look like, whether it was, you know, zoom rooms, which were not as popular then as they are now,

um, or, you know, face to face watch party gatherings, all of those things needed to take off. So actually

here's a fun story. There is this challenge going around on social media right now where people are

posting their pictures of the last thing that they took when life was normal. Have you seen this

challenge going around? No, I haven't. I haven't seen this. Well, it's amusing because you see pictures

of like concerts people have gone to, or, you know, a whole bunch of kids on a crowded playground,

things that we're just not doing right now. Um, the last picture I took before everything changed

was actually a picture of my computer screen with our very first online group gathering. So we were just

barely ahead of the curve, not, not far enough that we had full systems in place, but we had started down

that path and boy, thank goodness we had already started to get our minds around what it was going to look like

to build out church digitally because boy, it's a different world than it was.

Wow. But that's an interesting challenge. I just, I went back myself while you were talking, I shot a video of

my daughter playing basketball. She did like this no look shot behind her back and made it like it. She did like

18 tries, but I got the video of one of the 18 where it didn't even look and she like freaks out. So that

was my, and then everything went downhill from there. Like it was just even small groups you weren't doing

really, it was in your plan, but you hadn't really implemented it, uh, pre 2020 or even what sounds like

even pre COVID. All this has been kind of drinking from the fire hose quite literally for you spinning this

up, uh, and, and, and Northeast Christians starting to, uh, address this. How, how has that been for,

for your church and, and, and leadership and the body? Like what, what, what's, tell me some stories

there. Well, the coolest thing about our leadership and I just, I could shout out to them all day long

is that they are very, um, I don't know if I want to use the word vision. Yeah. I mean, they're,

they're pretty visionary when it comes to leadership and they're really willing to try new things.

And see what sticks and see what happens. And so one of the things that I did early in 2020,

again, way before COVID was a thing was I brought in my plan and I laid it out. And of course it was

like, um, project manager's dream, right? This camp chart that plots out all of the things and how I

want them to work in the calendar. Um, and I said, I want to launch virtual groups and I want to launch

watch parties and I hope to have, um, public micro sites that we're working with. You know,

there were all these little pieces that I put in there and instead of saying, Whoa, wait, hold on.

And I said, okay, go. And so when this time came, it wasn't a big challenge for them to wrap their

minds around all of these ideas, but what they did, which has turned out to be a really huge blessing

for me personally, what they did was they kind of took all of those things that we've talked about

doing and they broke them up and they put them out to other teams and got things going. And it has

been amazing. Absolutely incredible watching our entire church staff get their heads around online

ministry and just do it. I mean, we've been talking for years and years and years about how in the world

are we going to get kids ministry online? And you better believe our family teams were online within a week

because that's what we do now. Um, and so leadership has been overall just extremely supportive and

extremely, um, just open to trying stuff and seeing what works and seeing what sticks. And then as we

started to, to move forward into what are things going to look like now, you know, because right now we're

talking about watch parties and launching all of that and what that's going to be, we had to have the

conversation. Like, are we going to open our building or are we going to see what we can build out in

this? And this is your term. They, um, you know, what does digital look like for us? You know, how are

we going to marry the physical and the digital to give people the full actual experience of church,

wherever they happen to be?

The idea of, of digital trying to get the two, the physical and the digital to work together

pre COVID, you know, if you would have told me, Hey Jeff, how do you, how do we staff the church for

the future pre COVID? I would have said, yeah, I want to move away from you using the language

online campus. Cause online campus even box away from the physical campus. Cause so there are people

at your physical campus. The lady who lives across the street from your physical location

can benefit from church online, small groups online, uh, online sermon series or sermon archive.

Like there's resources online for them. So let's stop using online campus and let's start calling

them a digital pastor. And, and, and really what COVID did, uh, for me was it really fast tracked

this whole idea of, yeah, online is more than one person's job. It's all of our jobs. I never

would have imagined that pre COVID I was doing pot. I asked within Facebook groups and all over the

place. Hey, who's been doing kids ministry online? You were talking about kids ministry. I asked the

question, who's done it. I want to do a podcast. I've done kids ministry. I can tell you, we did kids

ministry online maybe four or five years ago was really cutting edge, bleeding edge kind of at the

time. It wasn't, wasn't well received. And so it's like, Hey, who's done it recently? Nobody. It was

crickets. And now all of a sudden COVID like the pendulum has swung. And instead of the perception

of online, Oh, well, that's just, you know, this one guy's job over here to kind of maintain,

it's really become more of, this is our church's job to, to do all of us are buying in and owning

to that. Now in this COVID season, it's been very digital first mindset. It's going to be really

interesting as we get back to whatever the next normal is when things level off to wherever it's

going to go. You know, when we get back to our buildings, are we still going to have that digital

first mindset or are we going to kind of find ourselves going back to the way that it used to

be where physical is, is King and online is that kind of redheaded stepchild. Yeah. So anyway,

within context of Northeast and Northeast Christian, as you're feeling that tension,

do you, where, where do you guys talk about the future going to be? Is it more centered around

physical, digital, fidgetal? Like what has your approach been? What are you wrestling and learning

with in this season? Well, so we actually just started talking about those long range plans

today. So that comes out all theoretical. Um, in fact, I have an assignment to come back with,

with plans for what does this look like forever? Um, but actually I said the word fidgetal in one of

our meetings last week and our lead pastor thought that was like the coolest thing he's ever heard in

his entire life. Um, because we are really interested in this idea of that marrying a physical and the

digital. And so first of all, for us on a normal weekend, we see somewhere between three and 4,000

people. So we know in a COVID season where things are reopening slowly, it's not going to be safe for

all of our people to be in the room all at the same time for who knows how long, right? Like, you know,

we can open gatherings to 50 people or a hundred people. And that's still a 10th of the people who

would normally be in our room on a weekend. And we're trying really hard to put the commandment

to love your neighbor ahead of any ideas of like, yeah, legally we should be able to gather, but we

believe in loving our neighbor. And sometimes loving your neighbor means doing everything you can to

stop the spread of disease. So we have that piece there. Um, and so we knew that we had to come up

with something for the really long term. And I hate to say really long term, but at least for several

months that looks like doing something that is digital. Um, we have, we have talked about, well,

and our lead pastor said this in his sermon this weekend, he said, if we were to reopen right now,

we would bring all of these people into our room. It would take nine services to get people

appropriately distanced with the number of spaces that we have. We wouldn't be able to open the

bathrooms. We wouldn't be able to have any kids ministry. We wouldn't be able to, um, to mingle

in the lobby. There would be no coffee and that would be tragic for our people. Uh, there are a lot of

things that we just couldn't do. And then we'd have to sanitize it all in between. And he said,

I've got a lot of energy, but I can't preach nine services every single week. So you would be coming

into this room and watching a screen. How is that better than what you're doing right now?

He said, it's not better. It's not better than what you're doing right now. And when you start

to gather in smaller communities on top of it all, you're going to be able to build relationships with

people that you may never have been able to build in the room. So going forward, we're looking at the

very real potential that a lot of our watch are not a lot, but at least several of our watch parties

will probably continue. We, we see the potential for people who are not interested in attending a mega

church being interested in gathering with a community of believers. And I mean, we, it's in Matthew 18,

20, right? Where two or three are gathered. Jesus is there. So there's no reason to believe that what

we're doing in these watch parties can't be as spirit filled and as impactful to discipleship as our

gatherings on the weekend. Wow. So like when, when you're starting this off, how many, how many are you

launching with? Are you cataloging them? Is it more organic growth and movement? What's the,

what's the infrastructure surrounding these watch parties?

Right now, the messaging that we're pushing to our people is just press play. It is as easy as just pressing

play, gather your people and press play. But if you sign up, then we will provide you with resources every

week and encouragement every week. That's going to make this a little bit easier on you. So we have created a form where

people are signing up and letting us know if they plan to host a watch party. And we know some of the people

who are signing up are actually, I heard today, it's about 50, 50. Some of the people are not going to

start straight away. Some of them aren't ready. They don't feel safe yet. They don't feel like,

like they can until the 1st of July or whatever, but all of them are signing up. And then after that,

every week we're going to provide, I mean, I said that already, we're, we'll send out an email that

says, these are the current CDC guidelines. Here are some tips for sanitizing your house. We can get

you masks if you need them. We've got communion for you. All of those things that we, that we want to

provide for them, we can do because they have signed up and they've provided us with a little

information. One of the things I'm really pumped about is we have put together an encouragement team,

and it's just a whole mess of staff people who are getting in touch with these watch party leaders

every single week. So they're calling them, they're saying, how many people came to your watch party?

What can we help you with? What questions do you have? How can we troubleshoot that? And then we're

going to, in some cases, show up at the watch party and surprise them like, Hey, we brought you a

goodie box, snacks for everybody, you know, and one of the things we're excited about is that this becomes

a real opportunity for this person who stepped up in leadership in a really difficult time to have a

personal relationship with a pastor to start growing that way so that they're ready to lead well, and then

they can start helping other people learn how to lead. And that's such a great model of discipleship.

This is, this is so cool. And never your, your, your hype party, you know, the staff that are making

the calls, the, the showing up, like, I'll be honest, as I've talked about micro for years, it's never

occurred to me to do something like that. So like your spin of that is awesome. And I bet that's going

to pay off. And what's interesting is you're getting, you're getting other staff people excited about this,

this idea. It's not, this is really the challenge with, with even like the online pastor where the

online pastor's over here doing his thing and the rest of the churches is oblivious to it. Like I

used to joke that I was like one of the best kept secrets of the church where I was online pastor

because nobody had a clue of what I was doing. I was kind of like working in a silo. And as a result

of this COVID, we're tearing down the silo. And as a result of it, like the, the church is getting,

getting excited about this. Now this isn't, it's not about numbers. And, and if you listen to the

podcast, you know, we really never talk about numbers, but I want to, I want to ask this question

because I want us to give context. So like you said, 50, 50, 50, 50% of people are like ready to

launch 50% are like, Hey, you know what? I'm excited about the idea. I don't, I don't trust COVID. So

we're going to wait next week is week number one for you guys, right? How many churches are you going to

be launching with? How many of these micro, how many of these watch parties will you be launching

with? As of this afternoon, during our meeting, we had 188 people signed up. Wow. Yeah. Isn't that

great? So if we take 50% of them, then we're looking at, hold on. I'm a pastor, not a mathematician.

Uh, 50, 70, 72. Yeah. The answer is 94. Oh man. I'm so bad at math. Way, way off. Way off. I'm not even

going to edit that out just for this year. No, I'm kidding. I'll edit. Actually, I'll probably leave

it in. I don't know. Um, so 94 times two is 188. So you had 90, you're going to launch with almost

a hundred churches right off the bat. Yeah. That's exciting. That doesn't include our plus

seven audience who hasn't seen the service yet and chosen to sign up. So we should be,

yeah, looking at close to a hundred. Wow. And so like you said, the expectations initially is more like

if you can press play, do this. If you're, um, you know, as you're going, maybe doing more,

some of the people you're providing resources for, like, talk to me a little bit, like, okay. So

a lot of times when I have these conversations, people are like, Hey, this is just, it's, it's a

small group, right? And I'm like, well, it's a, it's a little different, I think. And it really

depends upon how you're, you're spinning in it and what the, what the church is expecting to get out of

it. Um, so just tell me a little bit, how are you preparing in the short term or maybe even long

term? How are you preparing these people? Um, and what resources are you providing for them?

Cause the churches out there are, are wondering there. So they're thinking is, Hey, how can I

create a hundred micro locations to launch with? So how are you helping these people to do this once

they understand the vision? Well, so first of all, just to share a cool vision piece that we got to

share with our church this weekend, it was really, really cool. Um, we had a whole service where what

we talked about was just really how biblical the model of gathering and small groups in people's

homes is. And so we wanted to make sure that people understood this is not a lesser version of church.

In fact, this is exactly what the church is. And it was so cool for me as an online pastor, who's

been beating this drum for so long to hear that from the stage and to hear all of our people hearing

that and responding to it. So, so well. So a very, very first thing that we had to do was make sure

that we cast that vision really clearly so that people could get behind it and would want to learn

more about what to do. And then beyond that, um, our training takes on basically two tiers and we are

not even calling it training because we don't want it to feel that formal. It doesn't have to be that

hard or that prescribed. So we put together a quick video that says, Hey, it really is as easy as inviting

over people who maybe, you know, the person you keep wanting to invite to church, but you think they'd be

intimidated in a room with a thousand people, you know, inviting them to your house is way easier than

that. Bring some people together, set up in your driveway and then put the sermon on. Now, if you

want to do more, we'd love to encourage you to do more, but you don't have to. We want you to get

together. Bare minimum is, um, you know, be in the word and pray together and take communion. We want

that for all of our watch parties. And then beyond that, I've mentioned it a couple of times before,

but what we're sending out is a guide that is timestamped with the YouTube version of our sermon.

So in each section of this guide, it'll say like, at this point, we're doing worship. You can click on

the timestamped part of the worship and watch what we've provided for you. But if you want to do worship

on your own, if you've got people in your space who play instruments or who sing, or who can plug

in a karaoke track and you want to do your own worship, it's, um, here's a video of our worship

leaders walking you through how you could do worship in this space. And so there's a training video that

they can access that teaches them how to do that. Same thing for communion. Here's where you can find

communion in the service, but if you would like to lead communion in your own space, we believe that

you can do that. And here is a video of one of our pastors walking you through how to lead communion

and how to do that communion meditation. And so what we're trying to do is empower people to take on

as much as they're comfortable with to really pastor the people who are there to participate in their

watch party, but to not make it so that they absolutely must. And our hope is that over time,

these groups of people who are gathering to do church together will start taking on some of that

leadership and really making it their own. I mean, this gets down into the theological kind of point

of the priesthood of all believers where, um, you know, the job of the church, at least in this

theological line is the job of the church isn't to do it, but to empower and mobilize others to do the

ministry and these acts. And so even things like communion, uh, 29% of churches right now, we know this from

bar now, 29% of churches will not do communion even online. And so the idea of, Hey, we're doing

communion online where we're going to step further and we're, we're empowering and training people to,

to lead these communion elements in their own home and to be the pastor, to be the shepherd for others.

Like there, there, there are some churches whose, you know, brains just exploded mere, merely at the suggestion of this.

Um, when, when working with, with your, your, your church, what was that kind of priesthood of all believers?

Was that already in place? Did the, did the church people, did they already understand that kind of coming

into this or was this a new concept maybe before as a result of COVID?

So yes and no, yes, they did kind of believe that, but no, we weren't really practicing it

to that complete extent up to this point. Um, we are a church that is very, and we've been saying this

for five years, you are the church, you are the church, you are the church. Um, we want to empower

you to lead. We want to empower you to start ministries. We want to be behind you. We want

to help you, but we want you to be the church. You know, I, um, I've been at Northeast at just

attending for six years. And so I've been hearing them beat this drum for, for several years now,

but they'll say, you know, if somebody calls the church and says, Hey, we need somebody from the

church to go solve this problem. The response that people get is great. When,

can you show up to help them? You are the church. Um, you know, so we have started kind of, of

casting that vision for people and saying like, like church is going to be where you are. And so

this weekend we took it a little bit further by, um, actually our, our lead pastor did like an

ordination prayer over all of these watch party leaders. And he basically unleashed them to go and

pastor these groups. And he's, I mean, it was, it was incredible. This, this idea kind of taking root

all of a sudden for everybody like, Hey, our role as pastors is to empower you. That's what we believe.

And we believe that that's biblical. So it's, uh, I think it was the next step in a journey that we've

been taking for a long time. Can I get a link of, of that sermon? I'd like to actually hear that

myself. And I want to include it on for others. Cause I know like, even how does leadership spin

that? That's, this has been a conversation that I've had a lot of in recent weeks or months. Well,

um, so if, if it's in the DNA, um, and you're giving this a shot and I know you're trying to

figure out the longterm, but like, and you, but you're wanting to do this even pre COVID like this,

uh, the, the, the micro model and the watch parties and stuff like that. And so this is going to, you

think this is going to extend on, is this something that, that gets worked into the strategy moving

forward? I really hope so. I really hope so. So right now we are, we have two campuses plus our online

campus, our Northeast anywhere. Um, and our main campus is massive. That's where we're seeing, you

know, 3000 people on a weekend. Um, I know not the biggest churches that you talk to, but, but we're,

we're not small. Um, our second campus is actually very small and they have a very different culture.

And one of the things that's been really cool to see is that people who really appreciate say the

type of worship and the sermons that we have in, in the larger campus context, but prefer to be in a

smaller campus are going to that other campus because we believe that all kinds of churches can reach

people. And so what I'm excited to see as we go forward is us kind of opening up this arm of this

other expression of the church that really connects with people. I mean, it's such,

such an opportunity for us to reach people who don't like the small church, like a small town church

feel and they don't like the mega church. What they like is being in somebody's living room.

So, yeah, I mean, I, I see it going forward and I think that it very much matches who we are as a

church. It'll be interesting to see. And I've seen different churches take a different spin on this,

like the, the role of small groups, how small groups like exists either within the watch party

or separate from it or ways to kind of incorporate it in. And you're right. I do think you reach a

different type of person. And so the ability to have some of those is just to reach that different

sort of person. Daniel M talks about, you know, having the different classifications, you know,

like a large group of gathering, medium-sized group gathering and individual gathering. And he has

this thing called social space that he calls, but it's basically that's that 20 person, that 10 to 20

person group that, you know, and in his words, the church never really has reached that 10 to 20

person group. Well, we're really good at the massive, we're really good at the like tiny, but it's that 10

to 20, which is what I really think this watch party, you know, post COVID when we can actually

gather together. Really, I think that that watch party has that interesting possibility of reaching

those, those 10 to 20 people. Well, let me ask this because, because there are people, I mean, shoot,

I had conversations today where people were like, yeah, watch parties are the thing that we're trying

to figure out. So you've done this. So tell me this, what challenges have you overcome in this

season? What was difficult? What was easy? Like, what were the challenges that you had to face

in getting these watch parties launched? Biggest challenge. And I think that we rose to this

challenge really well. And I mean, all the credit to the, first of all, the leadership that went before

me and our senior leadership. But I think one of our biggest challenges was vision casting. There are a

lot of people out there. I mean, I live in Kentucky. People are dying to get back into the churches.

We are the kind, I mean, this is the God's land and we get into the church and it's hard for people

that we're not gathering together. And so the, I mean, just weeks of beating that drum that says,

hey, this is church. We are together. I think that the hurdle was people are desperate to get back to

church. But I think that we were able to kind of circumvent that by being real intentional about

that vision casting. It couldn't just be a simple, hey, just have a watch party and then not talk about

anything else. Like I think our lead pastor said, sign up right now, go to this website right now,

sign up, sign up a hundred times in the service last weekend, because that's how important it is. Like,

it really is not important that we gather. But that emotional experience that people are having right

now about just desperately wanting to go back to their church because it's what they know and that's

where they feel like they have to be to encounter God. I think that's been one of the biggest struggles

because some people only know experiencing God inside a mega church. And so when you kind of rip that away

from them and say, your choice is to do church at home, that's been kind of painful for people. And so

we're trying really hard to collect the stories of successes. We have had, we've heard a lot of feedback

from parents who are getting an opportunity to disciple their adult children who wouldn't come to church

anymore, but now they're at home together and starting to call their parents and say, mom, when am I coming

over to watch church on Sunday? We're going to eat breakfast and do church. And what a gift for these

parents to, who have been praying for these kids for who knows how long, right? To all of a sudden have

this opportunity. But if we hadn't ever made it past the hurdle of, it's just devastation that we're not

getting into the building, we wouldn't be able to hear those stories back.

Wow. Once again, like the, the, the adult parent discipling the adult child, I've not heard that

story. I mean, that that's a phenomenal opportunity for the, for people to utilize the gospel, to catch

this as, as an opportunity to maybe connect with people that, that they haven't connected with

before. It's, it's been a while. That's great. You know, when you said vision, I was actually

expecting you to be, man, it was really, and I'm not, I'm not calling your lead pastor out, but I

would say it was expecting more of, man, it was really hard to cast this vision because our lead

pastor, you know, really wants to get back in the building and he's wanting to try to, you know, get

things back to normal. And he really just wants to preach into the room and to see people. And he's

trying to, trying to get back to that. And so the fact that you, you, the, the vision wasn't

directed towards leadership, but it was more getting people to catch the vision. That's just, that,

A, that speaks very highly of, of, of your church and your pastor who has maybe some forethought

into empowering the people instead of trying to get back to the, to the old normal with that.

That's really exciting. Have, has that been with the lead pastor? Has that been like a constant kind

of thread with him where he's, he's wanting to engage and empower and taking a more missional

approach maybe with, with ministry? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I have, um, so we actually have

co-lead pastors, our executive pastor and our, um, I don't know, our senior pastor, they are like

on the same level and they are both those kinds of people who are all about empowering the church to

be the church. And so whenever, whenever it comes up, anything that is about casting that vision

and encouraging people to go out and, and do it, it's very natural for them. None of this has seemed

foreign coming out of their mouths, which is something that I think helps our people get behind

it. Right. None, none of this sounds weird. None of this sounds unexpected. We are walking around

saying we're the love the bill church. And if we were chomping at the bit to get by back into the

building, no matter how many people that hurt, it wouldn't, I mean, it, it would damage our witness

that we have been so intentional about building. It's exciting to me to hear a church that wasn't

even doing online small groups pre COVID or was just ramping it up right, right at the midst of COVID,

you know, starting to get the whole community online thing figured out has gone, not just the

doing community online, but taking it a step further and figuring out how to do a community

through online and in physical space. Like, I mean, essentially your, your church online is spinning

up locations, physical locations around where people are gathering together. And as a two campus multi-site,

you know, people who go down this road, like the, the, the Jay Cranda saddlebacks, the elevations, the,

the, the, the, the crossroads up in Cincinnati, like the, the, the common theme for, for years was,

okay, we're going to cluster these micro locations together. We're going to spin up an eventual campus,

maybe in the area. Once we get critical mass, you know, and even I, uh, in my time at Christ,

Celsia, Miami, we, we, we tried that where we tried to, and, and, uh, for some people that worked for,

for a lot of others, it didn't. Um, and so for a while, the, the micro location, the smaller locations

really took a hit because people were trying to say, oh, this is going to launch our future campuses.

So therefore it has to do that. That's the judge of, of being successful. But what's interesting,

you know, even in your context, getting a person to understand their missional responsibility,

to invest in their neighborhood and into their friends, to be a shepherd to their, to their family

and the people who live around them, even to the point of like leading communion and being that

pastor voice, that's exciting. That's a win into itself. And as you get that to replicate and

multiply, you know, that, that's where I think Northeast Christian sees a movement happening

through this hundred plus, not even counting the second hundred, that's going to come on

gradually over time. Once those people get vision of this and can move forward. I mean, yeah, I'm,

I'm really excited about what's happening up in Kentucky evidently. So well done.

Oh, thank you. It's a, it's a big, big team working to make it happen. And it's just incredible

to watch. It's really, really incredible.

Hey, so if somebody wants to get started, let's, let's, let's assume a couple of things.

Let's, let's assume it's a, it's a small to medium, medium-sized church. We don't have to

put a number on it, medium-sized church. They are doing something in context of small groups online,

whether it's moving physical over the church like that. Hey, they're really interested in,

in learning about this and doing this. Like where do they start? Point, point them in the right

direction.

Oh, the right direction is that Facebook group called online plus digital church leaders.

That wealth of information. Um, everything you could ever possibly need to know is, has already

been said there. Like, um, I, I have learned more and I have passed along more to leadership from that

community of people who are already doing this than, um, probably any other place. I just have

been so blessed by that collective, um, not just that, that collective, that, that group of people

who are willing to share their resources. I know I keep coming back to my own leadership and saying,

the thing that I love the most about working in church online is that it seems like people who

lead in church online are very open-handed with everything that they have. I haven't needed to

fight and, and stress and work to find information or to, to network with people who can help me get

to where I need to go. Um, and that has been so important. And, um, in the end, when I needed

people to pour, well, when I needed people to pastor me at the beginning of COVID, that's where I turned.

And, you know, I mean, you heard it, Jason Morris preached a whole sermon to me in the comments

because I was just losing it. Right. So just find somebody who's doing it already and start asking

the question. And consequently, that is what we're telling a lot of our people. We know that they're,

when they start hosting their watch parties, the biggest thing that they're going to ask us is how

do I get the sermon on the TV? And one of the things that we're coaching them is find your person,

find your person who understands the tech, because you can build that relationship with someone

because they will be able to walk you through what you need to learn. Um, and you'll be able to get

more specific answers to what you need. And so reaching out to somebody, making a connection,

building a relationship with somebody who is a step or two down the road, or who is doing something

that you really admire, I think is the best way to get started.

No, I, I, I love that. And, and what I really love is that you guys launched, you know, it's so,

so often in the, in the church land, it would be, we got to get this perfect. We got to coach,

we got to overdevelop, we got to overtrain. This has got to be the perfect environment. They've got

to be able to do all of, all of these things. And there's value in being prepared. Uh, but there's

also value and, and I'm going to quote the, the great theologian, Gary V. I actually don't think

he's a theologian, although it was a joke, but version one is better than version none. Um, you

know, therefore don't worry about tomorrow for tomorrow. Worry about itself. Each day is enough

trouble for its own. Matthew 634. I, I can't quote that. That's biblical. So, but getting started,

like actually doing it. And once the boat's moving, steer as you're going in this COVID season,

it's very easy to look and say, Oh, we can't do this. We can't do this. We can't do this. And it's

funny, they can't, they overwhelm and they pile on top of, and you feel like you're stuck. You know,

sometimes I, myself, I get in this cyclical loop where it's like, I don't, I don't know how to get

out of this because I'm overthinking the situation instead of analyzing and saying, okay,

what can I do today? How can I win today? And then figuring out how to build from there in the

fact that, yeah, you know what, at this point, let's just press play on the proverbial technological

VCR. That's all I need you to do. Press play, um, and, and clean your house. Cause I'm guessing

probably some level of cleaning your house is involved. Uh, but then, and then after that growing

and, and, and developing with it, which sounds like from the DNA of your church, you're, you're,

you're not that, that far away from as continuing to cast vision for what these smaller locations,

for what these watch parties can be centered around Kentucky. Like this is super awesome.

I I'm excited to, I want to hear the sermon. I want to get updates. I want to see what's going on.

You, you had some, and I saw this in that Facebook group. You've got some resources that, uh, that I

think you're providing. It's, it's like, uh, was, it was like a chat host. And then the other thing,

I, you know, I'd love, if you've got an updated copy of that, I'd love to share that. Cause I'm

sure some, some other churches would be interested in getting that as well. Hey, as, as we're landing

the plane, any, any closing thoughts on your end, Adrian, you know, I, my biggest closing thought

is everything is changing. Like everything might be different in six months than it is right now.

Everything might be different in three weeks than it is right now. Um, you know, we, we had an

announcement. What was that last week? That was like all places of worship are essential. They must be

open right now. Um, everything is changing over and over and over and over again. And so we just have

to be patient with ourselves and we have to be, um, willing to be agile because it can be really easy

to get fixated on what your plan is. And I don't, first of all, I don't think God works that way,

but, um, but when you get fixated on one really specific plan, it makes it really hard to adjust

with the changes. We did a Facebook live to explain our watch party model last week. We took our,

our team of people who've been developing the whole thing and we just answered questions and we talked

about what we were doing. And one of the things that I got to say to our people was the beauty of

all of this is that we're doing it with you. We're in watch parties too. And so we're going to keep

learning and we're going to keep adjusting and we're going to update all of your materials so that you

know more as we know more. And so my big encouragement to everybody would be just hold on,

trust that God is going to do something amazing with this season and be willing to make changes as

necessary. Yeah. Agile is such a, it's such a good word and actually, uh, dropping names. That was,

uh, Carrie Newhoff referenced that as like one of his seven effective churches post COVID. The word

was agile. And it was funny. I, I thought that was weird for a second. I was like agile. That's, I mean,

that's like software developer code, but in it, but it really does come down to, we can't, I mean,

people, churches, I think are going to struggle if they're locked on the models in this season and

real and thinking that the model is the finish line, as opposed to the go and make disciples,

Matthew 28. Um, and, and, and every church needs to be analyzing whether or not what we're doing is,

is effective for the, for the season. Um, not, not tradition, uh, not what we were in the past,

not what we were February, 2020, but what, what's effective moving forward. And so, but even that

goes back to Matthew, or excuse me, Matthew six, that, uh, do not worry about tomorrow. Um, and agile

church is, is just going to tackle what it's got in front of us. Uh, it's not going to try to adjust

for, for tomorrow and the stresses and the struggles of that. It's going to, it's going to launch with,

with what it can. So that, that, that's a, that's a very good word to wrap up. Well, Hey, I'm excited

about your church. I'm excited, uh, about this, this, this door that you're on getting ready to open up.

And so we'll have to have you back on at some point, even just to celebrate what's going on,

to learn, uh, what you're, what you're learning through this season as, as you're, you're growing

your church and heading hundreds ish plus or minus micro locations, watch parties right at launch.

That's awesome. So for Adrian, this is Jeff with the church digital. Thanks for joining us. And,

and, uh, we'll see you next time on the show. Y'all have a good day.