EP072: Greg Atkinson: Physical Church, Church Online, & Why Toothpaste Won't Go Back in the Tube

Episode 72 of the Church Digital Podcast, powered, once again, we're powered by Stadia Church Planting.

So we've talked briefly, especially in episode 71, about how we had Nils Smith,

who was kind of instrumental in my life, if for no other reason than I had coffee with the guy.

There was one event, one coffee, it was out in Disneyland, California, opposite coast from me,

was at a conference, and I was speaking with Nils Smith at a coffee house.

Jay Cranda was there, Radiarmus co-host with the Church Digital.

And the fifth guy who was there, including myself, the fifth guy was Greg Atkinson.

Now, Greg Atkinson is one of the top guest services consultants right now in the country

and does a phenomenal job helping churches do their guest services better.

But in addition to that, he really was one of these pioneer guys,

one of these guys that started doing Church Online before Church Online was anything.

And so it was a fascinating conversation at this coffee house,

just exploring the past, the present, and the future, the celebrations, the stories, the problems, the issues.

How are we going to resolve this? How do you fix this? What's been your experience?

And really, it was that conversation that inspired the Church Digital Podcast,

but even the Church Digital in general, because I realized that churches needed this level of conversation,

because I needed that level of conversation.

And when I left that conversation and started having conversations with other churches,

they got excited about it too, which led to the Church Digital,

led to this company, this organization coming around to help churches like yours figure out how to do Church Online.

So inadvertently, Greg Atkinson with Nilsmith and Jake Grand and all these guys helped me start this company,

or at least inspired me to start this company.

And Ray's been helping along the way, of course, because that's what Ray does.

Ray's awesome.

So let me actually get to this podcast episode here.

You got Greg Atkinson, who is this phenomenal consultant who understands physical church guest services

better than almost anybody in the country.

It's what he does literally for a living.

His job is to help churches figure out how to do guest services,

how to do services in their building effectively and efficiently.

He understands this.

But he's also a guy who helped create Church Online,

so he understands this online component as well.

So if there's anybody who really understands the merger of physical and digital,

of physical church and Church Online together into one, honestly, it's him.

And that's really the heart of this conversation,

not only kind of analyzing and talking through where the church is in general in this COVID season,

how we're either going to improve or how we're going to lose ground as a result of this,

the churches that are going to learn something from this season and the churches that are going to not learn anything in this COVID season.

But we also talk about how now that the toothpaste is out of the tube,

there's really no way to get it back in.

And as churches that are out there, it's not digital only.

It's not Church Online only.

There are churches that will be digital only.

But as a general rule, let's not stay experimental with this Church Online only aspect.

It's not physical only either.

It's a merger of the two.

It's getting the two churches back together,

figuring out how physical and digital can complement each other,

creating this digital church model that we've talked so much about.

So, Church, that's the episode.

We're bringing in Greg Atkinson,

consultant, church online guru from way back in the day.

We're bringing in Ray DeArmis, once again, co-host,

digital pastor over at Christ Fellowship Miami,

and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital.

In a conversation that I'm calling Physical Church, Church Online,

and Why You Can Never Put the Toothpaste Back in the Tube.

Here you all go.

I think that revival will happen in church as a result of this season,

in some places.

I think that God doesn't break us only to put us back together the way that it was before.

I don't think there's anywhere in Scripture where we see that God spiritually breaks something

and then reassembles it back up in the mirror image.

God always changes things for His glory and His benefit in that season.

And I'm not saying that digital is a silver bullet,

but I think that we're learning the value of relationship.

I think we're learning the value of connecting in ways that maybe we didn't really know and understand before.

Maybe we forgot.

I was going to say, you know, you and I have been talking for a while,

but I was just so thrilled to see when Stadia brought you on with such a kind of trailblazing mentality.

Nobody else had ever done anything like that.

And not knowing that we'd be coming up on coronavirus, it just shows how ahead of the game they were.

You all were to be able to be able to have a position created like that.

I think it's wonderful.

As a result of that, I mean, part of the experiment pre-COVID was,

hey, Jeff, we want you to create a research development project three years of how a church can plant digital churches,

digital-only expressions of church.

And Stadia was excited about it.

When this whole COVID thing happened, we pivoted it a little bit where it's now,

it's, okay, let's help churches figure out how to be figital.

But part of being figital is helping them understand how to plant churches digitally, how to multiply.

We want to help churches figure out how to thrive, grow, and multiply in physical space as well as in digital space.

And this fascinating thing happened.

We were expecting 50 churches.

At this point, you know, one of my bosses, one of the guys that are above me on the pay grade,

says to me, hey, Jeff, I think it's going to be closer to 150.

Like, there's been a lot of excitement talking about this stuff.

Because I think some churches, maybe not all churches, but a lot of churches are hungry in this season.

And they're learning something now that they realize is going to help them tomorrow.

And I think that's the win of COVID.

Maybe it's not 100%, because I don't think you ever get 100% of anybody anymore.

But I do think there's going to be enough churches coming out of this.

And the stories that are going to be told and lessons going to be learned in this next season to help us when the next ice storm comes,

when we get the next ice age coming through, whether that's AI or whether that's COVID 2.0, whatever.

I was just watching the press conference yesterday.

And it's the fall when coronavirus comes back.

Yeah.

It's 18 months from a vaccine.

And in the fall and winter, we're going to have coronavirus and flu both going at the same time.

And there was the doctor with Trump was saying that it's going to be a lot more complicated and difficult.

So we'll be back in the same boat of guidelines and can't gather together.

And so if you abandon online church, as soon as restrictions get lifted, which I consider temporarily,

and then fall comes around and comes back full force, and then you go back to, okay, now let's get everybody back online.

I mean, you just got to, like we were saying earlier today, you got to keep with the online campus.

It needs to always be kind of a both-hand and staff for it.

Yeah.

You know, Greg, I'm kind of the optimist on this side.

Like I just don't see how churches could abandon it.

You know what I'm saying?

Especially since I feel like, you know, every industry goes through its own digital disruption, right?

Like we've seen this over time.

Brady Shearer just tweeted out a graph from Barna as far as like how church attendance was pre-2010.

And he says, he's like, hey, so look what happened here.

Churches went online, and kapow, you see like a big change.

And even then, kind of like what we were citing earlier when we recorded with Nils, if you're conscientious about stewardship,

like if you care about reaching more people for less dollars and leveraging a lot of those daughters to serve orphans and widows

and to try and tackle some of the hard-fought problems of sin that we've seen in this world,

where even, you know, churches can get involved in telemedicine and get involved in some of these different initiatives,

then, man, I just don't see how you would want to shun digital avenues for the sake of the Great Commission.

I just, to me, that's, you know, we're looking at, you know, Jesus talked about the pearl of the greatest price.

Like a guy finds a pearl in a field, you know, and sells everything he has, you know,

to go ahead and buy the field to go after it.

And I feel like we're in the midst of that.

I just can't see how you would want to go another direction.

And I was saying to Jeff right before you popped on, I think some of this that has caused people to drag for so long

is theological in essence.

You know, we've been touting and proclaiming online church for years and years and years,

but there's just this thought of, unless they physically walk through our doors, we can't disciple them.

Whereas, you know, Myron is launching a campus in Ghana.

He's not going to physically sit down with something.

And Myron's one of the biggest disciple makers I know.

I mean, we brought him here to my church.

I've been to his church.

I brought him here to invest over a week at my church.

And he's all about making disciples.

He has a 7 a.m. discipleship group with men in his church on Monday, Saturdays,

and is just cranking out disciples.

But he also realizes the great potential you have when you go online and can get somewhere you can't physically travel to.

And so it grows you exponentially.

But I see it kind of like you said, fidgetal.

Both and.

I want us to live in both realities where, you know, the pandemic's not going to happen forever.

There eventually will be a vaccine and things will go back to semi-normal until the next thing comes around.

But we should still have digital and physical things going on in every expression of the local church.

For the typical brick and mortar church that meets, whether they meet in a school or a traditional church building,

they should still have broadcasting capabilities and getting it out there to the nations.

Because it just seems like you said it's good stewardship.

It's a better use of ministry dollars.

You can reach more people.

It's an exciting time to be alive.

Well, you know, Jim Tomberlin, one of our mutual friends, and actually I told this stat to Nils,

like what you guys were doing back in, you know, 2008, 2007, 2005, like that was bleeding edge back then.

And as we've progressed, you know, 10 years into the future, Jim uses the language of it's cutting edge and then it's cool and then it's commonplace.

And he tracks it in context of multi-site where, you know, 95 it was, or, you know, even the year 2000, multi-site was cutting edge.

2010 it was cool.

All the cool churches were on it, but it still was kind of like this weird thing.

Well, in 2020, multi-site is commonplace.

Everybody's doing it, or at least everybody's accepting it, or at least everybody's heard of it and doesn't, like, freak out because of some theological thing if you're staring at a video screen.

If you're talking about church online, you know, I think what you guys were doing, I call you guys, you're all like the OGs.

You've been doing this forever.

Even Grand is like eight or ten years into church online at this point.

You guys set the standard.

It was cutting edge back then, Life.Church, the stuff that you guys were doing.

Now what's happening today, it's not commonplace.

It's still cool.

Churches are pre-COVID were adapting to it as they saw fit, but it was really the cool churches that were not accepted.

And even if we're just talking, the real question is, are we talking broadcasting services, or are we talking making disciples?

Because there's a difference even in that.

What God did through this health crisis, this pandemic, is in between cool and commonplace, inserted this other C, crucial.

Do you want to keep meeting?

Do you want to keep existing?

Do you want to keep a body together?

Then you better get on board.

It's crucial that you become a part of this movement.

And then hopefully down the road, it will be commonplace.

But for these last six weeks when we couldn't meet in person, this is your option.

This is it if you want to get together.

Yeah, God kind of kicked it into gear.

So COVID, I mean, you're right.

There's a gasoline on a flame that caused an explosion.

And we fast-tracked through what should have been 10 years relatively quickly.

I mean, what's funny, I feel like I'm having the same conversation.

Because I literally just said this with Nils like a couple hours ago.

It'll be a separate podcast episode.

You know, AI, artificial intelligence, we had all this stuff coming.

There's going to be other major issues coming up.

Other ice ages that will happen as a result of this.

And so it's so important to learn lessons in this COVID season that's going to help us for the next COVID season.

And if it's not COVID, it's going to be something else.

Whether it's, you know, a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake, the great zombie attack that we're all fearing today.

I'm kidding.

Maybe not.

Well, maybe.

I'm not sure.

But at the end of the day, there's always at this point, you can't.

Seminary student, I spoke at Liberty yesterday.

And a seminary student asked a question.

I kind of laughed.

They said, is there any chance we can squeeze the toothpaste back in the tube?

Is there any hope?

And I was literally, she, the student was literally asking, I'm a physical student.

She's like a physical church.

Do I need to abandon my studies and go to more of an online mentality?

And I was like, okay, well.

We're all asking that.

Yeah.

And it's like, no, you can't.

You can't put the toothpaste back.

Pre-COVID, I think you could ignore it.

Stick your head in the sand.

Do an ostrich thing.

But this whole thing of where we are today, there's no going back to normal.

But I don't think it's all digital, at least today in 2020.

I don't think the digital-only churches that Stadia is working on, the stuff that Myron's working on, there's opportunities in digital.

But there's more to church, I think, than that, at least in 2020.

The average person, I think, is going to connect in a physical space.

But more and more, that pendulum is swinging more towards digital.

2023, 2022, 2025.

By 2029, if this AI thing really hits us then, I think culture is going to look completely different.

I think we'll shift four or five times before we even get to that point, at the rate we're going now.

Well, when you think about the Apostle Paul saying, I have to come all things to all people so that I might win some.

If it took something like this for God to shake his church into letting us see that technology is agnostic, it's neutral, it's not bad.

Like we've been saying for years to churches, and for me as a consultant, please set up online giving.

Please set up online giving.

Please set up online giving.

And then, I mean, just for, I've been consulting now for 15 years, since 2005, and to now see churches scrambling of what do we do?

How do we get people?

And they're setting up mailboxes outside the church for people to drive by and drop off their checks in a mailbox outside the church.

And I'm like, just set up online giving.

Technology is not bad.

It's not bad.

It could be used for good.

And there's nothing wrong with streaming your services online.

With doing, I'm in a, well, I'm actually in two online small groups at my church and another local church.

Two different churches that I have relationships with here locally, but that we do Zoom small group.

But being able to use these tools for good is something that we just kind of got a shot in the arm.

We kind of got our butt kicked of get out there, get out of the boat, get out of the boat, get out of the boat.

But, you know, we've been preaching it for years, but it took something drastic to have that wake-up call for the church.

Now, it breaks my heart.

If you say there's a LifeWay study, and LifeWay is big on research that shows that 61% of churches are online, so 39% have still not got online, that just breaks my heart.

I just, I hate hearing that, because then you think, well, what will it take, you know, what would it take to get you to embrace technology and to break, you know, so I went to Liberty for seminary in the 90s.

And obviously, a lot has changed since the 90s, 1998, 99, a lot has changed since my days of seminary and Liberty, and now, nowadays, but no, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

This, this is out there, and, you know, I was in our, earlier, you and I recorded a webinar, and I was just doing another chat about this in my Weekend Worship and Guest Services Facebook group, and there is, well, is it okay, down the road, restrictions get lifted, people can meet, people start coming back.

Somebody wakes up one morning and says, you know what, I think I'm going to make brunch, and I'll just watch online today.

I don't feel like going in today.

I'm going to stay in my jammies.

I've got a little cough, or I'm just, I'm just going to chill at home today.

Are we okay with that?

I mean, and I love, I love hugging people.

I love fist bumping people.

I love, obviously, I'm a first impressions guy, so I'm real big on guest services and hospitality and first impressions.

I like seeing greeters and people in the parking lot and ushers and all that I've spent my career doing.

However, there are some weeks where I wake up and I'm not traveling, and I think, I'm just going to watch online today.

And it's not, it's such an amazing time to be alive, because I don't just watch one.

I watch like three or four or five churches around the country or around the world, and it's such a cool thing.

One of the things that I was going to talk about, you had mentioned sharing some stories,

some of the stories that come to mind in my own personal journey is, I, you know, we all love Facebook.

We love Facebook.

However, I'm a big believer in YouTube, and obviously, second largest search engine in the world.

But there is, there is just time after time after time.

I have, I have YouTube, I have a Roku, and I have YouTube going through my television.

And I start every morning watching worship on YouTube, and it's just a playlist that just comes up,

and it just goes from one worship song to another worship song.

And I'll sit there, and I'll start my day with a quiet time in worship and reading scripture.

But there's a lot of times where YouTube, as you know, suggests stuff.

And so somebody's sermon will get suggested, whether it be Judd Wilhite or Stephen Furtick or Matt Chandler or T.D. Jakes, whoever.

Somebody's sermon will get suggested.

And I cannot tell you the number of times over the years where the right sermon hit me at the right time through the use of technology.

It was not something I went searching for.

It was not something I knew existed.

It was not something I knew had been preached.

It was just where I was at in my own relationship with God and my own spiritual journey and things I was struggling with and wrestling with.

It was the right sermon at the right time, which we have now through this great World Wide Web and the use of technology.

And so I would just be flipping through YouTube, and I would see a sermon title from Jensen Franklin or just some pastor that would come up, or Craig Rochelle.

There would be a message where the title just jumped out at me of, yes, you need to watch that.

And I would watch it at just the right time, and it just fed my soul, just nourished me in such a way.

And so all that to say, how does our expression of church and faith and spiritual growth look going forward as we come out of restrictions and social guidelines?

Because there may be weeks where we wake up and say, you know what?

I think I do want to watch Craig Rochelle today.

I don't live in Oklahoma, but I'm going to watch Craig Rochelle today, and I'm going to watch my church online.

But, you know, I've got a cold, and I don't want to spread it.

I'm going to stay at home or, you know, but, and then I'm also, you know, I put a quote out when this all started with coronavirus, digital equals daily, which I almost talked about today on the webinar we were recording, but I didn't want to interrupt.

But, you know, I look at churches that are offering devotionals daily or a word from a pastor or a word from a staff member.

You know, this is a great time to get unseen staff in front of the camera.

I was, I was watching the Summit Church this past weekend, J.D. Greer, and I just did a webinar last week with Danny Franks, who's over guest services at the Summit Church.

J.D. Greer is the president of Southern Baptist Convention.

They're a great church, and they did a really good online service.

But one thing they were very intentional about, and Danny Franks had mentioned this in our webinar, was they had various staff members in each campus pastor record a little iPhone video, and then they played that during the service.

And so they'd say, hey, I'm Greg at the Rock Hill campus, and I just want to tell you what God's doing in our campus, and he gave a little thing.

And then, hey, I'm Susie, I'm a children's minister, and we just are so excited to see you, and you get to hear from all these people that you typically wouldn't get to hear from.

Because what I was talking to somebody else about on a different podcast is it, production-wise, technically-wise, breaks up the flow instead of staring at a screen of a talking head of a pastor preaching for 45 minutes.

And so when I watched the summit church this past weekend, they had a welcome from a host, they had a welcome from a campus pastor, they had music, and then they had J.D. Greer give part one of his sermon, then they had more music, then they had part two of the sermon, then they had more music, then they had part three of the sermon, then they had more music, and then they closed with a campus pastor.

But it was breaking it up, breaking it up, breaking it up, which we can do through editing instead of just sitting there watching a talking head for 60 minutes.

Because people would get up and make popcorn or go outside or walk away.

As much as there is positive about online church in the digital world, there's also some negatives that people can turn you off in an instant.

You're dealing with attention spans, and people can get up and walk out of the room.

And so breaking stuff up with little things.

And then like Danny Franks was saying, they got rid of their countdown before the service, and they started doing kids' ministry activities.

So 15 minutes before the service, they were doing some kids' programming for kids to watch and just experimenting, looking at different stuff to do.

That's really encouraging.

Greg, you're a master at Next Steps.

How have you seen churches adapting and helping people find that next step online, thus changing it from just, hey, a broadcast, to now we're actually helping people spiritually make a move?

Yeah, I am super passionate about Next Steps, helping people take their next step in their walk with Christ.

But there is something that I have noticed.

So for like me personally, if I'm watching YouTube on my television, I'm not sitting with my laptop in my lap where I can fill out an online connection card.

So I'm just watching YouTube.

And so there's no typing.

There's no chatting.

Now, it's funny.

There are a lot of times where I'm watching one service on YouTube and another service on Facebook on my phone, and I've got them both going on at the same time.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Hold on, hold on.

You're breaking the rules of church.

I'm breaking the rules.

Your butt is literally being counted in two different seats.

That's not physically possible.

It happens.

It happens.

But what I found is I did a blog post recently about what church's websites should look like right now, what their homepage should look like.

By the way, I also just did a brand new post about 10 questions you should ask your congregation before you reopen.

And it's basically talking about bringing back the congregational survey.

You know, ask your people, if we were to reopen next week, would you even come?

If you have kids, would you even put them in children's ministry?

If you're a volunteer, are you even planning to serve again?

You know, like, let's poll our people before we go and open the gates.

But that's another topic.

But as far as next steps, what I have seen work really well is online connection cards that are on the homepage of the website so that maybe somebody comes there throughout the week and they fill out a connection card, whereas they're not going to do it during the music or during the sermon.

They're zoned in.

They're focused on the preaching.

And they're not typing.

Like, when I'm worshiping, I'm just worshiping.

I don't have a keyboard in my hand.

I'm not typing anything.

Now, if I'm on my phone, I might do a like or a heart or, you know, I might interact with something if I'm on my phone.

But rarely, one of the things I did years ago, and Jeff, I know you probably can relate to this, but having a home office and working from home,

I started seeing the healthy boundaries getting blurred.

And I started seeing issues where I would take my computer out of my office and bring it into den with me and sit with my computer in my lap.

And I'm typing and I'm surfing and I'm working and I'm looking and doing all this stuff.

But what I was doing was being distracted from my family and from my kids.

And so now I have a rule that when I stop working at the end of the day, my computer stays right here in my office.

It's plugged in to my screen here, but it stays here in my office.

And so the only thing I take when I leave my home office is my phone.

And so a lot of times I do will surf Facebook and, you know, look around.

But all that to say, if I'm usually watching a church service, doesn't matter if it's a midweek Wednesday service or a Sunday service,

I personally, just Greg Atkinson, I don't have my laptop on me because it stays plugged into my office.

And so if I'm watching on YouTube, I don't really have any way watching my television to interact with you.

I just consume.

And then if I'm watching on my phone, there's a lot more, you know, I can do with light buttons and typing on my phone.

But what I have seen that churches are getting some response from, and I was talking to Drake Farmer in Canada,

but they had had some success with it, and that's just leaving the online connection card on their homepage of their website

so that when people just in any time of the day, any hour of the day, any day of the week come to the church website,

they can fill that out.

And then another friend of mine just posted in my Facebook group,

and he's at a pretty large church in Arizona, a very large church,

and he posted that he and his team watched five or six churches, maybe it was seven, this past weekend,

and they filled out their online connection card.

They filled out their Next Steps card just to test the system, and none of them got back with them.

None of them.

So they secret shopped online, and I do this a lot, I do online secret shoppers,

but they secret shopped six to seven churches, and this is a mega church in Arizona,

secret shopped six to seven churches, filled out their online connection card,

and didn't hear back from anybody.

And so my thought is, it's great to have all these cool tools and websites and forms and options and all that,

but if you don't do the work, how are we going to follow up with people and disciple them and move them to their next step?

And so I thought, and so he posted it.

He didn't tell who the churches were, but he posted this long comment in my Facebook group,

basically saying, if you're going to put it out there, you've got to follow up and do it.

And so I have my own personal story.

I secret shopped a church in Pittsburgh recently, and they had a plan your visit.

This was months and months ago before pre-COVID.

They had a plan your visit on the website, which is a very cool, trendy, popular thing right now.

People are doing plan your visit pages.

But I filled it out and said, hey, I'm coming Sunday to this service,

and I was supposed to get contacted by a host that will say, hey, I'll meet you at the door,

and I'll give you a tour, and I'll walk you around.

But nobody contacted me.

Nobody reached out to me.

So when I did the debrief with the church, I said, that's great that you have a plan your visit,

but nobody reached out to me.

So what was the point of it?

It's a cool, trendy thing to have a plan your visit on your website,

but you've got to reach out to somebody.

You've got to follow through.

And so it all comes back to the same old thing we've heard for years and years and years and years,

systems.

Do you have processes in place to follow up with people?

And now in this new era, do you have digital processes and systems in place to follow up with people?

Well, now you're speaking Ray's language.

So I just wanted to cut Ray off so that I can say you just like, that's Ray's love language.

Ray, preach it, man.

Bring it, Ray.

Tell us what's on your heart.

No, 100%, because we have a connect page, and that's something that we pump three times during the broadcast.

We pump it beginning, middle, and end.

And it's worked great.

We've got a lot of people filling out the card, all that stuff.

But even then, that drives me nuts as far as why wouldn't even churches consider automating some of that follow up?

You know what I'm saying?

These forms, whether you're working with Rock, RMS, or we're working with OneShirt, some of you're working with FellowshipOne or with different folks, like you can automate instantly.

People can get an email, a text message, a something, some form of connection to let them know that you care.

But on top of that, this is gold.

Like the thing that I keep preaching to our team is as long as the engagements go up in the sense of the connection cards that we receive, we'll watch the views go up and down.

The views to me are like the stock market.

We'll watch that go up and down over the next few weeks.

And we will be impressed and unimpressed, and people will have their doubts as far as who's really behind the screen.

But the minute you get a card, that's when you automatically know who's watching you, and you can help them take that next step.

So it would just drive me berserk.

Oh, I know.

You know, I was a campus pastor for six years at a multi-site church, and one of my passions after every, our last service of the morning on Sunday, after every week, my passion was my team would collect all the connection cards, because I'm a big connection card guy, and they would have on the top of the stack all of the first-time guests, because they knew that I was just ready to follow up.

But I cannot fathom the stewardship component of having somebody fill that out and not following up, not contacting them to say, thanks for coming.

Oh, but I can explain why.

And I don't know if this is a fact.

I would actually love to ask the guy in Arizona, how many of the churches were in the city, or was it out of state?

Because I'm willing to bet there's something interior within the churches, something innate, better word, in context in their DNA.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, oh, they live in another state.

Oh, yeah, that's just a one-time thing.

I don't need to follow up on them.

I felt that tension.

I think it was both.

I think he said they did some local churches as well.

Wow.

Yeah, but you're right, though, because, you know, I do these Charlotte getaway weekends where church leaders will come spend a weekend with me in Charlotte, and we'll take them to visit three churches in person, in addition to doing some workshop and training.

But we stopped going to one church because when we went to their welcome center and we filled out the connection card, and I limit it to 10 people.

So you have this group of me and my facilitators, 13 of us, come walking into a church, and they fill out the card.

And when the guy behind the welcome center, and we went to this church specifically because they have a really neat welcome gift, and I wanted to stretch people's brains of what you could do besides a coffee mug.

And I have my share of gifts around my desk and coffee mugs and stuff.

But we wanted to show them, hey, here's a really cool gift.

But guess what?

This guy looked at their car and said, oh, you're from Canada?

Oh, you're from Seattle?

Ooh.

Give me the gift bag.

No.

No, I've heard of this.

No, this is true.

I've heard of this.

Yeah, yeah.

He took the gift back.

He said, thank you for coming.

Those are just for local people.

And our guests, my guests that I had from churches all over North America that weekend were so turned off that we as a team decided we'll never go back to that church again.

And I told the staff what happened because when I had another Charlotte getaway weekend coming up, they emailed me and said, hey, we just want to be prepared.

Are you guys coming again this weekend?

I said, no, we're not coming.

There's another church.

But, no, it's this concept of just because I am in Charlotte, if somebody logs in to our online service from Miami, Florida, it doesn't mean I can't reach out to them and follow up with them and send them some kind of gift and thank them and enter into a relationship with them and talk with them about next steps.

I mean, it's just unbelievable to think that people wouldn't follow up with somebody because so much is at stake.

Yeah, that drives me bonkers only because Jeff and I, we've had this conversation with so many people as far as like who's within your scope of shepherding, right?

Like who's within the scope of what it is that God brings to you.

And, you know, it's funny because we talk about being churches for the nations and for missions.

And we use that language from the stage, yet for some reason with digital avenues, I can't fathom why it is that a church would turn away somebody who's coming up to you saying, hey, I want to know more.

And yet, for some reason, they're like, well, you fall outside of our city, state, area code.

Too bad.

It really comes down to this thing of Greg at the beginning of people have a theological issue with church online and the theology is not in the broadcasting of the services.

We're okay with people getting saved all around the world.

Let's baptize people in Ethiopia.

How awesome is this?

Where we have the issue, where the perceived issue is, thank you, Eric Geiger, for sharing this, episode nine of the Church Digital Podcast, it's all centered around discipleship.

Let's get people saved.

But when it actually comes to helping them grow deeper in their faith, creating the biblical communities, helping them understand the personal mission, discipleship, evangelism, that doesn't happen virtually.

You've got to be breathing the same air molecules.

It's in the Bible, right?

If we breathe the same air molecules, therefore, we are – no, it doesn't work that way.

But that's how we've lived, and hopefully COVID changes that.

But if COVID doesn't change that, we're going to be in a world of hurt with COVID 2.0.

Well, and think about – we mentioned Myron Pierce earlier, who we were on a webinar with earlier, and I've been friends with him for a few years and have visited his church, and he's visited my church, and he's launched these digit churches.

And he's online campuses, but I know him personally, one-on-one, as I have been to his church.

And when he came and I brought him into my church to speak to our church and to do some training, he is a disciple maker.

So he's passionate about making disciples and meeting with people and opening up God's Word and reading with them.

But who is to say that we can't do it just like this?

It doesn't matter where you live across the country or across the world.

If I have come in contact with Jeff Reed and Jeff says, Greg, I would like to be a disciple.

Would you meet with me once a week?

Why not do it like this?

It's the same thing as sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop.

I don't have to physically touch you to disciple you.

I mean, yes, it would be great to meet in person and hug and go get coffee together.

But who's to say that we can't sit down and say, I mean, this is, you know, I used to work with ex-pastors, and we had a network of nationwide counselors that did Zoom counseling.

You can sit down and talk with people via Zoom and have deep discussions, soul-wrenching discussions of your childhood and trauma and things you've been through.

You can meet just like this.

You don't have to live in the same zip code.

Yeah, you know, and I'm sorry.

This just, this bugs me, and I don't want to get on too much on this perch.

But it just drives me nuts that we would be okay with congregants spending thousands of dollars to spend a week in a different country to preach to somebody about Jesus, get back on an airplane, leave them without discipleship.

And yet, we're not okay with discipling somebody who lives in that same country, who finds us online, that reaches out to us via connection card that costs us zero dollars and zero cents, and we have the capability of discipling them from here.

There's also, you know, if you want to look at it and just throwing out every angle, I, my friends will tell you, it's actually one of my future books, but my friends will tell you, Greg always plays the long game.

And so I'm always thinking way down the road.

And so I'm not looking for an immediate result.

I'm looking at something down the road.

But the way the church is interconnected now through social media, you know, whether you have 500 friends or 5,000 friends on Facebook, we know so many church leaders.

Pastors love to network.

They love to get in Facebook groups and learn from one another and share resources and share articles.

And Jeff, you know, I follow your Facebook group, and I know you've done some stuff in my group.

And there's a great Facebook live you did in there that people need to check out.

But there's a lot of collaboration and pastors talking with one another.

And what I'll see from time to time is somebody in my Facebook group will say, hey, we just had somebody from our congregation move to Tampa, Florida.

Anybody know of a good church there?

Well, we're living in a day and age where we could build a real relationship with somebody in Tampa, Florida, and then say, you know what, have you ever considered physically going to a church?

Because I bet, I mean, I know Radiant Church, Aaron Burke in Tampa, Florida.

They're a great church.

I would be glad to get you in touch with Aaron and encourage you to go check them out.

I mean, but long game, there's no, why cut off and not even open the opportunity to dialogue and get to know and build a relationship with somebody because of distance?

And for a lot of reasons, but maybe even if your goal, and I'm not wired like this, and I know you're not, but if your goal was the ultimate end all is the physical church, you still playing the long game, could potentially be able to introduce them to somebody that lives in their city.

Because we're so interconnected on social media.

And so I could say, oh, you live in Miami?

Why?

I have a lot of friends in Miami.

Let me tell you some churches to check out.

You got Christ Fellowship Miami.

You got Voo Church.

There's all these great churches.

I mean, you can point people because of the church world that we live in.

And so I wouldn't be so short-sighted to say, well, they're in Miami.

I'm in Charlotte.

I'm not going to reach out to them.

That doesn't make sense to me in 2020.

Yeah, there's definitely a tribe mentality that's kind of popping up.

I mean, even with Stadia, like, they've got their network of churches, of 1,000 churches that they've worked with, that they've helped.

There are churches that are planning and supporting.

And it's been interesting, as I'm just coming to get to know more of them and how all these churches are interconnected.

You know, another option is what, Ray, what we used to do with house churches.

Somebody would go to Tampa or Orlando, hey, consider setting up a micro-location and doing the services there through Church Online.

You know, there's different models of everything from doing more of a watch party, where it's just watching the service,

to more of, like, what I think Jay Cranda's developing out at Saddleback, where it's more of a home gathering,

where the person is more responsible for the shepherding and care of the people.

There's a higher standard of discipleship within that leader to do that.

Tyler Sansom up at First Capital.

Like, these are – which is awesome.

These are all conversations that we've had lately, and they're all people who are – in this season of COVID here,

these are the churches that are not freaking out.

I was actually on the phone or on the Zoom yesterday with Church Home, Mark Venti over there catching up.

And, you know, some of these guys that were forward-thinking enough pre-COVID, in the midst of this COVID,

they're stressed, but they know where they're going.

It's still set.

At Judah Smith Church.

Yeah, Judah Smith Church Home.

Yeah, they were way ahead of the curve, man.

Oh, yeah.

Five campuses.

But we'll link to it in the show notes.

You can listen to the podcast.

We did it – Ray, I don't – what was it, six months ago maybe?

It's been a minute.

It was a lot.

But the thing that I love that I didn't learn in this, he's like, yeah, we shut down two campuses.

As a result of COVID, they sold two buildings already in the season.

And I was like, man, I didn't realize economic was so harsh for you.

And he's like, oh, no, it's not harsh.

We're already planning to do it.

I mean, we like the campuses.

We're always going to be a fidgetal church.

It's going to be a mixture of physical and digital.

But the campuses weren't performing at the level that online was.

So we're going to put more towards our digital strategy.

The campuses were holding to a higher standard.

And if they can hold that standard, awesome.

The campuses were fine previous.

But online is performing so much better.

Ray, to your point, why don't we just do online more and put more energy that way?

Yeah.

I was going to say, you know, if you just – if you're results-driven and you look at metrics,

if this season, these five, six weeks of coronavirus, COVID, has shown you that you're getting better engagement,

better connection, better interaction, better consistency, better attendance, better reach.

You know, most churches I hear are reaching five times their typical weekly attendance.

If you're getting better results, then go all in on that.

Let's push in more on that with a both-and approach.

And I'm not saying don't come back and meet together physically once that's safe to do.

But don't let the digital side die down either because it's the one that's producing the most fruit right now.

And, man, the fields are ripe for harvest.

It's a digital world.

I couldn't agree more.

And I think that's going to be something that, as we talk about this whole digital thing, it just has to be part of it.

Jeff, you know, you talked about house church movements.

As we talk about the first wave rolling out in terms of reopening plans, I mean, isn't house church just built for that?

Isn't it ready to go for that?

I can picture my small group that's already been meeting via Zoom.

A lot of us live in the same neighborhood, coming together around our TV apps, or for a lot of churches that are still church plants, YouTube, right?

Because that's a built-in TV app that's in your TV already ready to go.

I agree with you, Greg.

I think churches should be leveraging YouTube because, if nothing else, it's a free TV app.

Leveraging the biggest screen possible so that the most people can worship, even though we're still gathering at sizes of, you know, 12 or smaller.

Yeah, so Ed Stats, it was funny.

Ed had spoken on this recently and shared a resource, and somebody sent it to me, and I love this, where he actually stair-stepped.

We'll link to it in the show notes, but he stair-stepped this phases of churches reemergence from the crisis.

He was talking about family churches.

Okay, that's less than 10.

So the idea of, hey, your church is in a room less of 10 people.

Well, if it's 20, it's more of a house church.

So now I have the ability, I have a family of four.

I can probably invite three to four families into my house and to create this house church feel.

Obviously, keep it clean, like hold the house to the standards.

But theoretically, you could, like, do less than 20 utilizing church online and call it something like a house church.

A cell church in a space of 20 to 50, a courtyard church, maybe you're doing a courtyard in a church building, outside in the sun, get a portable sound system, get a decent projector, up to 100 people.

You know, a small church operating at 250.

Like, there are now giga churches, 10,000, 20,000 member churches that are right now asking questions.

Where can we gather 250 people together and call that a mid-step?

They're literally right now asking those questions, digging around, trying to find large-ish venues that they can use, smaller venues that they can use as a stair-step before they get into the building.

And so if we're smart with this, we can utilize the technology to slowly, you know, I joked the other day at the seminar I was at, you boil the frog slowly.

You don't, like, crank it up immediately.

Some of these 3,000, 4,000 venue buildings, I don't know that you use those anytime soon.

The church home, they're like, yeah, we're not anticipating being in our large venues in 2020.

We think it's going to all the way be to next year.

And so we've got to figure out how to utilize small.

Thanks to COVID, small is the new big.

And so the more effective we are at these small sizes, Daniel Ems called them social space on this podcast, there's an incredible opportunity for us to still do ministry.

By the way, that's not only going to help us today.

Once again, in the next COVID crisis, you have that infrastructure in place.

I was actually on the phone with Portable Church.

I was texting some guys with Portable Church talking about this exact thing.

Hey, guys, do you have systems that you're building right now so that a large church can create a cell church environment for 25 to 50 people or a courtyard church for up to 100?

Like, make it easy for churches to create this stuff.

And they're like, yeah, sure, we're literally designing them right now, getting them set up.

So there are going to be options, and let's figure out how to structure yourself so that you can stair-step back in.

I forgot about the Ed Stetzer article, but I was basically going to say the same thing.

It is a strategic approach to reopening, like Ray was saying, through the house church movement.

You know, it's something that's been on my heart for years.

Back when I lived in Missouri, 2011 to 2014, I was a part of a house church in addition to my church I was on staff at.

I told them, I said, I'm eventually probably going to do a house church.

I've been intentionally trying to get to know my neighbors more, I said, but eventually I said, I'll probably do a house church.

I said, because we have these church planters in waiting at my church that are going to be sent out to plant more traditional, conventional churches.

But I said, yeah, I may plant one day, but it's going to be a house church.

It's going to look different than, you know, what we typically do.

However, when it comes to easing restrictions with COVID, you can't just yank it off all of a sudden and 500 people show up in the same building again.

And so you're going to have to strategically roll it out in a geographic neighborhood, house church, home church, family kind of model of, you know, we've got a group of 10 here and a group of 10 in this neighborhood and a group of 10 in this neighborhood.

You're going to have to get really strategic.

And that's the kind of stuff that church staff should be working on right now, sitting down, looking at helping their small groups pastor out, breaking down, saying, how can we strategically roll this out?

And it would make sense to me to do it through small groups for those that are already existing, for them to start meeting together that know each other.

But yeah, like, you know, I had a late night Zoom last night with a church communications director in North Carolina.

And she was saying, we're a church of a thousand.

We can't just open up and start meeting with a thousand people all together.

And I said, no, you can't.

You know, you've got to be strategic.

It gets back to systems and processes, how you roll it out moving forward.

The interesting thing in this is each state, each city, it's going to have a different strategy.

Each church, to me, it's the fascinating things.

I feel like the church kind of got in a rut because everybody was kind of copying each other.

And we're not going to be able to do that.

Actually, I had a church tell me, the discipleship pastor told me, he says, Jeff, we're going away for two days.

We're doing a virtual retreat, the senior leadership for two days of the church, to plan out the next 12 months.

And I was like, how in the world are you going to plan out the next 12 months?

You don't even know what next week looks like.

And he's like, oh, that's just it.

We're planning this thing out as if we're opening up in May.

We're planning out if we're opening up in September.

And we're planning out if we're opening up in 2021.

So we're not planning out 12 months.

We're planning out three different paths of 12 months.

Essentially, 36 months.

They're planning out 36 months of church.

I don't know that you have to do that.

Some churches may need to.

But there's really an opportunity, I think, to think outside the box, experiment.

Greg, you were talking about that earlier.

And really try to do something different here.

Yeah, that's why, like I mentioned, I just did this new blog on GregAtkinson.com about questions you should ask your congregation before you reopen.

But yeah, I'm going to go back and edit my blog and add a question of, would you be okay opening up in house churches or smaller venues?

Because that needs to be talked through.

Because the big question is, when are we going to open?

Well, you have some governors that are going to pull the trigger very quickly and some that aren't.

And everybody's spread out.

However, what the questions that I was asking is, if we open up, are you even going to come?

Like, if I'm a church of 500 and I ask my staff and my lay leaders to put their health on the line and to show up and to be ready to serve and 10 people walk through the door and not 500, I've just wasted everybody's time.

Why not do a survey and know ahead of time, no, only 10 people are going to show up, 490 are going to stay at home because they think it's too soon.

Let's find that out now.

And so I didn't build a tool.

I didn't build anything that you have to purchase.

I actually linked to, like, Typeform and Jotform and Gravity Forms and Google Forms and SurveyMonkey.

I said, create a survey however you want to do it, but just get the word out there of, you know, if you have kids, are you going to put them in children's ministry?

Help us plan so that we can do this 12-month plan like you're saying.

Can we roll out in May?

Does it need to be June?

Does it need to be September?

Does it need to be 2021?

Give us data.

You know how precious data is.

That's why I love connection cards.

So give us the data we need to make informed decisions.

Love that.

Hey, this has been a great conversation.

At the start of the conversation, once again, I love getting these guys together and talking because the thing that I'm like, hey, we're going to talk about this.

We never get to, but the conversation is so rich in the midst of it.

I've loved diving into this.

I'll turn back on.

We'll do it again.

We'll do it again.

I want to recreate.

And I didn't realize I wanted to do this as much as I did because literally we've had the conversation with Nils today, Greg today, two separate episodes.

Jay, I feel like we've talked to Jay in the past month, right?

I want to recreate that night at Starbucks.

Like get the five of us together on a thing.

We'll figure out a topic.

We'll figure out a time.

That's awesome because there's...

That was a monumental night.

That was a monumental night, figuring out, discovering the stories of the past, looking at the future, looking at trends of where we're going.

Truly, truly phenomenal.

And there's plenty of opportunities for churches, big and small, to learn in this season, to try to figure out how to not go back, not to think you want to go back to the way that it was pre-COVID, but to learn things in this season to help you be better as a church after COVID, and to also prepare you for whatever's next, the next COVID, the next crisis, the next thing that's going to come up.

Because, thank you very much, seminary student, whose name I don't remember, you cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube.

And the other thing is, it's just that reminding of how small the world actually is, you know, all these connections.

And we meet people online.

We meet people through social media.

But it is so much sweeter when you finally do get to meet them.

And so through technology, we have the opportunity to build relationships we otherwise, so like if I'm walking in my local grocery store, I'm not going to bump into Jeff.

And so I, and I'm not going to see him at my local church or in my community, so I don't have a chance to get to know him through social media.

I can start to build a relationship so that when I come to Miami, like I did, and I say, Jeff, take me to the best Cuban sandwich, and you hook me up.

That time is so much sweeter because we had built this relationship online, and then when we break bread and eat that Cuban sandwich together, it's an awesome thing.

And so why shut down that opportunity when we can get to know somebody from Detroit, and then who knows, one day you may have a business trip or a conference or a reason to be in Detroit and get to see them face to face.

It's a beautiful world we live in.

Yeah, and I'll go ahead and say it. If any podcast listeners want to come down to Miami, I will, too, take you to Havana, 1941.

Is that the name, Ray?

1959.

1959.

So, so good. Oh, my gosh.

I'm so there. I can't wait, man. That's going to be a great—

Ray, you're not invited. No, I'm kidding.

I'm coming. I'm totally coming, man. We're going to Miami you all up. We're going to play Pitbull as loud as we can, and we're going to eat Cuban sandwiches nonstop. It'll be a good time.

Well, you guys have the sun, and they're saying sun helps lessen the impact of the virus, and there's a lot of sun in Miami, so we should all have a big party in Miami because there's a lot of heat and a lot of sun, so that should be the safest place in America right now.

I mean, it's never a bad place to have more pastors come and come on down and help us out, man. That's all I'm saying.

But if you come, stick around. It's kind of hard to get pastors to come down here sometimes, but that's a completely separate podcast and probably somebody else's issue, not mine.

So, hey, we're going to land the plane. This has been a great podcast, and we're going to definitely do more with this, and we'll come back around and get the OG crew back together.

Ray, as we're landing the plane, any closing thoughts?

Yeah, Greg, thanks so much for taking the time. You're absolutely right. You know, when we all look back at what's happened over the last, you know, like we talked about a conversation that happened two to three years ago.

When we look back over what's happened in the last 10 years, and we recognize that the church today is different and that it's going to stay different, let some of this encourage you.

Yes, it is scary. Take a moment and breathe, and then get ready to accept the new normal. It's going to be okay. God is going to use us.

What Jeff and what Greg have been talking about is completely fine. Jesus said that the gates of hell won't prevail against it.

So if we're going to embrace digital avenues to get it done, let's do it.

Greg, as we're landing the plane on your side, any closing thoughts? Any last thoughts?

No, I just encourage people to keep watching your podcast, listening to your podcast, and checking your resources, your articles.

It seems like every day you're cranking out new articles, new content, new blogs, and I was thinking, man, how much is Stadia paying this guy?

This dude is cranking out content. But no, I think you guys are crushing it, and so just keep paying attention.

You've got some great guests and some great insight and wisdom coming on the podcast, and so thank you for what you're doing.

You know, as we said on the webinar we recorded earlier today, none of us have been through a global pandemic before.

You know, this is new to all of us.

There are new experts for this season of where the church can't even physically gather, unless you were around back in the Spanish flu days.

Like, none of us are experts. We don't know this world.

And so we're all figuring it out as we go. We're all building the ship as we go.

But you guys are really helping navigate, and so thank you for your work.

Awesome. Yeah. I was going to make some joke paralleling Jim Tomberlin to the Spanish flu, but that's probably not in my best interest.

So sorry, Jim. I'm not even going to say what I was thinking. We love you, Jim.

Hey, this has been a great podcast and lesson learned.

Surround yourself with smart people, because when you need them, they will involve themselves and make you look a lot better than you actually are.

That was actually what I did through COVID, because a lot of smart people came alongside and helped in that.

And Ray, one of many involved in this, and what we've been able to do through the podcast and blogs and groups, and even working alongside Stadia in this has been phenomenal.

Yeah. If you guys aren't involved in Facebook, well, first off, Greg's group is awesome, 12,000, 13,000 people in that.

If you're not involved in Facebook groups that are tied to this church, either like Greg's, the one that I lead through for Church Online with Stadia, there are others that do Church Online stuff.

You guys are missing out, especially in this experimental season where there is no right answer, and we're all kind of guessing and trying to figure out how to navigate your way through.

There's always somebody who is where you want to be, and they are more than willing to contribute and help you with that in groups like this.

By the way, if you're in one of those groups, be sure to help out somebody behind you at the same way you're looking for help above you.

And what happens, as all boats rise, we end up all changing the culture within the church through Facebook groups, which is crazy.

So I've loved doing it, and I want to continue on doing it, and obviously, Greg, love being a part of what you guys are doing.

So, hey, once again, thank you for the podcast.

For Ray, for Greg, this is Jeff with The Church Digital.

Thanks for being here, and we'll see you next time on the podcast.

Y'all have a good day.