EP067: Tyler Sansom & the Relational Approach to Church Online

Hey, this is Jeff with The Church Digital. We're going to get started with the episode here in just a minute, but before we get there, we all know Stadia, the organization that's been powering The Church.Digital.

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This has been great. It's been fun.

But let's go ahead and get you now to that podcast episode.

Episode 67 of the Church Digital Podcast, powered, once again, powered by Stadia Church Planting.

We've got a great episode.

My gosh, I've said we've got a great episode 67 times.

But really, listen, I love this guy.

I'm going to love this episode, and I'm hoping you will too.

We're bringing back a good friend of the show, a regular, a frequent guest here on the podcast, Tyler Sansom from First Capital Christian Church up in Corden, Indiana.

It's funny, whenever people tell me, and I may have said this in the podcast, I don't remember, but like when people ask me,

Hey, Jeff, what church is really doing Church Online well?

You know, they normally expect me to say like the Elevations and the Saddlebacks, you know, some of these larger churches.

And those guys are doing a great job.

But pound for pound, dollar to dollar, the best church that I know of that's doing Church Online right now, First Capital Christian Church in Corden, Indiana.

It's crazy.

They're under 1,000 in attendance.

The stuff that they're doing online, quality of production, discipleship process, evangelism, reaching out into the community, micro locations even.

This online to offline philosophy where they're utilizing online to impact the real world all the way across the board.

First Capital is incredible.

And it's funny, I didn't even realize really where the core of all of this came from until this podcast.

Tyler Sansom said something today that I had never heard any online pastor say before.

And now that I've heard it, I am going to tell as many people as possible what I heard in this podcast.

So online pastor, digital pastor, church who's kind of thinking about what should I do in this COVID season?

What's the secret to all this?

Tyler's going to tell you the formula right here.

It's not a silver bullet, but it's something that's going to revolutionize the way that you look at online right here in this podcast.

So I'm going to, we're going to just get to it.

I got myself, Jeff, the church digital, Tyler Sansom, First Capital Christian Church, Ray DeArmis, who is the digital pastor, co-host, once again, digital pastor from Christ Fellowship Miami, with an episode that I'm calling The Relational Approach to Church Online.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

It's been a minute or two since Tyler's been on the podcast.

Too long.

Man, too long.

He was like all over the place.

And of course, in the COVID season, one week feels like, you know, a decade.

So I'm not actually sure the last time he was on.

But I think this is like episode five or six with him overall.

Definitely love what's happening over at First Capital, Church Anywhere.

Maybe, obviously, we've got a lot of new podcast listeners since then.

So maybe Tyler, just open up.

Tell a little bit about yourself.

Explain a little bit about what Church Anywhere is.

Tyler, maybe just introduce yourself a little bit and talk a little bit about who you are and First Capital Church Anywhere.

Sure.

My name is Tyler Sansom.

I am the engagement pastor at First Capital Christian Church in Cordon, Indiana.

We've been doing online ministry for about five years now with an online campus, full-fledged, that kind of deal.

And I've been overseeing that for a while.

It kind of morphed into more of a online to offline model called Church Anywhere.

So last year, we saw somewhere around 700 people per weekend physically gathering to be in microsite locations.

So I got to train up all the volunteer leaders and campus pastors and all that good stuff for them.

I'm married to an awesome wife named Sarah.

And we just finalized our adoption to our 17-year-old daughter, Leanne, at the end of February.

Congratulations.

Yeah.

And just for kicks, because you're not old enough to have a 17-year-old daughter.

Are you even 30?

How old are you?

No, I didn't think so.

27.

27.

So you've adopted a 17-year-old.

But just 30 seconds.

Tell the story of that, because this is an awesome story.

Yeah, so we actually met her through Church Anywhere.

One of the microsite locations is at a youth shelter for kids in the foster care system.

And so we met her, fell in love with her.

We fostered her for over a year.

And then we adopted her at the end of February.

You know, just talk about living the ministry where you're at.

You guys set up a micro-location at a, what'd you call it, a foster care orphanage?

A youth shelter, yeah.

Youth shelter, like that.

Build a relationship with a high schooler and end up adopting her.

So that's a great story of just like owning the ministry and, you know, love you guys

for doing that and the church for being supportive and reaching out as much as it is.

So you said 700 as of last year.

It's funny.

In the past, I've just, I've joked a lot that your micro-locations are always seems to

be a new one.

Last I heard, there were like 16.

Where are you guys up now?

Like 35?

Kind of, where are you at now?

No, we're at 18 now.

So we've opened a team since the last time.

Awesome.

And so, because what I love about First Capital with the church anywhere is the locations

that you put them in.

It's not like a home reaching out to the neighbors or it's not a micro-location where somebody's

just being lazy and not wanting to come in and get off the couch in the morning.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

That's another podcast.

But there's very intentional placement towards these.

So like what type, so obviously we talked about this youth center.

What other places do you typically put this stuff, put these micro-locations into?

Sure.

We have our typical like people meeting in homes, gathering.

That's just not the majority.

We're very intentional about missional community.

And so empowering our people to go out and be the church.

This is why we call it church anywhere.

You can be the church, comma, anywhere.

And so it's very passion-based.

There's micro-sites in jails and prisons because people are passionate about reaching those

people, but there's also homeless micro-sites where homeless people will gather and be led

by one of our people.

There's any, you name it, we have it pretty much.

Elementary schools, youth shelters, all that stuff.

Awesome.

The, what is it, the Huntington's Disease Rehab Center, by far my favorite story.

You can go back and listen to the podcast stories from Church Anywhere.

We talked to some of the volunteers towards it.

By the way, everybody I ever talk to about church online.

And so Tyler, I'm going to compliment you on this.

Anyway, if somebody says, hey, Jeff, who's doing church online right?

Usually they want me to say names like Saddleback, like Life Church, like Crossroads, some of

these Elevation, some of these mega, giga churches that are out there.

I will always say First Capital Christian.

And it's not necessarily the size of it as much as the fact that what you guys are doing

in ministry and how you're enabling people to be on personal mission is so powerful.

Like the fact that you're developing a prison ministry, not because you as a church want

to develop a prison ministry, but you're discipling people to a place where they understand the

calling on their life and they're passionate about doing the prison ministry.

And then you're resourcing and empowering them to go there.

I could literally turn this podcast into a commercial for Church Anywhere.

I don't want to do that.

I've done that multiple times in the past.

You can go back and listen to those podcasts.

But it is powerful to see when we look at the church online as a distribution network of

the gospel and how you've done that, where you're empowering people online to learn through

discipleship, disciple making, and then releasing them into communities to enact this gospel in

the physical world, in the physical realm.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I was actually planning on hanging out with you here in a couple of weeks, man.

I was supposed to be up in Kansas City like the first week of May.

And so I actually had already bought the ticket to stop over.

And I was going to hang out on a Sunday and actually see it.

And, well, you know, coronavirus happened, which is a thing.

And so, yeah, life goes on.

Well, here's what I wanted to talk about.

I really want to dive into this.

Looking at COVID, looking at this season, talking with churches, obviously we escalated in a

hurry getting from, hey, we're not even sure we like this church online stuff.

The average church in America was saying, as opposed to, oh, now we're all cards in.

We've got to be.

We look at Life.Church, a church online platform.

They went from 5,000, 6,000 churches to 24,000 overnight.

LifeWay is telling us that at this point, 61% of churches are doing something online or broadcasting

some sort of services online, as opposed to pre-COVID.

It was probably closer to 10.

So there's this radical shift of services being broadcast.

And on top of just the services, there's all this content that's being generated while pastors

and creative departments are trying to, like, do content regularly, daily, sometimes even

multiple times a day.

And I love this content, but we're really missing a lot of the community, a lot of the

conversation.

I wrote a blog earlier about how we were conversation-starved.

And so there's this opportunity for us to actually, like, talk to people, talk to one another.

And this is really missing, I think, in where we are today.

And I'm just curious.

Tyler, Ray, both you guys have been very good with church online.

And you're seeing it.

But the thing that I love is you're also relational in the space.

What does it mean to engage someone?

What does it mean to be relational in context of church online?

How do you do this?

Tyler, what do you think?

Yeah, something that I've been challenged with by our leadership at First Capital, probably,

I think, two years ago is when we started this, but they finally wrote me a job description,

which anybody that's in church online knows that there's no, like, job description for what

we do.

Nobody has any idea what we do.

And so they wrote me this job description.

And one of the things on there was they want me to know 100 people online.

So that really shifted the way that I thought about ministry.

So instead of seeking large numbers who are watching, that kind of thing, I shifted more

to how do I, one, create relationships with people and actually feel like they're my friends?

And two, how do I take those friends of mine and move them through next steps in engaging

them?

So instead of leaving them where they're at, like, if I have a friend, I don't want them

to stay a baby Christian their whole life.

I want to help them become a full follower of Jesus.

So if I start viewing these names on a computer as my friends and as people that I'm in relationship

with, I'm more apt to help them follow Jesus better.

I love that, Tyler.

I've never heard it in that context of, hey, know 100 people and know them like they're my

friends.

Because, I mean, you nailed it right there in that so many people are just focusing on

kind of the glamour of church online right now, the sense of, hey, we're, we're

getting IP addresses from different parts of the planet.

We're getting all these, you know, views that we've never seen or this kind of stuff that

we've never seen before.

But actually putting it into the concept of relationships is really key.

And it's funny because this whole time we've seen Newhoff and we've seen other people talk

through how engagement is the new attendance.

How have you seen engagement take off at First Capital since you've even jumped in the role?

Yeah.

Well, when it first started about five years ago, when we were seeking these numbers, we

could see that there were people watching, but it really didn't do anything.

Like it didn't affect our church really whatsoever, except this is some cool, shiny toy that we

can put in the corner and we can talk about it, but it doesn't do anything.

It's when we were able to start moving those people into people that gave because they became

generous because they started following Jesus.

And it was when life change started happening that specifically the part of our congregation

and leadership that couldn't figure out why it was important to be online.

That's when their mindset shifted is when people started becoming better followers of Jesus.

When life change started happening, when multiplication started happening, discipleship wise, rather than

just watcher wise.

Yeah.

And that's so true for us.

It was kind of similar in that when I started encouraging people to, hey, come to a campus

or I'll come to you to baptize you.

That created a big shift in mind when I was bringing back to leadership.

Hey, look, man, baptized a couple of people this weekend.

All of a sudden it woke them up.

They were like, oh, we thought they were just watching.

Yeah.

You can argue with a lot of stuff.

You cannot argue with changed life.

Nope.

That's so true.

And it's funny because I kind of put that in the same context of, you know, youth pastors

who kind of feel a little bit buried in the system or whatever.

It's like, yeah, you feel buried in the system until it's the pastor's kid or until it's

the deacon's kid that gets baptized and their life gets changed.

All of a sudden that flips the script on everything in terms of the importance of kids, students,

and now even church online, right?

Because now we're seeing a life change actually happen and it's personally affecting those

in leadership.

You know, Tyler, you've had some radical stories in this season, at least that I'm seeing on

social media when it comes to the life change and the baptism piece.

You got a couple you want to share, just maybe an overview.

What does this look like?

Even 2020, before COVID, during COVID, like what's going on?

What's the life of your church look like right now?

Sure.

During this season, I've got one really good story and it may be my all-time favorite story

that's ever happened with the church anywhere.

But on Easter, first of all, I got to preach Easter this year because it's online.

So like online people would relate to an online pastor better or something.

I don't know, but it happened.

And so-

Guts, man.

Yeah.

So I got to bring this message and the way that we have a response, we don't use the moments

from a church online platform.

We literally have people, it's like an altar call.

We have them comment me in the comment section and our team will personal message them from

there.

It's a little, it's a little bit gutsy, but so is walking up in front of somebody during

a church service or however you do it too.

It takes a little bit of boldness to start to follow Jesus.

I mean, when you look at the disciples, he said, follow me and they left their whole life.

So that's a lot, it's a lot easier to comment me than to just up and leave your entire livelihood.

So anyways, we had, uh, we had seven people comment me during one of the services, but

one of them, her name was Courtney and, um, one of our team members, uh, if you're in the

church online group, you'll see Ty Carter's name pop up quite a bit.

He's, he's our, um, volunteer lead of our care team.

And, uh, he jumped right in and he personally messaged her from his account.

Uh, they got to talking and he calls me and he's like, Hey, how would you like to do a

baptism here in an hour?

I was like, heck yeah, let's do this.

So we get to the, uh, to the church.

It's just my wife, myself and Courtney.

Um, we tried our best to do social distancing with this baptism.

Um, she is about 20 minutes from our church where she lives, had never heard the gospel

ever before that morning.

Um, her four-year-old daughter asked her that morning, which was Easter morning, who is Jesus?

Because she heard about this Jesus guy because it was Easter and her mom, Courtney couldn't

even tell her who Jesus was.

The only church she knew of in the area was first capital.

So she decided to search us, saw the, uh, the gospel presented.

And, uh, that's the power of the gospel right there is that it transformed her life in that

moment.

We baptized her.

But the best part of the story is, uh, she said, well, what, what's next?

So we connected her with these next step classes and things like that.

But very simply, I just told her like, here's the, here's, here's how it works.

Jesus told us to go tell all of our friends about Jesus, about the hope that we found.

And that's your job.

So your job right now is to go tell your friends.

And she said, okay, yeah, that's great.

Two hours later, I get a phone call from Ty again.

And Courtney had led her friend Teresa to the hope that she found in Jesus two hours later.

And so we're baptizing Teresa here in the next couple of weeks.

I just got, I just got chills.

So good.

Amazing.

Never heard the gospel, get saved.

And, and literally within two hours, still within the same Sunday, she's out in the physical

world, um, engaging, sharing the faith on the same day.

Yes.

I mean, she called her friend and said like, Hey, this is what happened in my life.

And the friend wanted a piece of that.

So good.

Yeah.

You know, we talk about this online, offline theory, the gospel that we hear in the online

world has to affect our offline relationships.

And, and, and, and this story, Tyler, what were their names again?

Or, or yeah, Courtney and Teresa, Courtney and Teresa are, are, are, are real life examples

of this where they, they've heard content.

Um, and, and it wasn't just a Netflix, Hey, let me binge this show.

This is actually a life change thing that, that now Courtney is, is doing this in, in real

life, having this conversation with their friend, Teresa.

That is so awesome.

But, but you know, Jeff, and, and this is not necessarily a frustration, but here's what

I noticed.

So we talk about this and we're so impressed with that online and yet we're not so shocked.

Why are we not surprised when that happens in a service as well?

Because it's basically like the same kind of distribution, right?

Like just because it's not in person doesn't mean it's not the same content that's being

heard and not the same life change that's happening.

And so I think this is where a lot of us have to shift our perspective in terms of digital

avenues for distribution of the same kind of content that's happening on a weekend.

Right.

I think with that, it's really, really important to remember in this whole conversation, the

power is not within the venue.

The power is within the gospel period.

That's good.

Jesus changes lives, not online, not a building, not a pastor.

Jesus changes lives and the power is living and alive.

And if we present it, it doesn't matter how, how or where they heard it.

Man.

Yeah.

I got an amen right here for you, man.

That's, that's exactly right.

You know what I'm saying?

Shoot.

We could, you know, if we want to wrap this with an altar call, I'm going to type me in

the blanks right now because this, that's so true with Tyler.

And, and this is the thing that, that I'm still kind of in awe of in terms of what, as we

talk about like what's next and what's the future.

And I feel like folks are running back to gathering really, really quick when the whole

point, I mean, or excuse me, maybe not the whole point of like what we're learning in

this, but a big thing in terms of what we're learning in the midst of the season as the

church is that Jesus doesn't need our buildings to transform lives.

He doesn't really need our lights and our sound as much as we think he does or as much emphasis

as we put on that.

And, you know, I'm not trying to get anybody to lose their job or get fired in terms of down

the line.

That's not necessarily the point, but I think in terms of having discipleship processes

and pathways and having next steps for people is kind of the big thing, right?

And so can you talk a little bit more about what's going on at First Capital as far as

that's concerned?

Because, you know, a lot of folks, I think, what was it?

Life.Church.

Jeff said that 61,000 people, you know, made click that click their next step, you know,

that they wanted to receive Christ on Easter weekend.

But not a lot of churches have necessarily thought through, OK, great.

What now?

So how is that being affected over at First Capital?

Sure.

It's a dangerous game to play.

It goes back to are they watching or are they engaged?

Even when it comes to salvation, and I don't mean that to sound bad, but if they just click

a button that says, I accept that Christ, I'm so thankful.

I praise God that they did that.

But on the other hand, what are we doing with them to help them actually follow Jesus?

And if we don't have anything for that, that moment, while it means something, it doesn't

mean as much as it could mean.

So for us, what we've been doing, we have a whole strategy laid out of next steps for

in the building.

But several years ago, we had to make that for Church Anywhere as well.

I can run you guys through really fast.

Yeah, go for it.

So I'll use Courtney for an example.

So she comments me, gives her life to Christ.

Ty is the care team member that contacted her.

So Ty's job is to help her to, Ty's job is to help her, one, schedule a baptism and two,

figure out her next step.

We have options for that online.

We've been doing Rooted for a while.

If you guys listen to some of the past podcasts, I go more into detail about that.

But we direct people to Rooted or Andy Stanley's starting point material.

Both of those online.

It's a great place to start.

Rooted really pushes people to find their purpose, which is what we're all about.

We're about empowering people to follow their purpose to start these micro sites.

So those are the first two things.

But then Ty is kind of tethered to Courtney now.

So his job as a care team member is to contact her three to four times in the next two weeks

following her decision to start building an actual relationship, learn about her, become

involved in her life.

And so she's not doing it alone at that point.

And then after Rooted, we either push people into like a small group or into a micro site

because that's how we use that rooted material.

So that's pretty much our next steps process for someone who would have made that salvation

moment.

Yeah, for us, it's something similar over at CF.

This year, we empowered people to actually do baptisms in their homes.

We actually provided an instructional video.

And we even had some folks respond and upload a video back to us, which we provided a pathway

and instructions for that as well.

And we actually had some responses, which was awesome to see.

And it's almost like Acts 2 is, you know, for years, the church had prayed for Acts 2.

And yes, in the midst of COVID-19 through digital avenues, Acts 2 is kind of happening, right?

Like we were hoping for revival.

We got it, just not in a way that we're expecting it to happen.

And so we had people baptizing people, which was awesome.

We're getting feedback on that.

And then in the same way, we've got a foundation small group in which we help transition them

to.

And then from there, we try to transition them into a regular group.

And we've also got CF 101, which is our membership class, which has also been taken fully online

during the season.

But those processes had to exist beforehand so that we could make them digitals and which

we'd already been in process of doing anyways.

And so it's not like we came up with anything new.

It's that these things were always in existence.

There was always a pathway for them.

We were just taking them down that pathway through digital avenues.

And so everything you're saying, Tyler, is huge for a lot of churches out there that I

think the struggle with the next step is.

Whatever you're doing in physical avenues for pathways, you should be doing it in digital.

You should have been doing it already, but you should be doing it especially now.

Yeah, at minimum that.

I want to pull on a thread a little bit here.

Let's back up.

Because even the story of what you're telling me, I want to see if this is true, if you

got a story.

What you're telling me of the person who accepted Christ, they watched the service Easter

Sunday.

The daughter came in, got baptized.

Immediate action.

And it's still tied to the Sunday.

I'm curious, though, because those situations do work online.

Some of those hands raised when they click or the me's on there.

The me's are legit.

Some of the hand clicks, I'll be honest, aren't.

My daughter has accepted Christ at least three times during this COVID season by accidental

clicking.

And I have to go tell my church, hey, you know those 11?

Like two of them were my daughter's, so knock it down a couple.

And it's okay.

But there's this other part to this, this relational aspect, right?

I'm fascinated by this idea of it's in your job profile to know 100 people online.

So talk to me about that.

What does, as a pastor knowing 100 people in a virtual space, what does that even mean?

What does that look like?

Yeah, I kind of feel like I'm in like sixth grade again on AOL chat because, I mean, I don't

know how else to do it.

I just strike up a conversation and like, hey, man, how you doing?

And then it goes from there.

So like my friend Simon from London has been watching us for years.

And I legitimately feel like I'm his friend.

We talk about not church stuff.

I know that he likes 60s and 70s music.

And I know that he was watching I Dream of Jeannie.

And so things like that are how you do it.

I don't have like a scientific proven method, except be a human being like you would be in

person.

Just use a digital medium to build those relationships.

And that carries over to our care team as well, which it goes back to the, he's like, Ty's

going to contact Courtney three or four times the next couple weeks.

And it's not all going to be about, hey, did you sign up for that class?

It's going to be like, hey, tell me about how your kids are doing during the season,

that kind of thing.

We did a podcast recently, maybe probably a week or so ago at this point, was Patrick

Holden.

And he's a church planter.

He has not launched a physical campus yet.

Honestly, Patrick doesn't even live in the state where he's trying to plant.

He currently lives, I think, as I recall, was Michigan.

And he's trying to plant in Columbus, Ohio.

And so he is, he's gone even more aggressive than what you're talking about, where he's

going on on Facebook groups of people that are, that are based out of the Columbus, Ohio

area.

And just like meeting people direct through like Facebook Messenger, where, where he will

send a Facebook message to some random person who doesn't know.

And he's got kind of things that he looks for in people that, that he's wanting to engage

with, but utilizes that to filter it down and reaches out.

He's getting 30 to 40% response rate.

Virtually using Facebook Messenger is cold calling.

And he's building a team, even though he and the rest of his leadership are scattered around

the country.

And it's building relationships, utilizing some of this technology, where they're not even,

they're never face to face with that.

Do you guys feel tension one way or another that you've got to utilize the service?

Have you ever considered going with a more direct route with individuals, you know, sort of like

the story that we told with, uh, uh, with Tracy, but having it be, um, more just missionally

connecting with people.

What, what have you guys experimented or thought about that?

So I don't think there's an issue, you know, as far as like going out and, and seeking people

out, you're right.

Like there's something, there's something very biblical about that.

And Jeff, you and I talked about this after the podcast, just, you know, one-on-one in

terms of, Hey, he's seeking out the man of peace.

Like in different areas, he's just doing it differently, which if any of us were to go

plant, or if we were to go out through like the international mission board and to plant

a church in another city, we'd be doing the same thing.

We'd be looking for the right people who have the right amount of influence to plug in with

them intentionally for the purposes of planting a church locally.

Um, and so he's just doing this through a non-traditional route, which I actually admire.

And I think is awesome.

Um, as far as, uh, you know, seeking people out and doing that directly, I think it's great.

Um, I actually think that more of us could be more, a little bit more proactive, self-included

in terms of seeking people out and seeking connections from some of the people that we

follow on Facebook and some of the people that they're connected with.

Right.

So we'll see a lot of our friends who are involved in, yeah, I'm just going to go ahead

and call this out.

You know, as opposed to, uh, you know, they're involved in MLMs and multi-level marketing schemes

or in pyramid schemes and they'll do that, right.

They'll do that in order to build a solid contact base with people to go seek them out.

But I'm not saying that the church is an MLM cause it's not, but if it is about relationship

building, if it is about actively doing that, then we should be leveraging even cold calls

on Facebook messenger to go after it.

I mean, shoot, to obtain data, uh, we've got a Facebook group, uh, here at Christ Fellowship.

And now you can ask questions as far as like, in order to allow people to enter into that

Facebook group.

I, one of the questions that I added on is, would you like to be connected to a small group

for every yes that I get?

I messaged them directly through Facebook messenger along with the data card, uh, with

our connection, our online connection card to get them plugged in because it's another

lead.

It's another opportunity to try and get somebody connected.

And so the more opportunities that we can create, whether it's through cold calls or whether

it's through ways like that, I'm in favor of.

I love that.

It's good.

I'm going to steal that idea.

Go for it.

It's yours, man.

Is that not the truth of, of church online?

I it's, it's, let's just steal everything we got, you know?

Everybody's doing little, little bits and pieces, right?

I don't think everybody really has got the holistic thing put together yet.

And so, yeah, man, that's, that's part of this is it's like everybody.

Oh yeah.

Let's steal that.

Let me borrow that.

Let me do that.

It's awesome.

Um, well, Hey, like, um, it's, it's really interesting in this, in this relational aspect

because it's the biggest thing I think that's really missing in this church online piece.

And I'm a, I'm an introvert.

I'll be honest.

I struggle in the physical realm with, with some of this relational.

And so for me, like my sweet spot is, is doing this stuff, like talking into a webcam.

Um, COVID has actually been like a vacation for me.

This has been the greatest thing ever.

Uh, my wife, my kids, they struggle, um, with, with some of that because they're more

outward than I am.

Uh, but I love seeing ministries that, that are engaging relationally and meeting people.

And I'm going to tell 50 churches that they need to meet, uh, a hundred people.

Like that's the goal to have a hundred friends, uh, through, through church online.

That that's an incredible standard.

So honestly, I would, I would want to challenge our entire staff with a lot of that, with what's

going on right now.

I mean, considering that we've got paid staff, I mean, if every one of us were accountable

for a hundred people, man, our church would be, would be huge.

You know what I'm saying?

Uh, so that, that right there already just kind of elevates, uh, the standard, which I

think is amazing, man, that you guys have done over at First Capital.

Let's take it one step further.

So who's the name of your, um, your, your pastoral care relationship guy that you mentioned

who was following up on the two girls?

Uh, Ty.

Ty.

The thing that I love about you is there's so many names of people that are involved in

these podcasts because these are actual people that you're working with.

And it just shows the, the hugely relational aspect to that.

What standard do you hold on Ty?

Ty's a, no, let me understand.

Ty's a volunteer, not paid, nothing.

What standard do you hold on Ty in your church on the relationship?

And I've mentioned this before in our podcasts, uh, previously, but we literally call our,

um, our campus pastors of the microsites.

We call them campus pastors, even though they're volunteers.

And so, I mean, we, we take them through a training process, but I would hold him to,

an extremely high standard because, uh, we've built that trust together relationally over

the years where I know that, um, he loves Jesus and he loves people.

So he's going to do everything he can to love this person, to love Jesus better.

From, from, from a relational aspect, are you, not that I'm trying to quantify, I'm just trying

to figure out the relationship.

Are you, do you put a number on him?

Are you checking in with him regularly on the follow-up?

You said he has to connect to the people four times.

Like what, what is the one-on-one between you and him towards holding him accountable for

these things that you're asking him to do?

Sure.

I, um, so he's the lead over our care team.

So I am in a lot of communication with him, whereas he's communicating with the rest of the

team under him.

So I don't necessarily have as much communication with the people under him.

Um, I have some, but just not as much as I have with Ty.

So I talk to him on a daily basis, um, and I've talked to every one of the church anywhere

leaders on a daily basis, and then they communicate on a daily basis to their team beyond that.

Four generations, including you, right?

In, in that, in that equation, you tie the teams beneath, under Ty, and then the teams underneath

them all going out at some level, holding, building relationships.

Are, do you put a hundred on them or are these teams just more responsive at that point?

Uh, they're more responsive.

The online team, um, is, is in charge of our Facebook group, which is 900 people or whatever.

And then, um, beyond that, they're in charge of, um, caring for any live events.

So chatting with people in live events and then follow up beyond that.

Um, whereas the, uh, the, uh, church anywhere leaders are responsible for the actual physical

people that meet in their locations.

So for Brad, who Jeff, you talked to, um, once before.

My brother.

Yeah.

Brad Reed, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, for him, he's responsible for 300 people.

So he's built a team of 20 guys underneath them to help care for these 300 people.

Um, and so that kind of works like that.

So Brad, a volunteer built a team, recruited, developed, matured, grew a team, discipled a

team of 20 people to do ministry to 300 people, 300 criminals.

Yeah.

Prisoners.

Also, it's, it's awesome.

I don't want to judge our, our area is really blue collar country.

A lot of people don't have internet.

We've talked about that before.

So Brad and, um, one of his other leaders, Rodney, they organized a conference call yesterday

just to, to stay in touch with their team, but not like a zoom call.

Like a, literally you call a number and insert like a pen and then you're in the conference

call.

So they've, they've, they've done that every week since COVID-19 started.

Yeah.

Nothing wrong with that, man.

That's good.

Yep.

Use the methods you got.

I, I love this.

And so there's, there's things that I'm learning here in this, uh, relational, um, camp, uh,

online pastor, digital pastor, campus pastor, um, a hundred people, um, no people in this,

not, not the usual suspects within the church, but reach outside and really engage relationally

with people online.

Um, I, I love this idea of holding standards to volunteers, which, and there's also standards

held on you, even though, even the hundred person aspect as, as a pastor, that's, that's

a hard thing to do.

Even as myself as a, as an online pastor, I'm in my mind, I'm thinking, did I, did I know

a hundred?

I don't, I don't think I really knew a hundred.

I mean, maybe it was more at 50, but that still is a hard thing and that's aggressive

towards it.

And so as people are holding you to a standard, hold others towards it.

And even at a volunteer level, challenge them, uh, because the, in Tyler's equation, Tyler's

the lid of the organization.

If Tyler carried all the weight on his shoulders and didn't go out, I mean, Tyler, it's not like

you got five, 10, 25 staff.

It's just you historically, right?

Like that hasn't changed, right?

Yeah.

It's starting to change a little bit, but right now it's, okay.

Well, 18 micro locations later in 700 people engaging regularly in micro locations, not

including like staff, not including the people who just watched through church online.

Yeah.

Maybe you need to like start to actually developing a team there, but you're holding standards

to that.

And you're not releasing the volunteers who aren't doing it out of duty to you, Tyler, but

they're doing it out of personal mission.

Cause they understand what God has called them to do in life.

And that's doing what they're doing, what they're called to do, reach the prisoners, reach

the, the Huntington's rehab center, reach out to the youth centers, um, like follow the

heart.

We did a podcast, uh, with Larry Walkenmeyer, he talked about kingdom mission.

It's, it's not to glorify the church.

It's to glorify the kingdom.

And the church's job is to empower people on kingdom mission, uh, whether it glorifies

where it benefits the church or not.

And, and some of these relationships that you guys are developing, my gut is they probably

don't always glorify the church, but it sounds like they always glorify the kingdom.

So I, I love what's happening here.

I, I will tell you, we've, we've developed a really cool thing during this time period.

Um, that's super relational.

Um, I, I think it will continue afterwards.

Um, but I want to share it with you.

We're calling them to gather groups.

Um, and it's, it's based around common interests.

So mine is, uh, we're going to watch movies together.

Like I love movies, I study films in college.

Um, and so we're going to watch movies via a Netflix party.

So, um, we started, we started signups for these on Sunday.

I've got 20 families.

I'm going to watch a movie with on Monday night.

Um, somebody else is doing a book club.

Somebody is doing a walking thing where they'll, they'll walk and hold a phone to zoom with

people while they're walking.

Um, and so we, I think we have 14 of these right now.

Um, and we're hoping to empower other people to continue to open up new ones, but that's

that relational piece.

That's really cool, Tyler.

You know, it's funny.

I just got off the phone a couple hours ago with one of our student guys who is helping

oversee students online right now.

And we talked about this, but with video games, we talked about, we talked about having like

a fortnight guy, you know, to help people gather and to stream Twitch together and having

for that for animal crossing.

We talked about having something for that as that games exploded.

We talked about, you know, a 2k and even promoted it in the, in the students broadcast

this week, like, Hey, drop your name or tag in the chat.

Like we'll, we'll add you that kind of thing.

And so I think that's huge that you guys are taking that even further in terms of, man,

let's find your interest.

Let's get you plugged into community and let's get you in conversation, which is awesome.

And how easy is it to just spend an hour or two watching a movie with 20 families and chatting

with them?

That's, it doesn't take a ton of time or organizational skills.

We could have done this with tiger King from the beginning and the world, all of them, all of

them would have jumped on.

It would have been amazing.

What movie are you watching Monday night?

Same kind of different as me.

There's like 20 Christian films total on Netflix.

So yeah, we're going to find out.

You're just going one by one.

I put, I put a poll in our Facebook group and said, which one would you rather watch?

So that was number one, I want to be in the McGee and me one.

That's what I'm waiting for.

Nobody, nobody listening to this podcast knows unless you walked into Jeff's, uh, Christian

bookstore at one point in your life.

Nobody else knows who McGee and me is.

Well, I mean, nobody bought McGee and me from the Christian bookstore.

That was probably part of the reason why I'm, I'm shut down, but McGee and me and Carmen

I would have been, I would have been your sucker, Jeff.

That's what would have happened.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm, I'm pretty sure Bezos and, uh, and Steve Jobs were probably more responsible

for my, uh, for my bookstore demise, but those were good times.

So we don't want 100%.

No, we're good.

Awesome.

So, uh, this, this is really, I just, even the idea of, of, of the Netflix, it's utilizing

tools that are readily available to connect with people in unique ways, make relationships,

have conversations, and then route those into, um, as appropriate into a discipleship relationship.

What, like, so your, your movie people, you're going to connect them to as appropriate.

Like what's, what's the next step after, after the movie group, where do they go after that?

Anybody that signs up is in a Facebook group with me.

And so, um, I mean, you guys that know how Facebook groups work.

I can literally, as the admin posts, whatever I want.

So I could say, Hey, this week, instead of watching a movie, uh, why don't we just get

on a zoom call and talk about what God's doing in our life?

And if somebody is not a believer in that, then they get an opportunity to hear 20 other

people talk about what God's doing in their life, um, which would hopefully inspire them

to want to know more about this Jesus guy.

Yeah, that's very innovative.

Um, with, with just simple tools that we already have, have available.

I mean, Jay, uh, Jay Earhart's doing the video game stuff.

Um, dude's got, dude's playing video game on Twitch.

You know, people are watching like crazy and he's witnessing and he's training others to

just witness and share the gospel while playing video games and kids are coming to Christ and

getting ingrained back into, uh, his discord community.

And so like, there's, there's things happening there, but I got to tell you, never once did

I think, Oh, that Netflix party feature.

That's a great way to like connect with people and eventually share faith.

Like that wasn't on my radar.

It was funny.

I think Tyler, you actually texted me.

This is a game changer for something like that.

And I was like, yeah, is it really?

I don't, I don't think it is.

Now I understand.

Oh, it is because it's cause it's this relational aspect.

And especially in this world during this COVID season where we're conversation starved and

we don't trust physical space doing something like that in this COVID season is going to be

ridiculously successful, man.

Connect with it just as an individual person, not even a pastor connect with your, your coworkers

in a unique way.

Connect with your, your, your high school graduating class, the kids you knew from college that

those 10 people you haven't talked to in a decade, reconnect with them.

Hey, let's just hang out.

I watched, I watched star Trek, the next generation, the first episode last night, it was awful.

It was cheesy.

It was garbage.

And I was live texting a friend of mine during the process to, to be able to spin that into

something.

Yeah.

I mean, there's, there's validity to this.

If we just take, take advantage of it.

My wife is a huge Olympics fan.

So she's super bummed that the Olympics aren't happening.

But this Olympic channel on NBC sports has been playing these famous Olympic events over

the last several weeks, uh, nonstop.

And last night was her all time favorite gymnastics event.

And two of the gymnasts on the team were alive on Instagram talking about it while it was

happening.

And I was like, you guys totally stole my idea for this Netflix watch party thing because

that's what they were doing.

And people were watching it, but it felt like community with the people on the screen.

Um, it's really cool.

But you know, what's funny about that Tyler is like, I've been in NBA Twitter for like

since 2010 and even with the last dance on Sunday, like with the new Jordan documentary,

I jumped on Twitter to have a second screen open just for this experience.

And I was not disappointed.

And it's funny because here we are, we're interacting.

We're all watching the same thing at the same time, which proves Michael Jordan's greatness

that he's making us watch commercials in 2020 together.

But at the same time, we're engaged in community through Twitter.

Like we're in the same conversation as if we're in the same room, just over and over

and over again.

And so you're a hundred percent right.

We can leverage these things for the sake of relationship, even with people that we've

never met.

Yep.

I, I love this.

And there was so much other stuff I wanted to talk about in this podcast, but we hung out

right here in this relational piece.

And, and it, it, it's, it's not the podcast we need to hear tomorrow, but this is definitely

the podcast we, we, we wanted to hear today.

Man, I wanted to get into digital church planning.

I wanted to talk about micro locations.

I wanted to talk about, you know, how, how to pivot in this season.

And unfortunately, I'm, well, we're just out of time for this run.

Actually, I'm out of time.

I've got, got something else I got to jump into.

Ray, closing thoughts, anything as, as we're landing the plan here?

Yeah.

If, if you're struggling through, um, Hey, we got a lot of views, but we don't have a

whole lot of movement.

Part of the question that you have to ask yourself is what is the next step that you're pushing

people towards?

And, and is it easy?

Is it accessible for them?

And is it something that they're going to take, you know, Tyler and his church, they've

done such a great job at honing in on those next steps that they're reaping the benefits

right now.

Same things happen here at CF and we're grateful for it.

But a lot of it is just keeping it simple and keeping it clearly communicated.

And so even as you're planning the service, like, Hey, it's great to plan the worship.

It's great to plan the message.

It's awesome to have views.

Hey, all that's nice.

But where are you taking people?

And that should be true.

Even when you go back into physical spaces.

Yeah.

Once you get that next steps process solidified, your discipleship process, whatever it is,

I mean, at minimum, what you're doing at the physical, do it online.

Once that's set up, you'll find your church online service is far more effective in getting

people routed into a relationship.

You'll find in some of the things that Tyler's talking about now of expanding into new communities

and utilizing Netflix as a digital community tool.

Like, I never thought of it, but you have that opportunity to because you've got your discipleship

process set.

You can do crazy things like video games and Netflix and, and all of this stuff, and then

just route those relationships into your digital discipleship process to get them to a place

where they understand personal mission.

And so that next steps process is so powerful.

But all those things, I'm assuming Tyler, all those things, correct, are funnels to get

them back into that same process, right?

So it's not like, you know, kind of bringing it back to a sports analogy.

It's all about the fundamentals, right?

Like you got to bring it back to the fundamentals.

Like, Hey, it's great to do a 360 dunk, but if you can't do a layup, it's for what?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's all one pathway with a bunch of different arms that are leading into this different pathway.

Tyler, man, this has been awesome.

Any, any, any thoughts from you as you were landing the plane?

Sure.

Just, uh, this is, uh, something that everybody that's going to be watching this knows already.

Um, but it's worth saying again, Jesus didn't tell us to go out and make the biggest church

we could make or have the biggest people, uh, biggest amount of people watch us on Facebook.

He said, go out and make disciples.

And I think in, in this process of church online or just ministry in general, um, our competitive

nature can take over and we get lost in what is the main thing.

Um, so if you're making disciples and you're going out and intentionally building these relationships

to help people follow Jesus or find Jesus, um, the numbers will take care of themselves.

The growth is driven from the life change and not the other way around.

I, I, I love that about first capital.

And that's been something as, as we've talked with your lead pastor, as we talked with the,

the, the volunteers, you know, I've heard you say that multiple times, this, this is really

the, the, the lifeblood of the church, the motivation.

Um, it's, it's not a, a selfish where I'm trying to collect these people.

I'm trying to keep these butts in the seats.

It's, it's a selfless of let us go out into the community.

Let us serve and minister.

Let's care for people.

Let's know their names.

Uh, and, and as a result of that, God is glorified and actually is the most attractional

thing that you guys can do.

I, I love it from beginning to end, everything about it.

So, man, this has been great.

I just, Tyler, I just love hanging out with you and we need to, you know, when all this

like social distancing stuff is over, like we actually need to get together at some point

where we're, I'm working on some things, maybe October, let's kind of follow it away.

Maybe that's the day when we can be, you know, a physical space face to face again, breathing

each other's coronavirus, um, you know, germs and, and whatever.

Uh, but, uh, we'll, we'll go on for there.

So, Hey, thank you very much, Tyler, for this time.

Once again, Ray, it's great to have you on digging into this conversation on, on relationships

online.

So for Tyler, for Ray, this is Jeff at the church digital.

Thanks for joining us today.

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

Y'all have a good day.