EP064: Patrick Holden, Meeting & Mobilizing People on Facebook

Episode 64 of the Church Digital Podcast, powered by Stadia Church Planning.

We're going to park out here on the Stadia Church Planning side for this podcast.

This is the first podcast where we've talked with a church planter who's going in this process.

By the way, there's huge implications for church online all over this conversation,

because what we're talking about here is how to utilize Facebook to mobilize people across the country.

We're bringing in a conversation with Patrick Holden.

Patrick is a planter. He has yet to officially launch, I hate to use the word launch,

but to start his physical church plant in Columbus, Ohio.

As a matter of fact, Patrick doesn't even live currently in Columbus, Ohio.

He's living somewhere in Michigan.

But as a result of utilizing Facebook technology, he's already building his core team.

He's building his his group, his followers.

He's finding his one here in Columbus, Ohio, utilizing Facebook.

He's not even in the state, but he's utilizing it to connect, to meet with people and to recruit them into his church.

And it's not just Patrick that's doing it.

His system is so scalable.

His core team, who also does not live currently in Columbus, Ohio, all over the country, which is where they're at, they're using it as well.

And so even though these people do not live in Columbus, Ohio, they are actively recruiting and developing relationships with people in Columbus towards starting this church plant.

I mean, talk about mobilizing people on mission, even though we're in the midst of this coronavirus, this COVID season.

This is this is crazy stuff.

So here's where we are.

We're bringing in Patrick Holden into the conversation.

We're also bringing in another Stadia staffer.

His name is Nathan Hawkins.

I call him Chivo a couple of times in the podcast.

That's his nickname.

He's the West Regional Director with Stadia Church Planning and just an all around great guy and quickly becoming a fanboy of Church Online, which is one of the reasons I like him.

So we've got Nathan Chivo coming in, Hawkins.

We've got Patrick Holden from Nuvo Church in Columbus, Ohio.

Myself, Jeff with the Church Digital in a conversation that I'm calling Meeting and Mobilizing People on Facebook.

All right, everybody.

Here you go.

Yeah.

So the Spark Note version, I think for us is, you know, way back in college, my freshman year of college, me, my roommates and my now wife, Emily, we all work in a student ministry together.

And we would just always dream, you know, about what would it look like if we ever planted a church one day.

And so you fast forward, you know, 15 years later, really, we're all doing ministry at different places.

One of my friends is an executive pastor, a large multi-site church in Dalton.

The other one's a creative director.

Emily's a creative director.

And then I'm a lead pastor for one of the multi-site churches here in Michigan.

And about two years ago, God really started kind of opening our hearts back up to planting a church again.

And it's always been there, but it was like he was saying, hey, this is the time to do it.

And so we started exploring that.

And then all of us decided we were going to go to Columbus, Ohio to plant a church.

And so we went there.

We knew that we had kind of a long on-ramp, which is probably unique for us.

We were going to be in the places that we were at for about another year.

And yeah, and we said, hey, how are we going to launch this thing if we got a year's running room before we move to the city?

And how do we navigate that?

So, yeah.

I'm just curious, kind of like coming off of that, why Columbus?

Like, was there a tie there, regionally connected with the others?

Like, just throw a dart?

What was the motivation?

You know, it's so funny.

I love telling the story to you.

We had five cities.

Columbus was number five.

I promised my wife.

My wife is from Ohio.

I said, I'll never live in Ohio.

I'm from the South.

It snows there.

I don't know how I feel about that.

Still don't know how I feel about that.

But I think we went to the other cities and we landed in Columbus.

And in the most tangible way possible, we felt like this is where God was calling us.

And then when we felt that, we said, we're going to spend three days in the city.

And so we spent three days in the city.

We took a camera downtown.

We sort of emulated Humans of New York, if you're familiar with that.

Took a picture, asked people's stories.

And something we get a shift in me going, people really will have a random conversation with you like that.

And we interviewed 107 people over three days.

106 of them were agnostic.

And we said, okay, this is where we feel like God's leading us.

So, yeah.

107 and 106 were agnostic.

And I'm an introvert too.

So I had a lot of coffee those days.

So it was fun.

Wow.

Yeah, that's cool.

So at this point, you're launching when?

When's this going public official?

Yeah.

So, I mean, we're hoping to have our first official set of services September of 2021.

So we're still a ways off.

And really, I mean, we've been in the current, you know, job that we're in for about a year, having our church, you know, know that we're leaving to do this.

And so in the next two months is when we've been moving out of Columbus.

We've got about a two-month one there to get down there.

And then the other families that are coming with us, they'll be there early, early fall.

So, Jeff, one of the things I love about what Patrick and innovators like him are causing us to do is to rethink the whole notion of when is this launching?

When is it getting started?

What is it?

Because as he said, you know, yeah, we're anticipating our first perhaps public corporate gathering in the fall of 21.

They've been at work already.

And God's clearly been at work well in advance.

And so it's joining into that and then continuing to build on that, which will eventually result in some sort of corporate gathering.

But they're already well in.

And I love that, Patrick.

You're doing awesome work already.

Well, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks.

So the thing that intrigues me about Patrick is because I was in a meeting through Stadia and he was talking to some of the other pre – I'm learning the church planning terms.

It's pre-launch, right?

I think so.

Not quite public, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, the thing.

And so he's telling this story of how he's doing ministry like via Facebook and how he's connecting with people via Facebook in the area, not even in Columbus, Ohio, already doing some of this.

And so I was really intrigued because, you know, anytime somebody's doing ministry virtually, oh, and they're in another state.

I mean, that's just a phenomenal story.

And so, like, I wanted to bring Patrick on and really dive into this.

Okay, so what does this look like?

How do you do this?

What are the responses?

Evidently, it's 99.4% agnosticism in Columbus.

Okay, it's a non-scientific poll, but you've got this huge opportunity to connect with people, and you're doing it for starters until you get there.

You're doing it during Facebook.

So what are you learning?

What are you experiencing in the season?

You know, for us, it really began, you know, for me, thinking about two different things.

As soon as we felt called to plan a church, the first question we started to ask was, how do we find the first 25 or 30 people?

And the more church planners that I talked to, most all of them had a version of an answer of once we arrived in the city.

We'd go to Starbucks or a coffee shop, just introduce ourselves to people that maybe we didn't know before, and tell them about the church plan, which is really great.

But I think for me, I kept thinking, there's got to be a way to do that from a distance, because we've got a year before we're ever even going to be there.

And so for us, it really was kind of like, I know, you know, if you're thinking about building a fire, I know how to maintain a fire.

I know how to keep it hopefully going and hopefully grow it.

But I had no idea how to find sticks and stones and just get it started.

And so we kind of had this idea of what would it be like, you know, the first day that we moved to Columbus.

We pulled into the moving truck, and we said, we're going to have an event that night, like a vision night.

We were able to get 100 people there that first night because of the work that we had done before.

And so as we began to dream about that, we just said, hey, there's all these people on Facebook.

We know from our time over those course of three days that people would kind of randomly, you know, respond to, you know, going up to them and talking to them, especially when you're talking about the city.

And so what we decided to do is we were going to kind of add people on Facebook as friends, and then we would message them.

And the message was geared specifically to say, hey, will you talk to us about Columbus, inform us, lead us on how to do that well.

And we found anywhere from 20% to 30% of those people would respond back, take a phone call with us on FaceTime, usually on FaceTime, and then we would kind of go from there.

So that's how we did it.

Patrick, let me just say a couple things.

I love the innovation on so many levels.

And I don't know who the church planners you were talking to that said you meet folks at Starbucks, because maybe in 2010.

But now in 2020, like, don't talk to me when I'm at Starbucks, I'm in my laptop or on my phone, I don't want to meet someone.

The whole third space thing, they're a drive-through now.

But your true innovation is recognizing that, yeah, I love your fire analogy.

It's like, I don't want to try to gather sticks.

Oftentimes we'll say, particularly from an investment standpoint, do you want to invest in this opportunity where someone's rubbing sticks together or this opportunity where there's a fire going?

And what you're demonstrating is we can generate some spark, even start a small fire from a distance.

And so you also now have this long runway before you invest all the time and energy and resources, money, relocate your family and everybody else that's going to go to Columbus with you to really have a proof of concept.

And so if I'm an investor, I'm listening to you going, oh, wow, you're already in contact with how many people there?

You're already engaging at what?

And you've got 100 people who are going to show up to welcome you?

I'm like, oh, gosh, sign me up.

Patrick, how do I get on your team and invest with you?

Well, it's fantastic.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And you know what's so interesting, too, is I found even when we sat with personal donors, large churches, that sort of thing, but even personal donors, there was a level of confidence that we had because you're right, like donors, they're more likely to give to something that's moving than simply an idea.

And so we just kept saying, hey, we can tell you stories of people that we've met, individual stories of people, and you're joining a team that's already moving.

So, yeah, we felt a lot more confidence going into this conversation.

Tell us one of those stories.

Give us an example of something you've connected with.

Sure.

Well, one of my favorites is, so we got to, you know, I don't know too much about football.

Ohio State University is a big deal, or the Ohio State University.

I'm sorry.

O-H.

Yeah, anyway, so everybody that's listening from Ohio is with you next.

And so, yeah, so I didn't know a ton about it.

And so I'm on Facebook.

I think it was probably like a 10 or 12 person that I did this with.

Happened to be a former Ohio State football player who, a phenomenal player and super gracious guy.

And he jumped on the call with me, and we talked for almost two hours.

I told him a little bit about what we were doing.

And he just happened, I guess, he just happened to be over the entrepreneurial, you know, component of the business department at Ohio State.

And so, you know, we got to pick his brain and talk a lot about startup world and the church stuff.

And, you know, he's actually going to be jumping on a call with us tonight for a digital small group.

He's coming to everything.

So, like, those are fun stories.

You know, one of the things that we try to do as well is we really try to target people who are already networkers in the city, right?

There's a lot of people who are business networkers already who have, you know, their job is to make connections.

And so we would kind of go after people who had 3,000 or 4,000 friends and talk to them.

And we found that they wanted to be so helpful in helping us get connected to other people.

So, you know, I think of some friends that we have.

I won't share their name because I didn't ask for permission, but we randomly met them.

Didn't know that ahead of time.

And as soon as we did, I mean, they've introduced us to, I mean, really hundreds of people since then.

And, yeah, you know, they're jumping on as well.

So it's interesting how it works.

The prayer that we pray, you know, before we actually sit down, which sounds odd,

at a computer to send these messages out, is that God would direct us to the key influencers,

the people who can, you know, grow it exponentially through their networks already.

So, yeah.

So from a practical standpoint, like, are you filtering on Facebook?

How are you finding 3,000 to 4,000 plus friends in Columbus?

Like, how do you get there?

So, yeah.

We originally started by looking at Facebook groups and just finding Christian organizations

that had groups.

And then it was funny.

It doesn't show you all the information, but you can find the people that are liking most recently.

So we would go through, they would post, click the people who are liking it, and then we would kind of run through this process with those people.

And you only get so many of those groups.

So we did that for a little while.

Then we started, like I said, going after networkers.

So trying to find, you know, networking companies and the people that were connected to them.

And so we started doing that.

Those were really great for us.

And then, you know, the other thing is, once somebody said yes, we would go through their friend list and start adding everybody.

You know what I mean?

We'd go through it.

And that way, as weird as it sounds on this side of it, it would obviously show that we had mutual friends, which would be usually a great conversation starter.

And, you know, it's weird in the beginning.

You definitely have people that go, why me?

And I'm like, hey, this is weird.

But you're random.

And, but it made for fun conversations.

And most everybody's been so gracious about it.

Patrick, let me clarify something.

So the Buckeye, for example, the player that you've connected with and is now opening doors for you.

Have you shaken his hand yet?

Oh, that's a great question.

You know, so coronavirus kind of shut down a little bit of our travel.

But what we did, and I could brag on our team all day about this, is, you know, there's several of us going.

Eleven adults are going to be a part of it from other places.

We started doing this, and we would fly down for these, like, two-day trips, and we would just stack these meetings back to back to back to back to back to back.

Over a two-day period, you know, you'd spend eight to 12 hours a day just meeting with people that you met.

One of our team members, his name is Ryan.

He lives in Georgia.

Ryan flew into Columbus and just stacked two days of meetings with people.

And, yeah, so we did.

And so I actually did.

I met the guy I was talking about.

I went to OSU.

He gave me a tour.

Went to his office.

Spent some time together.

So, yeah, we've tried to do that.

Coronavirus has made it harder.

But as a University of Miami Hurricane fan living in Miami the majority of my life, I cannot acknowledge or condone the use of Ohio State in this podcast.

So, you know, I'm struggling even as I'm listening to this.

I may have to edit it out.

I'll have to see how the rest of the podcast goes.

We might just keep this one on the shelf.

But, no, the Facebook is really, it really is a good idea here.

I got to tell you, the thing that I love about what you're describing so far is that this isn't an ad campaign where you're spending hundreds of dollars per day to do something.

Like, what you're actually doing is utilizing the program and being relational to meet people.

And as a result of meeting people, building relationships and funneling that into ministry.

You're meeting people, you're connecting with them in the community, and then you're getting to the Christ point or whatever the evangelism is.

But you're not beating people over the head on a platform.

You're engaging in conversation, which in this coronavirus season we're in, we're conversation starved.

It's not content strategy, it's conversation.

And that makes this thing beautiful.

Is this, I'm just curious, like, did you see this somewhere?

Was this something that came, like, how did you grow to this point of, hey, let's utilize the Facebook platform to actually physically have conversations and meet people?

No, I hadn't.

I'm sure other people have done it.

I'm sure people would have.

But no, we hadn't.

In fact, none of us thought it would work.

So I'll be honest, we committed to do it for two weeks.

That's what we said.

That we would do 15 of these apiece for, like, two weeks.

Nobody thought it was going to work, especially me, I think.

And then it did.

And then all of a sudden, you know, our first two contacts were college students at OSU.

And so, yeah, so that's how we did it.

And for us, I think the other side of it is interesting, is it feels in the moment like mundane work.

You know what I mean?

Like, you're literally copying, pasting, sending a message, and then we're adding them to our database system.

And then they respond, though.

And I think for me, it's like we've kind of embraced that there is, like, this, like, responsible for the obedience in the small part of it.

And then God has, like you were talking about, run about this beautiful kind of array of relationships on the other side of it.

Yeah.

Man, you're responsive for obedience.

But also, there's some strategic thinking.

You mentioned just there, you're using templates.

You're adding people to a database.

So, you're being systematic.

It's intentional.

It's not haphazard.

Tell us a little bit more about that.

What does that look like?

How do you make sure that not everybody is doing the same thing with the same person?

Or if someone blocks you, you don't, like, what does that look like?

How do you do that?

Well, again, I would want to brag on, there's a guy on our team, his name is Ryan Steigl.

Ryan, everybody has their smart friend.

Ryan is one of my smart friends.

And so, I said, hey, let's try it.

And he created this ability to use HubSpot, if you're familiar with HubSpot.

And we kind of approach it as if we're doing sales.

And so, what we did is he set it up for us.

So, once we send the message, it is a template.

We took this template message.

We send it.

We add them as a friend.

And then we go over to HubSpot, and we add every single person that we reach out to in

HubSpot.

We put their name in there, and then he broke it out into a category called confidential

involvement with our church, conversation status, so we know exactly where people are, and then

whether they're open to a face-to-face meeting.

And then we go in there, and we add that information, and then we try to keep up with it.

And I would say, our team is significantly better at it than me.

I wish I was better at it.

They're phenomenal.

You know, I'm scattered, but you can tell.

I'm a league guy, yeah.

So, you know, but they're killing it, and so they put all of that information in there.

And so, it's always there.

And HubSpot's great, too, because you can add tacks, like, in HubSpot.

So, it'll pop up to remind them.

As creepy as it sounds, I know it sounds odd, but you can actually, if you're sending an

email, you can actually, it'll tell you when they open it.

And, you know, we try to develop some strategy around, hey, when they open it, how do we follow

up, and what does that mean?

And so, HubSpot's been a great tool.

And the other thing for us, too, is, you know, with church database systems, you're

paying, a lot of times, for how many people you have in the system.

And we didn't want, you know, a thousand people that might not be involved in that system to

pay for that.

So, once somebody takes the next step for us, then we move them over into planning centers,

what we use, and we track them a little bit differently over there.

But, yeah, that's the system behind it.

Patrick, I want to ask you about something.

You keep mentioning your team, and I think this is something that we don't want to be

lost on, folks.

Your team is spread out all over the country, and you guys are collaborating virtually.

So, it's not just you, but it's people, many of whom I suspect are probably volunteering

their time.

You mentioned your smart friend, certainly more capable than us in systems.

But having a process, having a system, allows other people to be involved.

It's not like this just lives in your head, and you're trying to do it all on your own.

The fact that you guys have taken the effort to map it out and say, here's what we're going

to do, it invites other people to be involved.

Talk to us about how that works on your team.

Yeah, you know, and so I would say, like, I'm so lucky to be able to work with people that

seriously are more talented and smarter, and that they're some of my best friends in the

whole world.

And so, you're right, nobody's paid on our team.

Actually, nobody, including me, has paid on our team at this point.

Everybody's volunteering their time.

Most of these people are kind of working two jobs, you know, with this as a part of it.

So, what we try to do, though, is we try to lean into our separate strengths.

Obviously, that's one of Brian's, and he's the extroverted person on our team.

But we also said, how do we make it so scalable that any volunteer can replicate the system?

And so, we literally made videos, like he, again, we made how-to five-minute videos on

how to walk through it.

They're step-by-step things.

Honestly, I mean, we can give, I mean, whoever wants that, we give all that stuff away.

But, you know, he spent a lot of time doing that.

And so, what we've done, we do have volunteers that are part of it now.

Part of our goal now is how do we, a lot of people want to talk to the lead pastor, which

is, you know, I guess that's part of it.

But, and so, there are people that will get access to my Facebook account soon, and they

will be sending out messages in some ways on behalf of me and scheduling it, which is great.

So, I'll still do it, but they'll be doing part of that.

But, you know, there's this component of it that we want it to be so scalable that our

hope is that no matter, you know, if God buses it and we go to other parts of the city or

even other cities, that we can take the same approach, even if it's in a different, you

know, social media place and just keep replicating it over and over again.

So, yeah, that's our hope.

I love that.

And I've got an eight-page PDF open here on my desktop that's your plan.

And so, we'll put that in the show notes to link to.

And if you could send over the videos.

Honestly, I use HubSpot for my business.

And so, part of me wants to, like, understand the HubSpot and your perspective of how you're

merging it together for my own benefit.

I know that a lot of times I've been talking with churches towards, like, the average church,

and I'm moving beyond church plans just here for a second, but the average church

broadcasting, this is not an exaggeration.

I was talking with a church today who said they had 65,000 people watching their Easter

services.

And the connection cards that they actually had with tangible names to follow up on, they

had 11.

And so, like, I'm just doing bad math in my head as my dog barks in the background, welcome

to coronavirus season.

65,000 and it drops down to 11 for actual tangible follow up.

And so, I've even been encouraging, utilize Facebook groups.

Utilize Facebook where it's not as invasive as a connection card.

It's easier to peel people's information out of it.

The fact that you're getting 20 to 30% response rate on a Facebook message is crazy.

Like, right now, Facebook Messenger is actually the most successful platform currently in the

industry today.

Email is, like, 20% open rate.

Text message is, like, 50 to 60% open with it.

Facebook Messenger is 80 to 90% at this point.

And so, getting people to engage it, and then feeling like they can respond, and if they

don't like you, they can block you through Facebook.

Right.

Super easy.

So, it's low risk for them to engage in that conversation is a great idea.

And I love the fact that you're capitalizing on this to, like, get engaged to meet people

and then move them along to what's next.

That's cool.

Thank you.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

I didn't know those stats about Messenger, though, but I'm definitely going to be telling

everybody I know.

That's good.

Hey, let me just interject and remind us.

We're talking metrics.

We're talking systems and processes.

The point to all this is making disciples.

And you guys have this amazing strategy.

You're doing phenomenal work.

It may sound a little corporate or salesy to some folks, but at the end of the day, you're

reaching out to people with good news, and you're inviting them into community.

And I wish more church planners would focus and start here, where you have, on relationships,

on meeting people, on making those types of connections, as opposed to focused on, hey,

where are we going to meet?

And what kind of sound system are we going to have?

And what's my first year of sermons?

Dude, you'll get to that.

You guys are making relationships and introducing people to Jesus and starting with just that

real-life connection.

That's why you're doing this.

And you can do it from afar.

Oh, Patrick, this is genius.

You know, so I love that you said that.

I'll tell you one more quick story.

See, we had somebody that we met on some of the Facebook Messenger thing, and they've been

distantly connected to what we're doing.

But there was somebody in Columbus who reached out, whose husband just had a heart attack.

He has a coronavirus, or he had a heart attack and coronavirus, and then they have a special

needs son.

And so through somebody that we reached out to on Facebook, right, they got connected through

what we were doing, got her connected, and she reached out to us on Messenger.

And so we were able to talk to her and do some, like you're saying, real ministry from 700

miles away.

I have no idea how many miles it is.

I just picked the number.

And yeah, and it's been an amazing thing to be able to come alongside of her.

So I'm just plus one-ing everything you're saying.

God does work through all of that.

I'm just curious, in your process, like, so you're having the conversation.

You're in another state.

You're launching, like, in 18 months, would you say fall 2021?

And yeah, coronavirus launching anything physical is crazy at this point.

What are you, what's the, what's the handoff?

What are you trying to connect these people to?

Like in your discipleship pathway, process strategy, whatever the word is, like, what's

the next step for somebody who you're literally having this cold conversation with on Facebook

Messenger?

So good.

So, you know, we, coronavirus actually caused us to pivot slightly and, and it's been super

helpful and super beneficial so far.

So once we have that initial call with them now, what we're doing is we're inviting them

to a, to a Zoom group that we're having once a month.

And we've started doing digital services online.

And so we invite them to be a part of this group where they actually helped me craft the

message, help us craft the service, give us input on the kinds of things that people

in Columbus want to talk about, right?

That's part of the advantage of being away is we get to go, I don't know what everybody's

seeing.

I don't know what they're feeling.

You, you coach us.

And so we invite them to this group and then we ask them to come and invite other people

to it.

And because they spoke into it, you know, they're, they're much more likely to do that.

So we're doing these monthly services online and, you know, they're scaled back.

We have a GH4, we have one camera and a couple of lights, but, um, you know, it's, it's

that, but we do that.

And then we're seeing people like come over and, um, and that's great.

And then our end goal is that they would end up in a digital weekly small group of us.

Um, you know, we were going to do dinner parties, but, uh, we can't.

Um, and so we're doing these, uh, zoom groups online.

We have one tonight.

Actually, I was texting some of the guys I was talking about earlier and they're coming

tonight and we'll hop on, you know, a zoom call.

And, and that way we can build relationships with each other, build our launch team, but

also speak in disciple one another through those groups.

That's kind of our end goal right now.

They're already doing it.

They've already started.

They're already joining with God and they're not waiting until they are able to gather, whether

it be virtually or in person next year, whenever.

And once again, digital allows us to transcend geography.

So you can do that from afar, whether it's 700 or 900 or you're doing it, which is, I think

the key point you're doing it now.

It's not as if this is all precursor or, you know, this is the, the preamble and then the

real, you know, whatever starts.

It's like, no, this is ministry now that will lead to more and something different in the

future, but it's, it's authentic.

And I just, I love that.

So yeah, you're hosting virtual zoom groups.

So someone goes through that.

They have a conversation with you.

You're inviting them to be the expert, to participate by giving you feedback and input.

You're not showing up with all the answers.

They're contributing.

What does that look like?

What are those, what are those groups talk about?

Yeah.

So, you know, it's funny.

I, I love, I'm sure most everyone's familiar with Josh Kelsey, Josh and Georgia Kelsey out

in C3.

They do dinner parties.

I'm sure we've adapted a version of what, you know, they were doing, but it really is

that we'll come in, we'll spend about, you know, 60 to 75 minutes together.

We'll play some sort of game at the beginning of those zoom calls.

We'll tell stories.

We're going around one person will tell a story like of their life.

Then we go around and do that.

I do it very short.

I mean, I, I jokingly call it a devotional, you know, from my, you know, Baptist background.

I don't know if that would even be considered one, you know, but I'm doing a little, little,

little devotional short thing.

And then at the end, uh, we actually, we, we thought it's gonna be really helpful.

We actually asked for prayer requests from people who are followers of Jesus or not.

And we believe that people are going to be leaning into that, especially in this time

period, people want to at least engage in the spiritual transcendent part of it.

And so we do that.

And then we, we hang out as long afterwards as they want to.

The other night we had one and about half the call left and about half the call stayed

an additional hour, hour and a half.

So, yeah, so that's, that's, that's kind of how we're doing it.

And our, and our hope is once we get to a certain number, we'll just continue to replicate them

or we can always break out into multiple rooms on the zoom call.

So that's, you know, it's all about how many we can get there.

Yeah.

I mean, you're not slowing down because of zoom, uh, you're not because of coronavirus,

you're, you're ramping up and even utilizing the season to go with it.

Uh, Chiva, what are you thinking?

Well, I question, you're not going to stop this when you get there.

And when you get on the ground and when you start being able to gather physically, I mean,

you guys are learning lessons now that you'll carry with you.

I pray, correct?

Because I'm thinking about this from the existing church standpoint.

They're, you know, they, they, they're not building towards something.

They're already there.

So they could do this too.

And you will continue to some, what will that look like once you get on the ground?

And once you start gathering physically weekly, how will this carry over into that season?

You know, it's funny.

So we, I think we had felt this as a family.

I'm in my early thirties.

We have two young kids.

And I love small groups.

I believe in it.

The idea of going to a small group is very difficult for young families right now.

And so for us, before we even decided we were going to, before coronavirus hit,

we said, we have to figure out a way to do this digitally once they go to bed.

So yes, our hope is to continue doing this in terms of the reaching out.

I'm sure at some point, Facebook will become something else that we utilize, you know,

but, but the idea of how can we digitally make connections with people?

We want to be on the front lines of doing that.

And then, you know, also figure out a way to do it physically.

So I'm, I'm sure we'll have services, but it's funny.

Like I was, I was talking to a guy the other day who is a high level media person.

And I think we were talking about the secular, you know, sort of approach to production right

now.

And I've, I've always been a part of attractional churches.

I believe in it and I love moving lights and all the things, but what he said that was

so interesting that he said, especially in this season, even coming out of it on the other

side of it, the most tractional thing is going to be the real and raw, even if it's online,

the digital, real, raw, relational component.

That's the thing that's going to attract people because, I mean, Jimmy Fallon's at his house

right now with his kids.

You know what I mean?

John Grzynski is doing the, you know, I mean, that's just a piece of the field.

So I think for us, that'll probably shift into production a little bit, but always doing

this.

This, this is the thing that I have, I've worked with Stadia.

I just checked the calendar.

I think it'll be, I'm coming up on my third month.

So I'm kind of new.

This has been the biggest lesson that I've learned in the three months that I've been here.

And it's something that I probably should have known.

And when, when, uh, Craig, my boss, when Craig said it to me, I was like, it was like somebody

hit me over the head with a ton of bricks.

I'm like, why have I never seen this before in my life?

So we all know Rick Warren's purpose-driven life, right?

You know, connect to God serving, you know, we all have different languages.

We all have different strategies, but there's a first base, there's a second base, there's

a third base, and then hopefully a home plate mission.

Sometimes it's a baseball diamond.

Sometimes it's three, one, two, three kind of approach.

But everything starts with the big service, right?

And so for, for years, I struggled with working in, in mega giga church environments where the

one is the first step.

And so, and you're trying to gather hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, you know, churches

are telling me they saw hundreds of thousands of people in, in Easter environments this year.

Coronavirus, things are skyrocketing where there's more attendance online than ever before.

50% of churches are growing, according to Kerry Newhoff.

So we're seeing this spike.

Who are these people?

Who are they actually?

Where are they coming from?

What's their story?

How can we as a church minister to them more than just creating video content for them to

process?

How do we engage in a two-way conversation?

It was interesting.

I challenged one of my churches, the church that I work with here in Miami called Christ Journey,

and I challenged them to that.

And they, they actually, we did some things on Facebook through groups to get names.

And so we grabbed the names, engaged them on Facebook Messenger, had several hundred conversations

off it.

People that we didn't have names of before.

One of the ladies, this is her story.

She lives in St. Augustine, Florida, which is probably five to six hours away from Miami.

She's never been to Christ Journey.

She doesn't know anything really about the church.

She Googled us, found the service, got attached to it.

By the way, she's not sure that her church is a small church.

They're not streaming anything.

So she doesn't have a church.

Christ Journey is her church for the season.

And she doesn't know if her church is going to open because the longer this stretch goes,

the harder economically it's going to be for these smaller churches to survive.

So utilizing a one-on-one conversation via Facebook Messenger, Christ Journey was able

to learn something in greater detail of how to minister to the group overall, because this

is just one story of multiple.

All of a sudden, instead of going, you know, let's go group first.

What if we went backwards?

What if we went individual first and built on it?

And so you see, for years, I've been wrestling with, we're doing this backwards.

We shouldn't be going big.

We should be going individual.

But the mega mentality that just environments that I've worked in, no, you got to go big

first.

You got to go big first.

It wasn't until I was in this like church planning environment where it's like, well,

of course you go small first, Jeff.

What were you thinking?

Chivo, you've lived this.

What are you thinking off of this?

Well, here's the both end, right?

God has clearly worked through large established churches.

And there's something to be said for those of us that have been Christ followers for a

long time.

I love corporate worship.

I love, you know, great preaching.

I love being a part of a church that gathers.

But I'm one segment of the population.

And I think it was Alan Hirsch who said this a long time ago.

You have all these churches fighting over that segment.

Meanwhile, there's this whole other segment of people who probably aren't interested in that

and won't do that, but they might have a conversation with you, Patrick, or they might stream something.

They might be open to engaging virtually because it gives them a different sort of connection and

engagement and so forth.

Why?

Why would we neglect them?

Why would we compel you?

Well, in order to be a part of the church, you have to physically show up on Sunday.

Well, we've just alienated a whole bunch of people who need the hope of the gospel.

So, yeah, if they're not willing to come to us, let's go to them.

Let's be missionaries and do that in this space.

I just love what you're doing and what you're recognizing here in terms of, yeah, this will

carry over and, yeah, there may be, okay, thousands of people watched a stream online.

How many of them are going to show up?

That's good.

But how many of them would continue to engage at some level if we would reach out to them

and invite them into a conversation?

Patrick, you're doing it.

I love it.

And I love what you're saying, too, because I would say for a long time, you've heard

this even about like megachurch models, which, you know, we've been a part of for a long

time, is the model is going to have to change where I almost go like, I feel like what we're

talking about now and what we're seeing, even with some of the larger churches, it's more

of an addition to.

There are large people that will come to that gathering, but there are, like you're saying,

there are a ton of people that never would.

And so, you know, it is, it's easier than we think it is.

And the model doesn't necessarily have to upend everything.

It's more of an addition.

So, yeah.

All right.

So, I'm a church planter.

I am intrigued by what you're talking about.

I'm thinking about doing something similar.

Where do I start?

What do I do?

Yeah.

So, you know, what we did is we just, I think it took a lot of courage to do the first 10.

So, I think you just commit to do it 10 times.

And then if that doesn't work, do it another 10 times.

Give yourself a couple of weeks of a window.

And then once you have your first conversation, it'll be easier.

We literally started in the group.

So, I would say go start in a Facebook group.

An easy way to do it is the town that you're going to, most of them have a Facebook group

or a page.

Go to that page.

Find the last five things that they posted.

And then go see the people that are liking it.

Add them and send a message.

And then I would say find the smartest people you can, if you're anything like me, who can

actually track the data because the data informs all the other next steps.

And that's what I would say.

Just real quick, tell me some examples, some groups that you would harvest information.

I feel bad even saying that, that you'd harvest information.

That may not be the right word, but that you were working.

Like, what are some examples, community groups, where you were looking in for Columbus?

Shattering seed, where are you?

Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

You know, so we really went, I would go, two of the areas we're looking at are Dublin and

then New Albany and Columbus.

Those are just kind of, you know, segmented parts of Columbus.

We went to there and went to their pages.

And, you know, Dublin's actually just added a bridge and they're building out all this

stuff.

We'd go there, find the people there.

Like, so we'd go to the city pages.

When it comes to like Christian colleges, a lot of, if you find a Christian college near

the city that you're in, a lot of those colleges will have Christian groups that

you can go find and you can kind of add people.

Again, you're kind of wanting to get both sides of it.

I think one of the things that we're talking about right now, we haven't dove too deep in.

So maybe somebody listening to this will and then they'll coach us on it.

But, you know, we're trying to say, hey, there are people who are already social influencers,

specifically, you know, parents or like mom blogs or this kind of thing.

And what we're saying is we want to be helpful in these spaces just like they are.

How do we make those connections with those people that can kind of leverage networks

together and partner to do those kinds of things?

We're trying to do that right now.

But those are a few places that we've looked.

Obviously, the business networkers.

If you find the business networkers in your community, you know, they want to be helpful

and they're going to make some connections too.

Going with the goers is a phrase that we've embraced here with Stadia for a long time.

And you're doing that.

I just want to acknowledge something here, Patrick.

You are out at the leading edge of something that we are excited to be supportive of.

I'm so glad that we get to support you via Stadia.

I know you come from an amazing church planting church at Kensington.

And also, we're fortunate.

I mean, it's for such a time as this.

Three months, Jeff?

Is that all?

I mean, clearly you've been a prophet in this space, in this sector for a long time.

And I'm so grateful for the platform you have and the way people are now tuning in to pay

attention and recognize, hey, that guy's got some really important things to say.

So I'm just, I'm grateful to be connected with both of you and associated.

I'm grateful for Stadia's leadership, recognizing this opportunity and encouraging both of you

in this innovative online digital ministry.

I just want to say well done to both of you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, so I've already told Patrick when I retire, he's going to take over my job with Stadia

and it's going to be awesome.

So I've already duplicated myself in hell.

Patrick, we're both going to work for you someday.

Just remember, go first.

No, no, no, no, no.

Rule number one is surround yourself with smart people and then do whatever they tell you,

right?

So it's been, it's been a lot of fun and looking forward to more.

It's been, you know, it's, I always feel weird when I'm like, it's been fun in the midst

of coronavirus as people are dying and there's massive pandemic and economies are crashing.

But I think, I think it's, it's interesting to see the church pivot in the season relatively

successfully, uh, understanding some things, you know, it's funny, let's make it the Alan

Hirsch podcast.

Um, take, you know, if you want to learn how to play chess, you got to take the queen off

the board, um, the most powerful piece, then you really learn how to use the other pieces

and for centuries, the, the weekend service, okay, maybe decades, the weekend service was

really the, uh, the queen of it and taking it off, um, learning other processes, uh, and

how to use some of these other tools effectively, even tools that churches don't know they have,

like how to crowdsource information off of Facebook to use it, to meet and capitalize with more.

It's just so, so good.

Well, Jeff, you and I were on another call earlier today where one of our teammates, uh, made an

analogy this season that we're in, you know, we're recording this the week of Easter and it's

almost as if this is a season where we're in the tomb, you know, it's, it's sort of the

sad Saturday.

There's a lot of us going, oh my goodness, they just crucified our Lord.

Like we, we thought he was going to redeem and, but Sunday's coming and the resurrection and

the hope and the way the church is going to resurrect coming out of this season.

Buckle up friends.

It's going to be amazing.

I can't wait to see what God does.

And yeah, it's, it's going to be through new life.

Like this church you're planting, Patrick, like this ministry that you're leading us in, Jeff.

It's sad Saturday with the coronavirus, but Sunday's coming.

Amen.

And we're going to, we're going to land the plane on that.

That was eloquent.

Well said, uh, Chivo pulling it in.

That was great.

Hey, uh, closing, closing thoughts from, from either of you.

Uh, Patrick in anything as we're landing the plane here.

You know, I think if I would just say one thing to, you know, talking to church planners,

we've made so many new friends on this, you know, there are moments where you feel discouraged

or you're like, Hey, we're quarantined.

How am I going to launch this church?

And I think my wife and I were talking to me tonight and we were just feeling not only

did God call us to plant a church, he called us to do it during this time period, which

means we're going to have to figure out new ways, but that's part of the calling that

he's called us to.

And if he's called us to it, he'll be faithful through it.

And so I, I feel like for us, that's where we're trying to land and, and yeah, so yeah.

Coronavirus is an opportunity.

It's not an excuse.

I love that.

Chivo landed in the plane thoughts.

I just, yes.

And amen to, to both of you, uh, for such a time as this, clearly it's the case.

Um, Patrick, I look forward to following along.

I hope you'll update us.

Maybe Jeff will even bring you back and you can share, okay, how has this continued to

develop in the season that comes?

So thank you for your time and for sharing your insights, your creativity.

I know a lot of leaders are going to learn from you and I pray that they'll follow and

reach out to their community as proactively and intentionally as you have, even from a distance.

Mad respect, brother.

Thank you.

Amen.

All right.

Hey, so we're, we're going to wrap on that.

This has been a, been a great podcast.

I mean, Patrick, thank you for jumping on here.

Chivo, thanks for, for jumping on as well.

And, and, and co-hosting with me.

I, um, I've, I've loved the experience with Stadia.

Uh, I've loved understanding it completely different side of ministry for me on, on this

church planting side.

I'm, I'm still green in a, in a lot of different areas.

And so love having, uh, as he's wearing a green shirt, that's awkward.

Um, yeah, nevermind.

I may have cut that out cause that was just weird, but this has been an awesome time.

So I'm, um, I'm going to leave it just to end on a laugh.

Why not?

So we're, we're going to land and I'm going to shut up for Patrick, for, for Chivo.

Uh, this is Jeff, the church digital.

Thanks for joining us.

We'll see you next time here on the podcast.

Y'all have a good day.