EP061: Kids, Students, & Church Online

all right welcome to the church digital podcast powered by stadia church planting this is jeff

here we've got another great episode set up for you here uh we're going off off topic a little

bit in off topic we always go off topic i don't even know what the topic is of this podcast anymore

from church online to digital church to church planting to on mission like it's been a very wide

variety of topics lately it's been fun and in this i don't know if we're allowed to have fun

in this coronavirus season that just got awkward there for a second but i really enjoyed this

podcast working alongside ray and and creating content for a lot of you out there and i've

enjoyed hearing how these contents these podcasts the blogs all the resources that we're sharing the

webinars how they are making a difference out there in churches like yours and in your church so

thank you for that let us know hit us up on social media uh the church digital on on all platwell

facebook and instagram twitter it's it's deerfedge and that's my personal account uh jeff reed backwards

edge in case you didn't put that together would love to hear from you on that so hey with this episode

um i i went back close to home uh christ fellowship miami where ray de armis is the digital pastor of

um we we did a deep dive uh here in the episode ray is really proud you know as as much as one can be

proud in ministry and i'm not calling him out but he's really proud of the effort that the kids and students

have done the ministry directors and the leaders and the staff how good a job they've done in this season

of creating content of doing ministry of engaging in two-way conversations through the kids and student

ministries and so we wanted to highlight kids and student ministries talk about maybe some of the

challenges some of the issues some of the hurdles some of the successes that we've seen in kids and

students and and i thought hey i love christ fellowship miami love the church would love an opportunity to you know sit down with

some of the staff and kind of hear how they are doing kids and student ministry in this

coronavirus season what the ministry looks like on church online and so into the conversation of course

ray de armis digital pastor at christ fellowship miami but including iliana silgy who's the weekend

experience director for kids ministry they have a weekend experience director for kids like this is this is

phenomenal stuff and tony cobb who's the ministry director of student ministry basically the guy who's

in charge of the thousand plus students that christ fellowship miami reaches across all campuses and so

it's a phenomenal conversation dealing with kids and students but we also talk a lot about small church big

church uh we talk a lot about one way versus two-way communication like there's there's a lot of popular

themes that we've been talking about here in the podcast and and in blogs and then lately in the season

creating good content but in addition to the content have the conversation with it as well don't just create

content forget the relational aspects relational is so important as well so you're gonna hear a bunch of that in the podcast and i can't wait to for you to hear it so hey

we got ray de armis uh digital pastor christ fellowship miami

iliana silgy weekend experience director tony cobb um for us for kids and then tony cobb of course is the

ministry director for students and myself jeff with the church digital uh in a conversation that i'm calling kids

students in church online okay everybody here you go

yeah so my name is tony and i am a ministry director for students and uh yeah i've been here for a couple

years and um yeah i got uh i don't i got four kids and a lovely wife rachel and uh we're in the middle of

coronavirus um homeschooling um like everybody else we're having a ton of fun

yeah so for four kids probably i i noticed you're in the office you're still going out to the office

now that's across the street for you so that's not that far right but right i literally walk across

the street so don't panic um i'm in the city of miami florida but i have two houses down from the office

and to make this thing happen um without children running around and screaming um we went ahead and

walked across the street so yep yeah much appreciation for that and so we've we've also got uh iliana

uh silgy here uh on the podcast as well iliana maybe just tell a little bit about yourself and and

uh what you do with christ fellowship miami all right so my name is iliana and i am the kids weekend

experience director and that involves planning all curriculum all um we call them tag-ins but they're

pretty much just mini events that the kids do for the weekend um and then i help to distribute all

information of anything cf kids related to all of our campuses so that's part of my role and then also

part of my role is um not only the teaching aspect of curriculum but also the applying aspect meaning

okay kids we taught you this now how can we apply it and then some of that includes partnering with

our missions and then every month we have a different mission so awesome yeah that's i love that

partnering uh with with missions and working you know even locally and helping kids understand

kind of what it means to be on mission even at an early age that that's a that's a really sweet thing

so the reason for the podcast you know is what like we talked about is um well first off you know all

you guys both you guys work at christ fellowship miami where we're raised digital pastor and straight up

raised very proud of what what christ fellowship is is doing now in context of of kids ministry and student

ministry in this coronavirus season and even churches that i work with often some of them have been

looking at christ fellowships looking at how you guys are doing kids and student ministry and what

it looks like to really um engage and do ministry with these age groups when you're like not able to

physically gather and so um you know i wanted to give uh ray just an opportunity here to

to talk through with with you guys that you know ask some questions and really dig into

what kids ministry what student ministry looks like you know at christ fellowship miami and

what lessons are we we learning from this um because they're i mean there's always room for improvement

there's always something uh but a lot of times the churches that that we work with they may not

even know where to start in this we'll kind of go back and forth between kids and students because

you know there's so much uh to dive into and we're going to get through as much as we can today because

both kids and students at cf have done a good job of not just building content but trying to create

community around the content you know there's and that's really been the key with church online the

entire time that jeff and i've been doing this podcast is you know compelling content is one

thing and we want churches to create that but really creating and centering community around that

is a big deal and from the get as soon as you know this whole thing was announced that we're not we're

not having church this weekend uh you know that that was happening a couple weeks ago both students and

kids dove into plans to execute not just as fast as possible but as excellent as possible to make sure

that they had both content and community up for that weekend uh and so that's one of the reasons why i

was super why i still am so proud of what we're doing because not only have they you know created

plans but they've been adaptable and shaping those plans and so uh you know iliana just kind of take

us through the process like from day one like what that looked like for you guys that friday a few weeks

ago when all that happened and then you know kind of walk us through some of that what that's looked like for kids

so you know ray was part of some of the communication with this and originally we thought we would just

um post the lesson online we thought okay that's the easiest maybe that's just oh i'm sorry my dog

is barking right now yeah dog that is awesome it's peacock mating season so they're uh oh that just got

graphic really it is so they're making all the noises and she's freaking out okay anyway so we thought

originally we'll just post a lesson and even ray challenged us and he's like okay why don't you

guys just do cf kids online we used to do it in the past why not do it now and then he even suggested

let's do one that we have in the archives um my hesitation with that was we had built so much

momentum for the series that we were in and our kids were crazy excited to the point of like they i felt

like there was they were so engaged with we're doing the all in series we're teaching them our cf kids

values and even about generosity and every week we kept seeing more and more and more kids engaged with

it that we thought okay if we just threw in a random lesson it would lose momentum of the series so we

decided let's continue our series let's record something um and then that way our kids have some form of

normalcy and that's the other thing with kids you know you you need that and it helps them to calm

down especially in the season they're confused they don't know what's going on and so we very very

quickly wrote up a script and recorded um that i think we recorded friday and then posted saturday

and then we thought okay let's not just have the lessons available what can we do to allow parents

to engage with their kids afterwards so right now i guess what we've been mainly focusing on

is obviously providing the content that we would have provided on the weekend and then engaging parents

to be that lead the next step is trying to figure out like you guys have already discussed like how

do we have a sense of community and some of the things that we've been doing that kind of have

been happening that way is our fifth grade leadership so we've also had other leaders create videos for

that they send it out and our original intent was same thing send it out let people let the kids watch

the video and engage with it you know with the content that they could download but then we found our

leaders our fifth grade leaders wanted to teach their class they're like i don't care if this is

happening i want to teach it and so some of them with the actual director of the campus all do what

we're doing now they either google hangout or zoom with the parent there as well um and they teach

their lesson and that was actually pretty cool and then we got screenshots of all these kids on the

screen and they're so engaged and again it's just that idea of normalcy of like no i still want to learn

this leadership principle like i don't care if i have to be at my house and then to help that

we also sent them because every time we learn a new value they get a bracelet so we mailed them

all their new bracelet that way again they just feel like we're continuing we're not freaking out

this is normal so that's what we've been doing in kids man you know that's so special that you guys

have really not let some of these things that are going on in an era of social distancing and everything

else uh become barriers that you can't break through in terms of creating that kind of community and then

how are you guys working that out with the parents of the fifth grade leadership like in terms of getting

the permission to do said you know zoom hangouts or google hangouts and all that it's communication

from the director um they the director and the leader so we've we're about three months into our

leadership program and in general from the very beginning there has to be communication between

the parents and the teacher and so that relationship has already been built so that it's easy for them to

say hey and you know the parent's name can we do this thing obviously with the parent's permission

is the only way that they can log on um and then with the director monitoring it or the the

other leader they it it's a way to manage that like i heard what tony was saying it is scary like

how do you manage it especially dealing with kids i probably wouldn't do something like that

for anybody any other age group except for fifth grade that's good so there are limitations to

this just to be clear for the rest of our audience there are clear limitations as to which age groups

you that even as an organization we feel comfortable doing this with for sure um and i think about how

teachers are doing this right now technically they're doing the zoom calls too and the god willing

the parent is there too to make sure nothing unsavory is happening so that's kind of how that came about

yeah my my child's first grade teacher had a zoom call this past week with the class and it was a good

way for them to create community the teacher was on but both lauren and i were behind the ipad

in the same way just making sure that everything was cool and what it did honestly like i didn't expect

this what it did for my six-year-old i mean her complexion everything was just through the roof like

man other kids to interact with right now especially in an era where it's like man i can play with the

kids on my block but i can't really play with anybody else so that's really great that you guys are doing that

tony you know you guys did a great job in creating content but not just that like since then it's

exploded into this multi-platform seven day a week interaction type deal with students

man talk to us as far as like where it started and where it's at now and and how that's gone because

to me it's just been it's almost like you guys became a tv network overnight you know where it's like

we got seven day a week programming we've got lots of opportunities for you to engage and interact

it's just been so monumental to me so so tell us about it we got to give you guys props i forgot

you know jeff and and ray and you guys i i don't know where our church and and where the world would

be without guys like you guys because uh you know there's there was a digital world that the church

uh we kind of knew about um but without you we would have been dead in the water and so just uh thank you

guys for setting up uh things like this resources because uh when all this stuff hit man uh we truly would have

been um it out on our own and and just lost and so man because of you guys you're helping a ton of us

out and so honestly like all the stuff that we've been doing at students is it was a platform that was

established long ago by you know the folks at life church with church online we got to use like a great

platform and just plug and play all of our content that we've been doing um you know our church has

fantastic facilities so we can use you know the multi-camera setup and uh switchers and all that

kind of stuff which we have um we've made this public in miami but if you're in miami and you're

hearing this um we have opportunities for you to come and record and so if if you're still looking for a

place and and you don't have a place to come and and do that man we'd love to help you out um so we are

we're just taking stuff that we're seeing other people doing and and repurposing it and repackaging

it um because we're we're lost in a sense that we're trying to figure this out as well um we

we've done a lot of teaching from the bible you know we've done a lot of relational ministry and student

ministry um but this is something brand new to us we're we're in a world where where students

get their content primarily from a different source than us they get it from youtube they get it from

social media and so what's happening is we're having to compete with the likes of

somebody who gets millions and millions of followers um and and all of a sudden we have to jump in that

game and so we're having to figure out on the fly you know essentially rebuilding an airplane that's

already flying um it it's it's craziness but um it's and so i appreciate ray you giving us props because

it's just one of those things where there are days where we feel like we're failing miserably at this

um and there are days that we feel like man that that kind of work and so over the past couple of

weeks we've tried a lot of things and so just a couple of things that that we try so we we obviously

wanted to keep our uh consistent format from we do our primary service on friday night so we wanted

there to be some consistency i love what iliana said um our kids are thriving for something normal

some normalcy in their life and so what our kids see is you know it's church uh what is it that

that feels normal so a message feels normal worship feels normal uh small groups feel normal and so

that's what we tried to to to throw out immediately uh as good as we could and so we we had somebody

teach a message we we put that on instagram live apparently you could do that we never knew i mean

ray helped us out we jumped on that pretty quick we did the church online platform um we had some some

worship uh uh in the can is what you call it we had some pre-recorded worship but that backfired

really quickly because in in the worship set there were kids in it so that friday night we had canceled

service and said hey we're gonna go all online and there were kids in the worship set and so in the in

the chat there were a bunch of kids saying hey you guys lied to us there's a bunch of kids in the set

so that backfired so the next week it was awesome it happened by the way like people i was in the chat

with tony people were upset thinking that we had like some kind of i don't know like underground

worship set where it's like all the real like yeah folks came together and worship god and recorded

this you know right how dare you do church and not invite me i mean for real that's exactly what

it felt like it was and and so it's uh we've had a lot of these conversations where it's if you're not

failing you're not trying um and so that was one of those where we're like sure yeah that's that was one of those that makes sense we we told everybody we

canceled church and there was i mean literally i think the opening line from uh kevin our worship

leader was uh hey all right cf students uh stand up to your feet and come to the front and i was like

oh but we're not there okay that was a mess anyways so yeah so we did you know try to create that

normalcy and uh so worship message small groups um to to make it feel like what we do every friday night

and so then what we did was we we were just getting we were listening to kids listening to leaders and

that's what we've been doing this whole time and so we you know i'm 38 years old i'm i'm way past the age of

of kids that that we're ministering to and so one of the things that i'm learning is you know i need

to hear their feedback and listen to what they're wanting and what they're needing what their parents

are wanting and needing and so um that's what we've been doing we've been trying to get you know what is

is it that you're needing and um taking that and applying it and so um kids were like hey we want

something is there any way we could do something every day and so we took that and ran with it we

said okay let's let's do something every day uh it doesn't take that much from us and so we started um

what could we do every day um just a quick bible study or there's a lot of kids in trouble a lot of

kids like you know the the word lonely kept coming up like we're just alone we're we're by ourself um

isolated and so we said okay let's have an opportunity to to pray for kids and things like that so

tuesdays and thursdays we we send out hey what can we pray for you about and then we just we go on

instagram live and we just pray um and that itself has been fantastic wednesdays we do you know we

we do a tick tock challenge where we just throw it out and and kids can interact and engage with us

um and the fridays we do you know we do our normal service where you know we have message and then

mondays we we have our student directors where they bring like a little devotion and um and encourage

and things like that so we're engaging our kids all throughout the week um but what i what i tell our team is

is this there are things and jeff and ray i'm sure you guys know this there are things that are going

to be created in the next month that that haven't been created yet and so 80 of what we do now will

change well 80 of what we do now is going to stay the same is what i say but 20 of what we do is going to

change every week because it's going to have to adapt to what people are coming out with and new tools and

new tricks and and it's it's going to have to be us listening and putting our ear to the ground and

figuring out how to do ministry in this season we've got to be consistent and we've got to to stay steady but

but but but at the same time we've got to be able to to grow with people that are smarter at us than

this um and i think that's the the flexibility that's going to allow us to grow in this season and

not it our stubbornness is going to hold us back um and and and it's going to be the the the control

that's going to to keep us from driving and and being fantastically great in this season um but it

will be the ability to say okay that 20 that has to be different it's going to make us even better

and so okay so what i've challenged my team is like every week that you have to come up with something

new what are we going to do new this week and they're like is that going to be every week every week

until we get through this season we're going to do something new we're going to engage a kid

differently we're going to do you know some so i mean it so that's kind of our format we're going to

engage kids on a daily basis you know from their feedback uh we're going to keep consistent with our

service but honestly we are engaging something every week we're going to do something new try something

new and it may fail you know 90 of the time but we're going to figure out how to

connect with our kids so that's good so real quick for both iliana and tony what are some of the

feedback loops that you guys have opened up to get some of this because i think it's great that both

of you are staying you know just ready and adaptable but not a lot of people are used to and especially

in ministry to hearing from their people what it is that they need and what it is that they want that

they'll actually interact with and so what are some of the feedback loops that you guys have opened

yourself up to that you would recommend to other church leaders as well well so we got parents who

are actually taking pictures or videos of their kids watching the online service and and this week

we just got a video from a kid he gave us the feedback and he's like it's great you guys did a

good job but i need more worship and we're like oh okay so taking that into consideration we're adding

more worship and so we have been finding that people have been finding us actually to give us that

feedback messaging our directors our directors would then tell us hey this is a feedback i got from this

parent this is feedback i got from this kid and that has been really helpful because we're tailoring

it for that exact audience so that's worked out pretty well it's good tony same um i just we call them

i mean it's a novel idea holy cow we just pick up a phone and we call people um no so first week we

actually we had all of our directors call every single one of our students in our database which

was crazy amounts it was thousands of kids um and the the feedback that we got just from that

was was incredible and just the the amount of love and support that families felt uh was fantastic and

so that was the feedback that that started it all um and so then we are what we'll continue to do is we

create a a parent group so just like this like this this zoom call we'll create a specific group for

at at different campuses we'll select parents and say hey we want to invite you on to a conversation

maybe once a week um to say hey what are you seeing how are you how are how is this engaging your kids

so from a middle school parent to a high school parent um and just give us feedback and and and just

unbridled hey here's the questions before we ever jump on this we want you to to see how this is

working and so um that's how we're gonna do it both novel ideas and it's you know it's great both of

you are getting feedback from different sources and yet you know one is unsolicited and then one is

completely solicited it's funny tony because uh last week jeff and i had a conversation uh with with

airdis who's basically the creative director for a search up in tampa and he was talking about how

they made phone calls and like literally told influencers hey we want you to repost he's like

you know for us there there is no means of old school and new school right now there's a means of just

communicating out to our people and just doing whatever it takes to kind of get in that kind of

engagement with them so i think it's great that both of you are taking different approaches to get in touch with our folks um

um so now what are some of the challenges that we're noticing in terms of that that community aspect

what are some of the challenges that we're seeing uh iliana you want to break down some of that in

terms of kids like what's some of the challenges that you guys are wrestling through now and what are

some ways that you're doing to take on those challenges coming up so we're trying to build community

right now through our instagram um however the challenge is that that has never our kids instagram

specifically has never really been um poured into as much as it is now so we don't have the following

um you know the followers we don't have just consistency and that's like the keyword um and ray you always

challenge me with that you always say like it when i present a new idea you're like that's fine but it

needs to be consistent that way you build momentum that way people know um and right now i think that's

the challenge is letting our parents know that we're even here um and and finding that consistency

which we have not found yet um i would say students i mean tony you could speak more into this but students

had a pretty good following on their instagram and so kids are used to going there and seeing the content

and they know exactly what to do but now we're finding we have to kind of train our parents where to go

like hey guys this is where you go and on top of that then you have to go to this other page for

more information or more resources or more and so that's what we've been working on and it's been a

challenge and um just in full transparency sometimes i find myself comparing to i follow a lot of other

kids ministries um and just seeing the consistency with their instagram page and the amount of parents

that engage and i'm like i want to be there but i have to realize too it takes time and i think this

is it was something we always wanted to do but i think this season is what's going to push us to

start doing it and then god willing afterwards continue to do it too because we see the importance

we see parents engaging we read their comments when we present something uh we started bedtime stories

stories on wednesdays at 6 30 and even that we posted at like 6 45 because the video wasn't uploading and

there was all this like we're just trying to be consistent so that's been the biggest challenge i think

out of everything let's go back up pause pause what's bedtime stories okay so uh so like tony has the

instagram plan our instagram plan is to at least post two fun crafts for families to do together and then

uh mondays and fridays and then every wednesday have uh we read the jesus storybook bible um with

like we want our parents to engage with their kids by reading it so we have two directors reading the

jesus storybook bible we play a game and then we do questions like all right guys from the story you

read jesus served others what are ways that you how how can you serve others in the season and then we love

you bye bye guys good night and it's also a way for our kids to see our directors too and see that

they're still there they're still available that they care for them and so that's something that we've

been trying that's an awesome idea like that that didn't even cross my mind i'm not that i'm like

hanging out in kids content area but the the idea of doing like a bedtime story at night can and using the

jesus storybook which was such a phenomenal resource we'll link to it in the show notes like that

that's a great idea true and that's that's super easy that's like grab an iphone put it on selfie

mode do a recording from your phone reading from a book that's good job well we did it with an iphone so

yeah yeah we did it that way we had the directors come in we literally had an iphone all right read

tell me this bedtime story press start they read the story you know fun animated like they always do and

then we do close-ups on the on the picture the way the kids can see it and then yeah love that

that's a beautiful idea i love it and you know it's it's that kind of novel thinking that i'm telling you

it's it's going to connect with parents and i love iliana that you were honest enough to kind of just

talk about hey so this is something that we're building we're working on this you know um and so tony you

guys have obviously you've been honing you've been trying to build community for some time

uh how have you reaped some of the benefits off of that in this how has that worked out for you guys

yeah i think you know that's an area that we're trying to get better at i think we've um

what we're finding is um that's something our kids are really craving is that community aspect

um like i was saying before you know you have um our kids have access to unlimited amounts of content so

we're just throwing our content and in in the mix of all of this now um and so they're responding

they they they connect with the with our content but it seems like what they're craving is that

relational element so what we've been trying to do is is find a great tool that that allows them to

connect um in the best way obviously i think they still prefer that that face-to-face connection

um because it's it's the one thing that the church still provides um that that social media and technology

it it hasn't been able to but what what what's happening now is is you're you're meshing the two

it's it's we're forcing the issue of of you have to be able to be relational through technology and so

um through it's things like this through zoom so what we're trying out and honestly this is

like right now on the fly we're we're trying to um test out beta test where we would do you know like

church online's platform where we would just do you know type in um questions from our our small group

lesson um and it would engage i would say probably 20 of the kids that were watching the message but

it wasn't it wasn't really engaging that was the feedback that we were getting it wasn't like

man that felt felt great but and so what we're trying to do now is see if if it's if we can take

another step and say okay let's try a platform like zoom and see if we can you know utilize the breakout

rooms or or or utilize the webinar format to where a kid feels like they're sitting in that in that

circle in that small group space and engaging with their leader someone who cares someone who's going

to connect with them on that consistent basis especially during in this this time where they're

isolated and they're you know they feel like they're alone um someone who's going to be consistent in

their life let's see if we can do that and uh and and and then provide that leader tools and equip them

with with better resources and see if that that can make the difference and so that's where we're at right

now um and so we're going to try to launch that really within the next uh week uh trying to prepare

and train our leaders uh to to launch that so all right so we have a lot of churches that maybe don't

have a lot of the same resources that that listen to our podcast you know um christ fellowship we're

very blessed to have you know an extensive kids and student department partly because we're multi-site

and we've got so many people in different locations but um i've worked for the church where the student guy

me at the time was volunteer and our kids director was either part-time or volunteer and so um in each

of your ministries i'm gonna start with iliana what would you say is like one next step that you would

advise for them to try this week to help connect with their people and it doesn't matter if it's old

school or new school what's one step that they can do to engage their people especially during this time

in the middle of this crisis i definitely think you don't need a uh production crew or whatever um

to engage your parents you're right you could just use your iphone i honestly think it's something as

simple as doing an instagram live of the lesson or just even hey parents just checking in want to make

sure you guys are okay how can i pray for you just um creating that atmosphere where they can see the

face of the director um and that they're still finding a way to teach a lesson but it doesn't have to be

anything crazy thankfully kids aren't as vicious um and things that they see online so i don't think

they'll mind if it's just instagram live in your house and you're trying to teach the lesson so um

i don't know how students if students are more unforgiving with that aspect but um that was

something that i had shared with with our people too i was like it doesn't need to be crazy kids just

want to see your face they just want to see consistency they just want to see that someone is giving their

lesson and it's normal yeah it's funny iliana you mentioned that because i was reflecting on the fact

a couple weeks ago before school you know made that shift and that change i was listening to a bunch of

uh my my older daughter's classmates talk about ninja on twitch they were talking about him

you know i mean he's become like one of the biggest celebrities for them fortnite superstar all this

stuff they're literally he's just he used to be broadcasting on twitch now he's now he's kind of

shelling out some new platform but it's just him playing video games nothing else nothing no over the

in his house like that's it and the guy's making millions of dollars and kids are are bought into

it like and so i think what you're saying is 100 true that it doesn't have to be this crazy over the

top production tony same question like how so youth pastor who's volunteer or you know part-time pay

full-time hours uh like what would be one thing that you would tell him hey man here's your next step in

terms of engaging your students if you've not started already honestly it's probably more the

the relational connection and it's the consistency so consistently um you know relational like content

like you can get content like you can connect with them um you know if you want to do like a you know

you can do a facetime or or whatsapp or um you know you can even do there's you know a free way of of

doing zoom and things like that like you can set up just be consistent you can do your own bible

study you can do your own but if you're not even equipped to do your own bible study grab somebody else's

content and and and and throw it up there and just connect like there's so many great features

um that that allow you to connect nowadays i think that if if you just be consistent what you'll find

is man kids will they're gonna they're gonna jump on and uh really you know thrive off of that they

want to be needed and known um it's that's still true in the digital world as it was in the physical

people want to be needed and known um and so it doesn't i mean that's probably the benefit of the

of a smaller church versus the giga church or the mega church or whatever is that it's a lot easier

to know people on a personal level now and to be honest with you uh the smaller church they're much

better at that than than say the bigger churches um it's so interesting because the smaller church right now

feels inadequate and actually i was on i was on another podcast with somebody yesterday not one

not one of mine we were talking about this the small church feels inadequate to be able to keep

up because they're measuring themselves based on the content that the bigger churches are doing i mean

iliana at some level you even attested to that in this in this podcast where you're looking at other

churches and the engagement that that's that's what's happening and uh and so you're wishing you had that

and are working working towards that you know the the the goal i i would imagine in this coronavirus

season we've touched on a little bit here it's not it's not broadcasting the one message it's not that

one-way communication there's so much one-way communication right now disney plus netflix hulu

these are all one-way communication i can sit down i can binge a show and i can be as isolated

as anybody else on the planet is right now you know i think the challenge for the church is that is that

two-way and figuring out how to engage in a two-way conversation to interact you know some of the

things that i love from this is even things like getting on a phone and calling tony your words a thousand

people i mean i can't think of any lower tech way to engage with someone than actually picking a

teenager right then picking up the phone and actually trying to do a voice call but at some level like

the value that it has that shows that that enables them to have a conversation to let them know that

they're loved in that right binge watching the office or friends on who on netflix does not tell me i'm

loved that two-way conversation lets people know in this coronavirus season that that i am loved so i

i love that thanks thanks for that and small church out there that's listening there's definitely an

opportunity to jump all over that because to the point bigger churches struggle to have that individual

conversation because in tony's situation he's got a thousand kids he's got to have an individual

conversation with that is a logistical nightmare a smaller church you've got a huge opportunity to engage

with people right where you are and not try to compete with the big but use the strength of the small

to have relationships in deep ways tony i'm sorry i cut you off you were saying yeah and i and and even

more than that i think there are there are things that a smaller church can can teach uh the larger church

and so don't be afraid to do that i say in this season um like we tell our staff like like our our job

profiles have all but been deleted you know we're all we're all new and so it's it's almost uh the church

world our our our the size of our churches have been deleted um because it's all ambiguous now um how many

people watch your messages is is pretty ambiguous it's um it because it may mean something it may mean

nothing we'll see in in three months um and so what's happening is the small church you have a value to

bring to a medium size a large size church because the truth is the relational things that you have learned

really can contribute to someone who has learned a lot of skills in say like managing levels of of you know leaders

and systems and things like that i think there's a lot of things that they've learned and a lot of equity they can

bring um um you know and and vice versa there's other things but yeah i i think there's a ton of value that

that they bring so we've talked about sharing content um or we've talked about utilizing other people's

content i know there there's some licensing or at least there may have been licensing i think some

companies may have released the licensing but this is completely out of my league so where can people get

content maybe to repackage and reutilize who at this point is okay with letting their content go

online like give some recommendation for churches that are out there wondering on that both on the kids

and if appropriate on the student side so we do uh tony does this as well we do purchase orange curriculum

um and orange curriculum does allow you to post content as long as it's it's on a password protected

site or something like vimeo um where you know someone can't try to rip off what they have

um so plus they sent out an email last week in response to all of this with all of their content

that that you can send out to parents without you having to do anything honestly you just forward that

email has all these links you can watch a bible story video it has articles on how to talk to your

kids about the coronavirus it has all of these things that they're providing for whoever has a subscription

with them other churches that i have reached out in the past and i would have to see if it's still true

now is crossroad kids club has always released their content for free as well without having to

do password protected or anything like that um saddleback you do i reached out to them um same thing as

orange they just want to make sure that if you're providing it it's a it's a private link that way no one can

try to rip off their stuff um and those are the three that i've looked into so far oh and kids spring i'm

sorry kids spring from new spring there they have a resource website in general that they provide free

resources for kids yeah and um life church do they have kids curriculum life life church has that as well

yeah yeah i mean they they share everything right yeah that's what i was including student guys so yeah

we because we could anyway that's another story so tony what do you got yeah so uh yeah i would say

um yeah that's the primary one that i would that i would go to is is open.church which is uh going

to be life church's primary one because you have a ton of great churches that that partner with life church

as well that are going to uh funnel their their free content on there and so if you go open.church and

then click on the resources tab they have students as well as small groups or kids curriculum um and and

there's a ton of great free resources um that and then i mean honestly the good old google if you google

free resources for ministry uh you're going to be surprised what what pops up um especially now a lot of

people will will use that content so uh the stuff that iliana was was mentioning as as well as those

things that is uh those are those are gold and then um never be afraid to ask call someone and ask

so just because it's not on there doesn't mean they wouldn't give it to you yeah and that's the

that's the exact attitude that we took with orange correct because at first this is in no offense to

orange we're deeply appreciative of what they've allowed us to do in this time but at first that

question was up in the air right yep so we reach out to orange and saddleback because we use a lot of

their videos we literally just ask them like exactly like tony saying we're like hey guys you know in

the season what can we do with your content and they responded pretty quickly yep and and orange you know we

are a multicultural city so we have you know uh orange has fantastic spanish options they have uh english

things like that and so um there there's we're looking for all that kind of content so we're able

through orange um to to be able to do um you know to offer alongside the content that we put out we can

actually offer a spanish version because a lot of our parents of our students uh eliana knows this

that we have we have families that that don't speak english at all and so as they're sitting

alongside a middle school or a high schooler um they can actually go along the message along with the

message with with with those notes in spanish so we found that's been helpful too for our global

campuses who same thing they they were in the same boat as us and they're like what do we do and so at

at least orange providing the spanish has helped out a lot yeah and that's going to make for a great

podcast down the road that i think we'll revisit is bilingual ministry that's something that's huge in

in miami and yeah you know not only cf had you know we've we've brought back a lot of that in terms

of what we're doing digitally but we've expanded it jeff last week we launched cf kids online in spanish

as well you know kidding yes um and and you know tony's talking about student resources as well that we're

providing um this is a big deal this is uh not just as part of our global strategy but even it's a local

strategy you know we've got 60 in miami-dade county where our church lives uh that that still

consider spanish their primary language and that might not be the case for the kids i'm me myself

i'm a third generation immigrant eliana you know the same you're either second or third where english is

our primary language but that doesn't mean that the parents don't want to interact or don't feel more

comfortable engaging with their kids in english and so we want to make sure and provide them resources

so that they can still spiritually lead their kids even if it's in a different language that's right

yeah we are we're seeing um the global church uh especially south america cuba um what they're

able to do with with our content um orange's content via us uh in spanish it's it's tremendous i mean what

god's doing in in those countries is is absolutely fantastic and i mean especially now in in this

season it is has been a tremendous blessing to be able to to gift them that content um holy cow i mean it

was it it because before it it was it was night and day um they didn't have access to that and i don't

know jeff i mean if if amy your wife i know she's she does school teaching and stuff like that one of

the biggest dilemmas that we've been seeing in the city is when kids have gone home to do education at

home is that that not bilingual parent maybe they only speak they're predominantly hispanic and they only

speak spanish is being able to teach that student who's been being taught in english that's been a

huge issue um uh and so we've been hearing that you know from the front lines and so it's anything that we

could do to supplement those two things and say look we're teaching your kid in english but

alongside that here it is in spanish um and and so it's been a tremendous tremendous help yeah i i

love that philosophy of of spanish and even for my time at christ fellowship because miami is such a

a bilingual trilingual quadlingual there's so many cultures that's right you know rich i mean this is

truly is the melting pot um of it all and so to be able to utilize those resources in spanish i mean

maybe the kids are reading them in spanish maybe not yeah it does open up you know some global campuses and

and some work down in latin and south america but to better empower the parents to do ministry to the

kids because you're speaking in the parents heart language as opposed to right making them try to

take something out of context and translate it where they may not be comfortable with that yet

that is a awesome reason to go through all the effort of of doing the the the spanish and the

translation of that right we're gonna have to park out you know i'd love to even revisit maybe like

the the asl american sign language the deaf stuff you know at some point that's you know it's one of the

i think it's like in the top three largest unreached people groups in the world is the the heart of

hearing the the the deaf in american sign language asl yeah that's just america as opposed to the other

national sign languages because i know they're all over the place at some point it opens up into a wider

scope of of sign language language uh but there's definite that group has always been close to my

heart and looking at online as a way to reach uh those people um deaf people hard of hearing people

is um yeah that's that's near and dear to me maybe it's because i'm 40 deaf myself in my right ear but

that's that's another thing so ironically i always put my wife on the right side no i'm kidding because

that joke will be cut out and that will not make it in at all that's a quick edit right there that is

a quick edit right there so hey but this has been this has been a really good podcast ray as you're

landing the plane yeah you know um i want to once again you know and it's not just because i work with

them uh but i want to applaud what we've been able to do in cf kids and cf students and if you want to

check out more check out at cf students or at cf kids miami we'll put links in the show notes to their

instagram just because that's an easy way to get to get started and then follow them on different

platforms if necessary just to see some of the stuff that we're doing but here's the thing i was i was

kind of thinking back when i was a kid there was a show i used to watch called the wonder years

um some of you may may be aware of that especially if you're an 80s and 90s kid uh but kevin arnold one day

was you know that he was heralded by all of his friends because he was able to ask a girl out on a

date and he was sitting amongst them a table full of nerds and he as he he breaks the fourth wall and

tells us through his thoughts he said you know for some reason they were all looking to me for guidance

and then i realized in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king and i've never forgotten that

that's right and this is the truth right now um you know you you heard it first from from these two

we're trying things we're not the experts but we're trying things and right now we're all kind

of flying blind and so let me tell you these two are leading the way just by saying hey look i don't

have all the answers but i've got a good working eye and here i am trying to lead the way take their

advice heed it take it build off on it share that back with us tell us how you're doing it better we

want this to be interactive as well so that we can minister to our people better because we're all

in the same boat we're all learning yeah so good um iliana as we're laying in the plane any closing

thoughts anything on your end yeah um just recently i listened to something pastor omar he met with

three other local miami um pastors and rich wilkerson had mentioned from the voo he was like

you know grocery stores aren't going to be the same after this this isn't going to be

the same he listed all of these and then he said the church isn't going to be the same and i think

if we keep thinking that oh i just can't wait for this to be over so things can go back to normal i

think we are shooting ourselves in the foot to be honest i think this is a time to be innovative and

it's a time to also be open to maybe where god is leading us um because i i i think god is working

greatly in this season you know despite every everything that's crazy that's going on i think if we

keep thinking to ourselves i'm just waiting this out until it's back to normal that is going to be a

mistake i think we should be praying and seeking and okay god what do you how can i still like expand

your kingdom with what's happening now and then what's going to be the aftermath of this yeah well

well said very well said tony as we're landing the plane any any closing thoughts yeah i just uh

double down on what eliana was saying um i think that's so good um i was telling our team uh this

past week it was reminding them and and i think the uh the story has been told a couple of times in

history and so i don't actually think it's probably true because it's told a couple times but um it was

when um uh uh cortez landed uh and he basically defeated the uh what was it the mayans um and and

so go global history here man but i was not expecting that listen man this is a pat riley story man this

led us to the championship point so i'm all about it i prefaced it by it's probably not true and so if you

knock me on my my facts it's no but the story was and the story was like he landed uh on the shores of

south america with only a a few hundred boats you know and to to to go up against a few million people

with a few hundred boats and a couple of thousand men was was ludicrous and so his speech to these men

as they offloaded the boats was burn the boats and it was profound and so like like the idea was and

this is what i was telling my team was if you if you have the opportunity to retreat you always will

if you don't you'll get creative so the only way home is through victory we're going to use their

boats to get back home like that's the idea and so in this season it's what iliana was saying yeah like

we can't go back home the old way we got to go we got to go back home the new way and so i think

that's that's the that's the new thing don't don't ride the old boat back home let's let's figure out the

new way because if you're consumed with we can retreat you you're gonna you're gonna miss out

on all of the creative things that we could do to you know to win the battle and so that's that's uh

that's what's inspiring us these days is all the new things that we can do well i just fact checked you

uh referencing stephen curtis chapman's burn the ships which is a song back from the 90s that he

literally wrote about this whole court test and he was 15 19 on the eastern shore of mexico i can read

the lyrics we'll include it in the show notes but you are spotted now i don't i don't want to tell you

this but uh if you if you listen now that i've actually been in miami for a couple of years uh

uh you you don't want to have uh hispanic people fact check cortez that whole account of him defeating

but that's a whole nother podcast depending on which hispanic culture some of them yeah i was

gonna say hispanic culture like they get offended when you say that cortez defeated them like they

like come on some do some do i'm telling you now some cubans consider themselves more from spain

than indigenous yeah anyways uh all that said i'm so happy that we finally did a podcast where steven

curtis chapman was mentioned listen i am just glad i could contribute my little bit to this

conversation here that if nothing else i contributed steven curtis chapman uh yes good good times good

times raised we're landing in any closing thoughts you can tell how proud i am of this team um and guys

i want to thank you again for coming on the pod uh this is this is big for a lot of other churches

and and thank you so much jeff for affording us the time to do this um and this team's not done rolling

as you can tell they've got they've got a fire lit underneath them and they've got a lot of ideas

that they're going to be executing like this isn't just theory a lot of these things are already

rolling out as of today and so you know i just want to encourage them and i want to encourage you

uh out there who are listening to try something new this week give it one shot even if it fails even if

you feel like oh man what if they make fun of me or something else i'm going to tell you right now

anything you do with the idea of engagement in terms of your students don't concern about the

celebrity aspects be concerned about engaging and talking to them and you will see that victory

that tony's talking about you will awesome two-way conversation is is so important in today

um love the one-way conversation pushing content figure out how to do two-way respectfully

um of that because students kids adults that's how we feel loved in today not not the one way

the two-way um figure out how to do that that's the strength of the internet uh especially in this

coronavirus season so hey uh tony iliana ray thanks for jumping on this podcast this has been great

uh love it and uh looking forward to we'll have to continue the conversation about spanish languages

all sorts of fun things uh but that is not today so for tony for iliana for ray uh this is jeff at

the church digital thanks for joining us we'll see you next time here at the podcast y'all have a good day