EP059: Ben Stapley & Church Communication During Coronavirus

Episode 59 of the Church Digital Podcast, powered by Stadia Church Planning.

I love that.

Stadia has got some awesome stuff coming out in the next several weeks

that is going to help you, church leader, understand how to do church online better.

Now, I'm not talking about broadcast.

Broadcast is the front door to something far greater,

something far more interesting towards the future of the church.

And so all I'm asking you to do, listening audience out there, is stay tuned.

We've got some awesome things that we're going to be announcing here in the next week or so,

and you are going to want to be a part of it.

So keep your ears open.

Be checking your mobile phones a lot because we're going to get the info coming to you real quick.

All right, so here with Episode 59, we are talking with a good friend of mine, Ben Stapley.

Now, Ben is the Weekend Experience Director at Christ Fellowship Miami.

He oversees everything from worship to production to creative communications to online to guest services.

Basically, manages everything from the streets to the seats to the screens.

You would think he would figure out a better way to have them all rhyme together,

but, you know, he really has been a busy guy.

So part of the conversation that we wanted to dive in here is, what are we, as a church, what are we communicating in this season?

How do we communicate in this season?

And who are we really communicating to?

You see, somewhere along the past couple weeks, in case you didn't notice, and I'm pretty sure you noticed,

the rules changed on us.

Everything.

Everything changed on us.

And as a result of that, all the playbooks, all the strategy books,

all the plans that we had worked so hard to develop got thrown out the window.

It's kind of interesting.

You want to make God laugh, make plans?

Well, you know, God brought this coronavirus in.

I hate to tell you, he was aware of it, and nothing's surprising him in this season.

And as a result of it, we, the church, are scrambling to try to figure out how to adjust

and how to plan for what's next.

And really, that's what Ben addresses so well in this podcast.

Helping us, helping the church figure out how to plan, how to strategize,

how to revisit what's important in our communication process.

So this isn't as much church online as maybe some other things.

And we dance around some church online stuff, dance around some social media things.

But all in all, it's a great conversation that I think is good for leadership to hear right now

as we're wrestling with how to help the church strategize and plan for what's next.

So I'm bringing in, obviously, Ben Stapley,

Weekend Experience Director of Christ Fellowship Miami.

The guest host, of course, or co-host, I should say, Ray DeArmas from

Christ Fellowship Miami, who actually works for Ben as the digital pastor,

which is an interesting dynamic in this podcast.

And myself, Jeff with the Church Digital,

in a conversation that I'm calling Church Communications During Coronavirus.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Yeah, so I'll give a quick synopsis of what I do, what I did,

and then how I've had a pivot since then.

So I serve on the executive team at Christ Fellowship Miami,

oversee the worship production online and creative departments, guest services as well.

Don't want to forget about them.

And so that was my role beforehand, basically making sure that we got a great experience

going from the seats, from the streets, to the seats, to the screen.

Since then, really quickly, we've eliminated that first, right?

From the first two things, from the screens, no guest services, to the seats.

We don't have auditoriums in which are putting on experiences, to the screens.

Now it's all just screens.

So I've basically taken my whole work week, a third, a third, a third, or oversight,

a third, a third, a third, and we've pushed everyone into that last third.

How do we make this great experience exclusively online for our screens,

disregarding the seats and the streets?

So that's how things have radically changed in the last two weeks.

Yeah, and I know during this season, I hear lots of times talking with churches

about how, man, they don't even know what to communicate.

Like, let's just even talk about, okay, so right now, you have whole departments of church

that were previously basing their success on getting people parked,

getting them through guest services, getting them in the room, in the audience, on stage,

and all of that is, all that's essentially gone.

Like, that is completely ineffective, and the government is basically saying,

you're not allowed to gather.

I just got a text from somebody telling me that there was some church somewhere

where they were still meeting in Louisiana, and they got shut down

because they're not even allowed to do that, and 1,800 people were potentially exposed

because there was an issue, blah, blah, blah.

So, like, there's a reason why we're not allowed to gather,

why the government doesn't want us to gather,

why we are not going to gather in this season.

But now we're learning how to utilize the screen side of this better.

And that's really what I kind of wanted to focus in here on the podcast with you

because when it comes to communication and how you communicate,

you are so, so good at this.

And honestly, you know, I just even sit back from afar just while watching.

It's like, dang, Ben really knows what he's doing here.

And so thanks for jumping on the podcast.

And with Ray, really just wanted to talk about what communication,

what church communication looks like.

How does the church find its voice in the midst of this coronavirus season?

Just initially, what thoughts do you have kind of on that?

Two things.

First of all, identify your audiences.

So you have two main audiences right now.

You have your congregation.

Actually, you really have three main audiences.

I'll start concentric circles here.

You have your staff, you have your congregation,

and then you have your larger community.

So those are the three circles that you need to think through.

I'd say the majority of churches are doing a great job on that middle one.

They're thinking about how to communicate to their congregation.

They're forgetting about the inner one, how to communicate to their staff,

who need to be super nimble during this time.

And sometimes the staff is getting the last news and hearing about a new plan.

They're finding out on social media.

They're not finding out through official communication channels.

So don't forget about that inner circle of the staff

and then that outer circle of the community.

So in the past, we knew that there would be some non-believers

and people who are far from Christ in our auditoriums listening to our message.

That has radically changed.

Now the whole world is outside looking at it.

We've gone to the outside.

We're no longer saying, come to us.

We've gone to them with our experiences.

We are on all the platforms.

And we're encouraging our people to share it.

And because of that, your communication needs to look radically different

because you have that much larger, we always had it.

First of all, let's be honest.

We're just more aware of it.

And the impact is much larger.

And there's ramifications top down in terms of how we communicate

and think of them.

And dare I say, even prioritize them higher than our congregation.

The outsider before the insider.

That reality was always with us.

It's just being like ramped up to 11 at this point.

So that's the first thing, your audiences.

And then in terms of like basic communication best practices, three things,

over-communicate, cluster communicate, and deadline communicate.

So over-communicate, we kind of hit on this, right?

Well, I'll call it out.

Here at Christ Fellowship Miami, we are still playing catch up with staff.

They're still saying, how do I get current news on a timely matter through what avenues?

We are in such scramble mode that we haven't nailed that yet.

We're two weeks in.

We haven't nailed that yet.

So you need to over-communicate.

You need to cluster your communication.

At this point, people are being bombarded.

Not just from you as a church, but from their school, from the government official.

They're getting multiple, they're getting communication from different forms.

So as best as you can do is cluster your communication, just trickle it out to your people.

You're going to keep their attention.

Because if you're giving them an update every hour on the hour, or even every day,

that's probably a little too much, and they're going to tune out.

So maybe it's a, hey, you know what, church or staff, every Sunday at noon and Wednesday

at noon, we're going to let you know what the plan looks like for this week, on Sunday.

And then if it's modified, we're going to tell you on Wednesday.

We're going to cluster our communication so that it's not a death by a thousand cuts.

And then the last thing for us is deadline communication.

So you might not know what your decision is right now.

That's fine.

But let people know when you will know.

A great question for this, being for us, where we are now, what is it, 17 days before Easter?

I have an internal clock counting down and getting me in panic.

17 days before Easter.

We haven't publicly made the call yet, but whether or not that's going to be exclusively online.

But we've told people that word is going to go out this coming Monday.

So we don't know now, but you will know by this deadline.

Over-cluster and deadline communication are essential during these new shifting times.

That's awesome.

So what information, I'm just curious because you said it, like what information, and today's Friday, March 27th.

Thank you for the reminder.

I need those PSAs.

I need those.

Yeah.

And just, well, you know, the podcast recording, this will debut sometime later.

But it's four days between now and the Monday when you make this declaration.

And I'm just curious from a leadership standpoint, what information do you think is going to open up that could swing it one way or another on Monday?

Like, so you don't want to make it today.

You're going to make a deadline decision on Monday.

Like, what are you expecting to find out that's going to influence that decision?

For us, it's a couple things.

We're trying to wait to the last minute to make that call because the last thing we want to do is, and I'd say things have probably changed pretty drastically in the past couple days.

But we didn't want to make that call too early, and then things clear up, and then we have to re-communicate.

And every time you have to re-communicate, you lose audience.

And so for us, let's figure out where the farthest deadline is that we can make that call and still have, I think it's 12 days come Monday, 12 days to communicate that.

We feel that's a decent amount of time to get the word out.

And so we picked that date about two weeks ago.

We're going to wait until this day to publicly make the call because we still can get it done.

But we don't want to make, you know, we're looking two weeks before when this all started to happen.

We don't want to make the call now.

And this appeared to be an overpanic.

It's not an overpanic.

We're clear about that at this point.

But that was some of the decision-making process.

What's the least amount of time that we need, and then let's make the call then.

Yeah, sorry.

That makes a lot more sense, just kind of piecing together and seeing the thought process where two weeks earlier, you picked a strategic arbitrary day of saying, hey, we're going to make the decision here.

And then you're watching things kind of roll out within that.

Well, and at least by picking the strategic day, you then now know, okay, this gives staff time to swing and do what they need to do to be able to still manage it to execute for Easter.

There's also a fascinating thing here in terms of, we talk about communication.

How do we communicate well as a larger church?

So when we reopen the doors, and I'd love to think, you know, ask you guys, you guys have talked to more people than I have.

How do we do this well as a capital C church?

So in other words, some people are saying, well, you know, as a cynic, if I open my door sooner, I might get a bigger flock.

If I'm the only person who's open, from a very cynical perspective, someone could say that I don't have that perspective.

I think that's unwise for a number of factors.

And then on the flip side, if I stay closed for too long, am I being over cautionary?

I think we as a church have an opportunity to say, gather around with people in your community who would be most locally affected and say, hey, guys, let's try to, as best as we can, pick a Sunday, pick a weekend that works for the majority of us.

And we can come out as a unified front and saying, hey, church is open May 1st, April 15th, whatever the date is, as we get closer towards it, I think churches have an opportunity to work amongst themselves and to communicate on a unified front, which is fascinating for us to be unified that way, which we usually don't do that well, let's be honest.

Yeah, it'll be what church looks like post-coronavirus is going to be fascinating.

And culture's response to even gathering in large areas versus their desire to stay distant and afar and watch from the outside economically, what businesses are even functioning, just even hypothesizing restaurants aren't, I don't think restaurants are going to be open to the place of having in-dining.

I picture businesses like Uber Eats having far more popularity where restaurants basically become kitchens with two or three tables in them, and it's just now getting delivery into the homes and things like that.

But I'm kind of an alarmist guy in general, so you can either buy into that or not.

I know you're a prepper.

I know you're a prepper.

Oh, yeah, totally, totally.

But hey, so it's important in this season, and I don't want to digress too far off.

Squirrel!

But let's talk about not only how we're communicating, but what are we communicating in this season?

Because I've talked to some churches, honestly, and they're like, Jeff, I don't know what to say.

I've even had a couple, you know, this is more of a church planner side that's like, Jeff, I don't even, I'm just, I'm going to take two or three months off.

We're going to delay the launch of the church just because I don't know what I can contribute in this season.

And so for somebody who understands communication, as well as you do, Ben Stapley, what do we communicate?

What can we, the church, what should we, the church, communicate in this coronavirus season?

Yeah, that's unique towards each local ministry, right, to obviously contextualize what you feel God's calling you towards.

The thing that I feel he's been calling me, calling Christ Fellowship, and the one, you know, I had like three talking points for other churches, or words even, is hope, pivot, and merge.

So hope, you need to get as much of that from Jesus as you can, desperately, because each day has its own unique challenges.

And your people, again, looking at those concentric circles, your staff, your community, your congregation, and your community, desperately need that during this time.

Colin Powell had a quote, I used to love it, never underestimate the power of a positive attitude.

And people desperately need that.

So come in with hope.

The second thing is pivot.

I'm picturing that scene from Friends with a couch.

I think we all know it.

Pivot!

Pivot!

Pivot!

Pivot!

I think I've heard pivot a lot of times.

Along with out of an abundance of caution.

Those are the two phrases I've heard a lot during the season.

Pivot and that.

And so churches, make sure to pivot as much as you can.

Whatever your game plans were, be willing to throw them out the window and to come back to the drawing board.

We've been doing this with our community engagement.

All of our programming, kids, students, and adults.

I know we've talked to some of our other staff about that.

But basically saying, let's go back to the drawing board and let's completely pivot from what we've done to what we now need to do.

And then the last communication, like what we should be saying is to put the, to identify the elephant in the room and to call it out and to be mature about it is to talk about the merger.

The merger needs during this, not even during this upcoming season, now.

There are a lot of churches across this nation who are on the financial fence and who are on the financial bubble.

And this will, this shock to their giving, shock to the economy, and then the shock to their giving, it may make, may no longer make them financially viable.

Those churches in that circumstances, my, my encouragement, my counsel, as lovingly as I can say it, is to look around at other churches in your area and to start, look for other ones that you admire, that you esteem, that you agree with theologically.

And you were saying, if we, if we had to close our doors, hopefully not, hopefully not.

But if we had to, how can the work of God through another church continue to operate on our facilities at our campus?

And those are conversations, that is thoughts that need to be happening now for lead pastors across this nation.

And those are conversations that need to take place now.

First of all, if nothing else, other than to reach out to another church and say, can you help me?

We're really struggling here.

You're doing something well.

How can you help me?

And then worst case scenario, if doors had to be closed, you know what?

I'd love to pass the baton off to you guys for this foreseeable future.

These are conversations that are tough, but we need to be mature enough to have them now.

And talking about resourcing.

So those are the three words.

I'll do a quick shout out for my church as well.

We talked about having to potentially help churches down the road with merger opportunities.

Before we even get there, church, how can you help your local churches do ministry well in this new time?

What can you uniquely offer towards them?

For us, we have been blessed with a broadcast facility.

We've got cameras, we've got a stage, we have that on hand.

And so we've publicly put the word to Miami pastors, hey, if you want to do a road trip, even beyond, to come on down to our facilities, use our stage.

We have its slots.

I think the bit.ly link is record your message.

If you go to that, you can schedule a time with us now to record.

And we will make our facilities and our staff available for you to get that content if you can't do it yourself.

So that's how we have been uniquely blessed and how we are blessing others.

Churches across the nation need to be thinking about this, how we can support each other's and get us through this time.

That's awesome.

And I love the fact that you guys are opening up and the production teams that you guys have are helping to produce messages for others.

I've known churches locally here in Miami that have taken advantage of that kind of in this coronavirus season.

I want to bounce an idea off you.

And the merger aspect, I love it.

You know, and even just in some of the conversations, and this is all forecasting and hypothetical, and maybe it's this number, maybe it's worse.

But, you know, I've heard as much as 20%.

I've heard higher numbers, but 20% seems to be the consistent one.

20% of churches aren't going to reopen their doors out of this season, especially if it extends on.

And so, you know, the challenge, there's a lot of church planners that listen to this,

and the challenge for church planners to fill in, you know, working with Stadia,

the challenge for us to reinforce and to fill in some of those gaps,

even to gird up at your level what you're talking about of, hey, don't shut down.

Consider a merger.

Consider something else.

Multi-site churches being able to absorb some of that weight as well.

I think we're all going to play different roles in that.

I was actually, I was talking to a small church.

I just would love your idea on this, your take.

And it's basically going back to the Life.Church network model,

where there was a network of churches where content was shared, but not necessarily the full merger of that.

And this may be a curveball from left field, but I was talking with a small church pastor out in the Midwest, okay?

And it's a friend of mine, and he's like, Jeff, you know what?

I really think there's an opportunity for bigger churches to share content, to be able to resource some smaller churches, even in this season.

Maybe it's not the full discipleship.

Maybe it's not the full congratulations, you're now a campus of this.

But even if it's just sharing some content to allow the smaller churches to gain a foothold until it can kind of recoup.

I'm just curious, kind of your take on something like that.

What would that look like?

A network of churches connected out of a larger mega multi-site church, something like that.

You know, it's already happening in relationship to how Life.Church has had for years, the open resource.

I wasn't even aware of this, but they have complete kids programming now available for you to download and plug and play.

And you can take as much of it as you want or as little.

And so maybe you don't have the bandwidth to create that yourself.

So you just have your kids director appear on the iPhone and say, hey, welcome to our experience.

We got a great teaching from you today.

Let's jump in.

And so you can do a mishmash of that.

But that content is out there for churches who are looking for it, who say, I can't do this myself.

And I would, I hear what you're saying, Jeff, I guess I would leave it to the kind of crudely put, I think there's going to come out of this some, and there already have been, some top content creators who are out there.

Stellar stuff, theologically down the middle, that majority of people feel comfortable using, production level high, plug and play.

And so I think that content is there and I think that will continue to go.

So I don't know if the vast majority of mid-sized churches need to get in that game.

I think it's, I think we got experts doing it at the top of their game and we allowed them to do that and we figure out how we contextualize that in our local congregation.

So like to answer your question, I think there just needs to be like five players in that, in that arena and then to knock it out of the park and for the rest of us to borrow it as we need to.

Yeah. And there's a humility aspect to that too, right, Ben? Because that means that a lot of churches who are used to creating their own stuff, it's like, no, you know what?

We're willing to outsource that for the sake of being good at what we're supposed to be good at.

Yeah. Yeah. I would say that it's funny. I have friends up in the meeting house up in Toronto, Ontario. And like I've, I've encouraged, you know, they've looked at that and they, they ultimately had to, they've done it for years, make their own kids content just because the regional accent is so different.

You know, if you're not, you're not getting out and about and you're not saying the A's then, hey, as a Canadian, I need to, I need to hear that. I need to hear my accent. So there, there are uniquenesses there that won't play regionally. Like if you've got a Southern accent and that video is trying to play in the Midwest or on the West coast, it's not going to, it's not going to play.

So I think there are uniquenesses there that regional churches can play a role in that in terms of creating content.

That's good. Ben, you do such a great job. And, and I think you're great at leading us through how to stay on message through multiple platforms. And to me, the best way that you do that is by leveraging Google docs with us as a team. To me, it's just so practical. It's, it's unique to you. I've never been led by a leader who's done this.

Um, and so can you kind of break that down for a lot of folks? Cause it's a free, easy tool that can help all to me. It would just change the way that so many people operate. If they would leverage this platform in a way that you have.

Yeah. I don't want to, maybe this is like a lot of your audience already knows this. So I apologize if they don't, but, um, this is a great advice for Ray. If there's like one thing on my tombstone, like I would like to see when I die is like that people lovingly joked with me is the, if you can't pass it down until you write it down.

Um, so, um, like, especially now living on oral tradition and, and verbal communication is going to get degraded very quickly as it gets through the chain of, of commands.

So that's, so I, I write down literally everything so I can pass it down.

Um, I use Google docs on this for a couple of very basic reasons. If I'm using word, if it's not an active living document.

Um, so people don't see the updates as I give them kind of no brainer there. It's, um, it's cloud based. So whatever platform you're on, it'll will work for you. You don't need to have that piece of software. You just need to have access to the internet and then you can access it.

The other really nice feature about this is the commenting. So I can, I can write out a document, give action steps, and then I can attach people to it in the comment section.

And assign tasks for them. And then when they're done that, they can resolve the tasks. So we can all see who's doing what and where the progress is. It's, it's, it's, it's like, you know what it is. It's a quick and easy.

Um, project management tool. Now it's not, it's a quick and easy one. It's not the best, but there's great project management tools, but if you need to get the process started, it's a great starting point.

Especially if you haven't got your whole church up onto base camp or sauna or Trello or whatever project management software you want to use. You can start with this before you get there.

Uh, that's super helpful for people moving along, but that's how I see it. But right. You're, you're also a user. What do you, what have you found to be the benefits?

So, especially with keeping message message across the board, the same, because there's so many different platforms through which to communicate through for creatives, right? Whether it's, Hey, we're doing mass text or we're doing Instagram posts, we're doing this.

This to me has been to make sure that we all stay on message and that there's not variances of the message that it's as simple as copy paste, even to the point where Ben's done such a good job of breaking out. All right. So here's the main communication.

And then we're going to shrink that down to 140 characters so that it fits within a text so that it fits within a tweet so that for our communications director, she can come back to this and say, okay, so this is what the email copy looks like.

copy paste church online guy me i can make sure that that's an opinion comment or that our chat

hosts are armed with the same communication um for our social media directors they now have access

to that same document so that the same message there's no variances in date time or even just

suggestive comments there's no variances there because that's where communication to me really

starts to break down is everybody's operating in their own space and then they're all just even a

fraction off and the next thing you know people are asking questions and and the communication

gets convoluted yeah the other thing for helpful for us right um and and jeff is we once this crisis

started we just created a you know virus response and it had literally had like you know the first

day we're doing this and then it was the next week underneath that and we we're now going week to week

because the plan has changed so much so what what students was doing last week is not the same but as

this week what community engagement is doing now this week is not going to be the same as next week

and so for us that's a hub where all of our core staff goes towards and say what's happening this

week um how do i get a quick synopsis ah it's all here we're all up to up to speed so if you're

a church and you haven't done that yet um write it down so you can pass it down it's good and especially

for us and and this is me on the practical side speaking to somebody who works with and underneath ben

those three concentric circles i can say that it's helped develop that first one in terms of the staff

making sure that we're all on the same page because so often once again if we were back

in our oral tradition so much gets lost between hey we had a tuesday meeting and now it's time for

thursday execution so much gets lost in between there that if it wasn't written down you know

translation would be completely different in terms of the message yeah so how upset are you going to be

when christ fellowship it says hey we're abandoning google instead going to microsoft could you do it

on microsoft like yeah that wouldn't can you yeah yeah so busy the collaboration and the tasks and

yeah the cloud oh i'm gonna convert you i'm gonna i'm gonna convert you jeff oh no listen i i i'm

i'm a google guy through and through i've been doing it for decades um i i actually brought christ

fellowship to google in like 2000 probably 2003 and and like stadia being on board with them they're

like hey we use microsoft office and i'm like dear god no please i don't know not word no i don't know

this stuff and so i'm having to reprogram i am so used to the to the google stuff it's crazy so anyway

i don't think maybe i don't get anything i think i personally might set a building on fire if we went to

office 365 as opposed to google docs i think i would take care of that for him yeah i actually i reached

out i reached out to the it guy because every time i try to save something in the cloud the file ends

up getting corrupted and i'm like okay i'm a smart guy like i should be able not to have files automatically

get corrupted anytime i try to save it into the cloud but maybe that's just a jeff problem which

is cool it probably is um but let's let's kind of i'm digressing oh once again squirrel let's kind

of stay on on task here with with with the podcast here and keep rolling which ironically gets us to

the next topic i wanted to hit on which is this idea of keeping people on mission and so this is so

this is a conversation the question that i ask a lot these days like what is the what's the purpose

of church in this coronavirus season um beyond just the services great we worked really hard to get

the services online we're doing that that's awesome there's got to be something else just like

any church any given sunday there's more to just a physical even the physical church ministry before

coronavirus it was more than just that one hour on sunday so like how do we keep as a church how do

we get how do we keep our people on mission and arguably even in contextualized with that what is our

mission what's the why why are we keeping people on mission and why is the church what is the church on

mission yeah what does that even mean i'll break it down to two groups internally and and externally so

how do you how do you keep your staff on mission and then how do you keep your congregation and community

on mission so first of all again low hanging fruit but if you if you haven't utilized some of the video

based communication tools out there like we're using right now zoom google hangouts is another great

one it's a free service already embedded in google calendar as a default for all of your meetings um

utilize those for a couple reasons first of all i can get little nuance through a text or an email

through the written word i can get a little more through hearing your voice i can hear the tone

and the emotion behind it i get a lot more when i see your face and i see you engaging with me or i see

you disengaging with me so um if you're a church staff and you haven't leveraged video conferencing yet

do it asap because your staff desperately needs to see again the optimism that you as a lead pastor or

executive pastor have that we are going to get through this christ is still on the throne i believe

in him more importantly not what i believe he believes in us he believes that he's empowered us to

accomplish his your your staff need to see that desperately so leverage these video video tools to

communicate that to them uh internally and then the next thing internally is keep some type of regular

it's going to be a new normal a new rhythm for you guys but develop a new rhythm everybody needs

parameters and consistency to flourish so what is that consistency for your staff so you may have

you know five meetings in the course of your week whatever it was maybe it's maybe it's reduced down to

two or even just one stick to that stick to that regular pattern where your staff knows you're gonna

they're gonna meet with you they're gonna hear from you more importantly they're gonna see you

and they're gonna know what the game plan is for the upcoming week that's vital to keep your your

staff keep going on um and then the next thing is and i'll call this out i've been bad at this um

i've been running and gunning and i have not given the pastoral support my staff needs

it's all being it's all being strategy it's all being logistics it's all being execution

and the the relational the spiritual the pastoral component has fallen to the bottom the bottom of

my priority list right now and it's it's embarrassing to call myself out in it because

we desperately need that i desperately need that they desperately need that um so i'll i'll challenge

other leaders to give that to their people as well not just marching orders but give them the

spiritual shepherding they need during the season as well myself included so that's internally

then externally how does the church still be the church uh don't just promote what you are doing

don't just become an ad agency for the next foreseeable future this is happening this is happening this

is happening um give people avenues in which they can jump in and participate so don't just give them

experiences hey we have a we have another live experience that's great i'm not diminishing that live

experiences are awesome they're looking for avenues to participate as well that may be reduced because

of the social distancing but they are still out there we still can text and call and facetime and

meet via small groups there's still plenty of opportunities ones we have yet to even think of yet

out of how to minister in this new reality don't just become an experience uh church at this point

um be be an experimental church that you're trying new things and be ones in which you're still

engaging your community don't be an experienced church be an experimental uh tweet that wow i know

listen i have i have a running joke on the podcast um if something is is if something is really

impactful i would consider i would consider tattooing that quote in the person's name on my body and ben

stapely you are now tattoo worthy that right there was phenomenal you can't pass it down if you don't

write it down it's it's on my back and holding it in its talons and now that's going to be tattooed

on on just back so he can be able to pass it down as it's no man that's that's like on the cheek i'm

putting them right here on the right cheek are you gonna go right by the teardrops the teardrop

good good stuff there ray any thoughts on that yeah um ben you know and it's funny i know ben's

being really hard on himself in terms of the pastoral side but one of the things that he's been really

good at in terms of the season especially with me is helping me understand how i can democratize

some of the things that i'm doing so that i don't become a stopgap i don't become a lid on the

organization so often especially in creative communities or whatever else especially when

percentages shift as far as like how much we're relying on certain platforms or whatever else we

think well if i can't do it nobody else can and so ben has done a good job at helping me

brainstorm okay so what can i hand off or even just challenging me in a good way not not in a

threatening way not in a hey you know that we need this done like yesterday kind of a thing way

but even just thinking through how can i hand off some of those things so that the organization overall

can benefit in this time because as a leader like i can't die on the vine either and ben's did a good

job of saying well what resources can we open up and even advocating for us in this moment and saying hey

what resources can we can we open up because our team is working through some extra stuff and that's

helped us uh both thrive in this time because granted every creative or every digital strategist

that i've talked to in this time and if you're out there and you're listening you're probably

with us where it's like you're working 24 7 right now and you're thinking to yourself like when you're

not in front of a computer screen creating new graphics or thinking through stuff you're probably

dreaming about them at this point or thinking through did i send that email did i send that text message

in the middle of the night so right now if in the least if in your teams you can help challenge

challenge and help think through okay so some of our staff members aren't necessarily using as much

of their time right now how can i help hand off some of this stuff so that the staff overall can win

that's benefited me um personally ben and you've done a great job in championing that how would you help

other creatives to think through all right so challenge your teams thinking through how you can

democratize some of your areas as well right now yeah i had a conversation with gosh a staff member

at uh life church a couple of years ago and they were talking about how they had two graphic designers

to hire and they had a you know kind of a b level talent uh and then an a level talent and they told me

yeah we're gonna put the b level talent to work on graphics for the weekend and then the a level

talent to work on graphics for the week and my i was puzzled i said wait wait wait but if the

weekend is the most important thing false premise by the way um the weekend is the most important thing

why are you putting and they said no no why leverage your best talent for one hour why don't you leverage

them for the other 167 and my mind was kind of blown and since then uh i've been trying to figure out

how to move staff from the weekend to the week in terms of those resource allocations uh during this

season to answer your question from doing a roundabout here ray um to answer your question we've been

looking at as a whole organization so saying we've had some staff members um some campus pastors

we're saying i've done as much uh follow-up i can with my people i still have additional time well

guess what i i have graphic design in my toolbox how can i help out um or i know i i know how to shoot

content how can i help out and so we've been finding unique skill sets in our staff that were kind of

hidden talents that have come to the surface and we're reallocating those resources as a as a staff

to make sure that we are getting as as many people working towards our exclusively online content

only at this point so if you haven't done that as a church i strongly encourage you to do that

that's one one way to change in this new reality that's really good and that's not something that

i'm hearing from anywhere else is how you know they're shifting leaders to make sure and allocate

things properly for this time and it's such a crucial time in church history where we don't

want to lose that engagement right we don't want to lose that week-to-week conversation

and you're and you're also saying right for this time spoilers i think this is going to be the new

reality i don't think this is just for a season we're going to ultimately open our doors again but

one of the lessons we need to learn church is the the resourcing we've put online it cannot be an

mass exit of those resources back solely to our physical i don't think it needs to go back i don't

need it doesn't need to say where it's at but we need to find some sweet spot in the middle there

because we've we've learned this lesson we can create spiritual disciples through digital

platforms let's not lose this tool in our toolbox as we march forward let's continue to use it in a

very robust way no but uh ben and just kind of thinking through that what are some of the communication

things that you think are going to hang around from from what we're dealing with right now because

as a church i feel that we've for sure ramped up the wave of communication and so what do you

think is going to hang around right now in terms of uh even when we exit the season when the doors open

up and we can do you know saturday night and sunday morning services again in person what do you think

is going to stay as far as what we term the 167 like communicating during the week yeah it's a couple

things simple again the video conferencing model like just from a work efficiency standpoint i'm listening

like to podcast about this that like this is going to be the new normal one of the things most people

hate about the job is their a commute be their commute see their commute they don't they hate their commute

people have now loved the fact that they've gained back an hour of their day because they don't have

to commute so that is not going away that is a those are going to be a part of our new reality uh the

other thing too in terms of content is the the live con the the midweek um morsels of content that we

that we provided people and we've seen continued in growth engagement on that um and then also in terms of

the the style that we've been talking about offline offline right the style of the communication has

moved from uh from authority to authenticity because it's easy literally when you are on an elevated

platform to stand in front of people and to speak at them with an authoritative tone thus saith the lord

and again that's not a that's not a bad thing but if it's our only style of communication is a bad thing

we've supplemented that with authenticity where we've told people i'm struggling i'm having a hard

time during this crisis i'm trying to manage a staff i got kids that i'm homeschooling i got parents that

have their health threatened i know somebody with the disease or i anticipate someone will die with the

disease and i'm gonna have to bury them in a couple of weeks um i've now shown as a lead pastor

a greater degree of authenticity and use you see how god has worked in me which will encourage the work

of him in your life that is a beautiful thing and that is something we cannot give ground on as we

reopen our doors church we have yet to really figure out it's funny we just recently published an article

from um uh soul care mindy calaguire she's a executive over at glue but she runs a counseling center

has been well published uh author when it comes to um you know the psychology of of the therapy that's

involved and she's really passionate about pastoral soul care and ministry soul care uh and so she's

talked a lot about um for through us writing some blogs about the the condition of our people the

condition of the uh our audience our listeners our members our attenders our community ben using your word

the community around us and church we've yet to really even scratch the surface of of where this

is at i've got friends i've got friends that are burying right now not as a result of coronavirus but

just in general they're burying people people that have died in the past week situations how do you grieve

in a situation like that you can't gather together uh you can't hug people how do you grieve a loved one

that's now dead what what is this what is situations like this psychologically doing to us and we don't

we don't know and which is one of the reasons you know like what does it mean to to be on mission

how are we as a church functioning um here and to bend to what you just said you know it's i can guarantee

you one thing i don't know what the answer is but i guarantee you it's not hey let's just keep doing status quo

yeah because where status quo took us pre-coronavirus that's going to completely be ineffective during

um and inarguably afterwards because i think culture is going to shift as a result of this in in big

ways in the church addressing more of of this experimental asking questions even in the posture of

i had somebody tell me this and this wasn't even context of coronavirus but it's better to ask questions

to make statements and in in this season the more that we can engage the more that we can listen to

people learn where people are at that that's really the power of the internet it's not a one-way

communication uh billy graham did broadcasted a message to a billion people back in the 90s

bounced it off 37 satellites translated multiple languages is awesome the power of the internet gives

us a two-way in the conversation with an individual and so the ability for us to engage and listen to

people as individuals uh and do ministry to them that's man that's the future of that and and what

you're talking about and how we're we're connecting with the community engaging and listening to them

at that individual level that is awesome so hey man uh ben ray man thanks for jumping on this podcast

i i and i've said this many times you know ben coming down at christ fellowship miami a church

that's near and dear to my heart watching how he's led and and functions within that that that church

and how what the difference he's making within the staff uh in the just the overall direction of the

church i don't know that i would want another person to have the job that he has and watching him lead

at the capacity as it's been awesome it's been a bigger it's this has been so invigorating let's call

that out as well this we've we've had a chance we've had a chance to take the rule book and the playbook

out and to hopefully throw it out the window right and it's exhausting i'll call that out it's exhausting

but this is exhilarating this is exhilarating times to be a part of the church i have not seen the

opportunity for us where we've been forced to rethink how we do everything phenomenal time to be alive i love

it awesome you know i you know exhilarating is a better word i was saying man this is fun but then

like people are dying and then it's like awkward because i'm saying the fun word exhilarating i think

is a good a good word i'm gonna i'm gonna copy that yes um awesome and so i'm gonna learn how to say

it with a canadian accent maybe while eating some canadian bacon and that'll just give me the full

ben stapley experience so don't stereotype my people

so hey um ray as as we're landing the plane any closing thoughts yeah you know so much of what ben

said is is right about having to throw out the playbook and if you've got to rewrite a new playbook

right now i would encourage you to do the things that he said at the beginning to make sure and over

communicate to cluster communicate and then what was the last one ben i wanted to make sure and the

the wording right deadline communicate deadline communicate that's been so important for us as

an organization but not just that not this isn't like a now thing like what ben was saying that's

moving forward in terms of making sure that your congregation stays informed you know christ

fellowship you know we're seven thousand some odd people on a service on the weekend you know before

all this hit and then we were reaching much more online like many of your churches are right now

but the big thing is is do they understand do they know and do your staff members have a clear

understanding your staff members like the congregation they're good they're a wonderful litmus test but

if your staff can't articulate to you what your current communication is if they can't repeat it back to

you then something is wrong something is missing and those three things are key they've been key for us

and i hope they're key for you moving forward awesome well well said there uh ben any any closing thoughts

as we're landing the plane one last question ray and jeff is it four or five because i know it's not six

is it four or five hours of sleep that you've been getting each night because again i know it's not

six is it good hours are we talking is it four hours or is it five hours because i know it's not six how

many hours of sleep have you been getting on average each night four or five since i started watching

tiger king my concerns have grown so it's maybe about four knowing that there are people like that

in miami-dade county in my backyard it's maybe three and a half that's awesome you know what i'm gonna

give true i'm gonna just give true testimony right here i'm six uh i have um it was for a stretch it was

three um and and i hit and just you know i'll i'll call it out i i hit a wall um i don't know about a

week ago today from the recording so probably like somewhere around march 20th uh and it was like okay i can't

keep doing this um you know my family's like jeff you can't keep doing this um my dog's looking at me with

why don't you love me anymore eyes just because i was i was the guy stuck in front of a laptop or on a

phone or staring at a web camera you know so much and and so i kind of i paused enough to in and ben

this is kind of giving some credence to to your to your some of your earlier stuff but uh i brought some

stadia team around me some of the guys that that work regionally and was okay this is this is what i do

these are the questions that you should be asking um this is some resources here's some online things

and they started on their own reading blogs listening to podcasts starting to understand

more of the church online and what was phenomenal for me coming out of that was instead of me being

the only guy within the entire organization that was passionate about church online all of a sudden

i had like um very intelligent minions kind of running around working with churches talking church

online now i don't know that they understand all the philosophical stuff but dude they can throw

down and get dirty and answer some of the the basic questions on on this at the level they are now

and that enabled me to kind of step back i still get even in the context of of like random phone

calls and things and we'll talk about it later i just got a text from a guy i haven't talked to in a

decade uh and he's like jeff i'm desperate i need to talk to you asap and so like it's some of that's

still coming that that's great and there's plenty of there's always going to be opportunities to do

things but i mean here's so there's a season where you gotta burn it even in my own life in christmas

season i mean i'll call it out there were years where i worked 96 98 102 hours a week leading into like

the the palm sunday to easter sunday work as a production guy totally not healthy totally not

the right thing sometimes you just gotta gotta play it but in seasons like this where you've got staff

who may not i think ben you used the word like job descriptions are out the window or they're destroyed

or they're invalid because at this point nothing that we do um is what it was when we created these

things um take the time and this is this is my lesson take the time to have the conversation with

the person has no clue what they're doing and train them because oftentimes it's better to at least to have

a a compadre a friend along the ride at best another representative that now allows to multiply

what you're doing across two and three there's that old adage right you can have control or you can have

growth but you can't have both and this is an opportunity especially people who are overseeing

creatives and digital assets to release control to have greater growth yep and even then a helpful

tool for me that's worked out well that once again i mean this is a lot of ben's leadership was

writing manuals on on google docs and then sharing them um it's something as simple as that even from

everything from here's where to upload video here's our style guide uh you know and handing a lot of

that off you know lovingly like walking people through the dock but handing a lot of that off

this way and then going back and refining the manuals in in case anything wasn't clear uh these

are good things that if you've got all the knowledge over your ministry then you're a lid you're a lid like

there's no other way to say it you're a lid on what else can happen and especially in this era and so it's

important as much as possible to write it down so you can pass it down right then heck yeah tattoo

that jeff i know i'm more interested in the control grok i say that all the time somebody else told it

to me so their name gets but was it was a gross show is it yeah yeah yeah craigism man okay craigism

craig gets like he's got like four or five credits on my back somewhere so i might have to give it to

somebody else someone else told me the quote so i'm going to give them credit and it wasn't been safely but

i love the fact that ben said it hey so we're going to land the plane this has been awesome i mean i i

love uh spending time with these guys ben if and i know ben you are uh using your online platforms

as well to help communicate and help churches out there so if somebody wanted to keep up with what

you're doing how do they find you yeah go to ben stately dot info uh you can find information

there about me uh or follow me on social media i'm on all the platforms um i think at this point yeah

subscribe to my man's youtube channel look look for ben stately on youtube let's get him let's

get him a thousand plus subscribers uh you know let's get it going you don't even give that endorsement

for me you're giving it to ben of course i gotta try and embrace this across the board i'm trying to

get this multi-platform thing down and i want people to engage this podcast that's the thing that i push

the most but when it comes to but but here's the big thing uh and ben is trying like he's done a good job of

moving his content over there a lot of that content it needs to be visual specifically because of the

hosting moments um i think that's where especially for those of you who are listening to us to do a

lot of church online and you're not production oriented like me you will learn a lot from how to

everything from engage the camera to how to make sure that there's enough distance between you and

your co-host there's so many practical nuggets in there that you need to unearth and there's a lot of

short videos in there that you can take some you can binge watch a bunch of them and then even

send them to other people for instruction manuals so make sure and leverage that i'm glad you said

that i in 30 seconds ben fastest question you've ever answered in your life stadia asked me to ask

you this question and i failed to how long should a sermon be online 18 minutes ted talks eight 18

minutes that's what you're going with i'll say this i'll say this caveat ted talks are designed to hit

the head our our sermons or devotionals or teachings should hit the head heart and hands give you something

to think about make you feel and an action step head heart and hands so i say 18 i say about 25 all in

to accomplish those two things for me has been the sweet spot and and let me tell you jeff our teaching

team actually received the coaching and adapted to it if our lead communicator uh you know our former

lead communicator he's now he's still a member of our teaching team he went from typical 45 minute

message he went down to 24 and a half last week wow i mean he did it he took the coaching i'm telling

you pastors you can do this you can wow like there's there there's like 40 years of training that you've

undone kind of retaught to it so you know if i was wearing a hat proverbially if you're watching this

on youtube you know i'm not wearing one thank you ray hats off well done thank you everybody for that

hey this has been a great podcast if you are not following ben follow ben he is an awesome resource

for you guys for ben for ray this is jeff with the church digital thanks for jumping on this podcast

we'll see you next time uh here at the church digital podcast you have a good day