EP053: Stadia & How The Church Can Survive Coronavirus Culture

All right. Episode 53 of the Church Digital Podcast. I got to tell you, I wish this one

was being sent out in better circumstances. So yeah, we're on lockdown. Like the church where

I'm at, that I work at here in Miami, we are not having services on Sunday. We are broadcasting

entirely online. We had to cancel evangelism training and discipleship training. I'm actually,

when I do this recording right now, it's Saturday and all this is done. We're not doing

any of this stuff in the physical space anymore. What's great for us is that we have a structure

in place to move in the swing to do this online. And so really this is the challenge that I

want to throw to a lot of you out there. In this season, when we are no longer able to

do ministry in physical spaces, let's look at doing it online. This is not a pump the

brake and we're just waving the white flag, giving up. This is our opportunity to embrace

online and do services, do church services, but don't stop there. Do discipleship, do ministry

online. And so this is what we're bringing here in the podcast this episode. We're bringing

in a webinar. I actually, I filmed this back on Thursday before the lockdown happened,

before the world went crazy. Well, okay, maybe the world's kind of going crazy, but before

it really got crazy, we did a podcast, a webinar with some people from Stadia. So we brought

in, well, Greg Nettle, let's just open with that. The president of Stadia is jumping on this

webinar. We brought in Nathan Hawkins, who's one of the regional guys who works with churches

up in the, up in the Pacific Northwest. Ironically, his church was actually shut down a week ago,

but it just, as it spread from, you know, the, across the Pacific into America, his was one

of the first churches, one of the first areas up in Seattle impacted, as well as we're bringing

in, again, excuse me, Ben Kacharis, who is one of the churches who partners with Stadia,

but he's also on the board of directors with Stadia Church Planting. The heart of who we are

with Stadia, as well as the Church Digital, is to help you, church out there, figure out how to do

effective ministry online. And what's interesting is for years, we were just defining effective by that

one hour on Sunday, but we are literally locked down, and there are no opportunities to do discipleship

unless we're embracing this digital front. So the challenge that I want to throw at you,

listening audience out there, is to embrace these digital methods. Now, chances are, if you've been

listening to this podcast a long time, you've got all this figured out, or you think you got all this

figured out, but here's the reality. There's a ton of new people that are embracing this content.

The website, the Church Digital, we've seen a 700% increase, growing increase in traffic week to week

during this. And it's not leveling off, it's spiking up here in the most recent days since

virtually the entire country has gone on lockdown. So churches, fans, friendly, yeah, we'll go ahead and

leave that in the podcast. Friendly, the friends and family of the Church Digital, because you guys

are my family. Help us get the word out. And this is not for self-gratification, but this is more for

helping churches get aware of this. Here's what I want you to do. If you know churches who are

struggling, who are interested, or even if you just want to throw this on social media, thechurch.digital

slash COVID-19. All the resources that we're creating, all the links, everything is going to be on that

webpage, thechurch.digital slash COVID-19. So we're going to go ahead and go to the episode here. This

is episode 53, The Church in Coronavirus Culture. Okay, everybody, here you go. Hey, friends, I'm Greg

Nettle, and I serve as president of Stadia Church Planting. Thank you so much for joining us for this

webinar. Sorry it's under these circumstances, but we feel like God in advance kind of uniquely prepared

Stadia for such a time as this. About six months ago, Stadia convened a gathering out in Colorado

of tech leaders from all across the country, both in the business world and in the church world,

to kind of explore the idea of what technology is available to us for new church planting specifically,

and further just in general expressions of the church, how to make disciples. And as we left that

gathering, we were absolutely convinced that it would be imperative for us to pursue digital technology

to advance the kingdom of God, to advance the gospel. What we learned was the potential to reach people

all over the globe throughout the United States is unprecedented in our time and even further with

what's coming with 5G technology. As a result of that, we formed a team at Stadia, we brought some new staff

on board with our team to launch our digital church planting kind of operation. Jeff Reed, who we're going

to be hearing from, if you had the LeBron James of basketball on your team, that's Jeff Reed in the

digital world. So being a Cleveland guy, you know, I appreciate that analogy anyhow. Hopefully you West Coast

people will also. But you're going to hear from Jeff. He's absolutely amazing. Jeff's doing a lot of

things for us now. We've got cohorts forming on how to start digital expressions of the church. He'll be an

incredible resource for you as well. I'm going to pray for us in just a couple minutes. And after that,

we'll turn it over to Jeff and then Nathan Hawkins, who you've heard from already. Nathan does an

incredible job for Stadia out on the West Coast. But here's what I wanted to say to you, first and

foremost, about what we're all facing with what's happening with the coronavirus. It's really easy

for us to look at this as, oh my gosh, we might not be able to have weekend gatherings. Or, oh my gosh,

what are we going to do about finances? Or, oh goodness, how are we going to disciple people? Or

how do we do children's gatherings? And those are all legitimate, valid questions. And just so you know,

we're asking them here locally and in our home church as well. But here's what I want to say to

start this off. I believe we need to reframe this. I believe this is an incredible opportunity for the

church to advance the good news of Jesus Christ. Because when things are at their worst, the church is

at its best. It's when people need us the most, when they need the church. But let me say it even

further. There are millions and millions of people across the United States that never would have

stepped foot in the doors of our church building this weekend, even if the coronavirus had not

happened. They would not have stepped in. Far fewer are going to now. So how about if we take this

opportunity? What if we develop our teaching series or we use our online platforms to answer the questions

everyone in the country is asking right now from a biblical perspective? What do we, where's hope in

all of this? Why do bad things happen like this? Where's God in all this? What do I tell my children

about the coronavirus? There are a zillion questions we have the answers to. And if we could teach from

that perspective, we could reach people in the unchurched world in a way that no one else, including

ourselves, ever could have because those people won't come in our doors. So let's look at this as an

opportunity to reach others. Perhaps look at it as an opportunity to experiment with digital online

expressions of the church. It's coming anyhow. This is a great opportunity to begin experimenting

for that, with that, and building for that. Online disciple making, we have to be doing it as a church

anyhow. This gives us the opportunity to jumpstart that. Children's ministry, we're going to be talking

a little bit about that. Incredible opportunities with that. So let's go into it with that mindset

rather than looking at this as a negative. How about if we look at this as a positive opportunity for the

gospel? Let's pray together. Amen. God, I am so grateful for every person on this call. You've

entrusted them with leadership, with caring for the beautiful bride of Christ. God, would you help us to

take steps of faith? Father, I pray for Jeff Reed, for Nathan Hawkins, for Ben Kacharis as they pour

into us today. And I just pray that you'll bless our time together. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Thank you for that, Greg. Just a reminder, if you're just joining us, please go ahead and mute your

microphone and we would encourage you to select the speaker view on the top right corner so you can see

who it is that's communicating to you. And then encourage you to make use of the chat function for

your questions. We will reserve some time as we wrap to address some of your questions and we want to be

able to respond as much in real time. As Greg said, my name is Nathan Hawkins. I get the privilege of serving

Stadia Partners here in the West Coast. I'm based in Seattle, Washington, the epicenter of this

outbreak, at least in the United States at this point. Our church was not able to meet last week

and our schools have been canceled. And as many of you are now experiencing, we're just a little bit

ahead. So we'll offer some insights and perspective from that, but we want to hear from the experts. So

Jeff Reed leads in the digital online church space. Jeff, what are some of the very first steps that we

need to be taking, things that we can be thinking about as this opportunity Greg identified?

Awesome. Hey, thanks, Chivo. Nathan, appreciate that. I'm going to call him Chivo on the broadcast

because that's just how it's programmed in my head. I apologize. I'm excited to be here under weird

circumstances, but I want to try to help us figure out some simple and practical steps of how to improve

our online ministry, our church online, as we're feeling pressure and as we're even being limited

on how we're doing ministry physically. And so the first step that Nathan alluded to is let's talk

about how to broadcast our church services online. And so there's a couple, there's going to be some

slides that's going to come up and it's going to reinforce this. Also, let me go ahead and tell

you that a lot of the, um, the notes that we will have available is online. And a lot of the links

and the vendors and other resources are currently available at the church.digital slash notes. So if

you want to pull that up in your web browser, you can follow along, uh, with a lot of the vendors and

examples that I'm talking about. Cause at the end, um, we here at Stadia and the church digital,

we want to provide resources to help you figure out how to take these next steps. But let's talk

specifically, uh, about broadcasting our church service and what that looks like in, in an online

context. Really there's two different types of platforms that we're going to land on. Um, so the

first platform that we can land on is social media. Uh, and then the second is going to be more website

based. And let's, let's talk a little bit about the difference between the two. Uh, when we broadcast on

social media, it is probably the easiest way right now to broadcast the service online. So whatever

the time is your service, you can broadcast the super easy way is something as simple as, as a phone

device that that's showing it. Um, there's some quality issues and some things that may come up, but

if you were really trying to do it super easy, super simple, you're broadcasting that to social media,

things like Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Periscope, which is connected to Twitter and people, your audience

is engaging with that service, watching it online. Now, if you just did the phone device, you may have

problems with audio. It may not sound good. Um, video may be pixelated and hard to receive. Um, in addition to

that, uh, social media itself, the platforms actually try to drive away from long-term viewing. So think

about it. Like if you're watching a Facebook video, you're getting other push notifications that are

popping up on your phone of other things that somebody else is saying, or other videos that are happening.

Uh, same thing with the other platforms. Cause in the end, Facebook isn't concerned with

someone watching a full 70 minute service. They want people to ingest as much communication as possible.

So they're literally throwing distractions in amongst the broadcast to pull people away from it.

The average Facebook, uh, watch is probably two to five minutes. YouTube is a little longer,

maybe five, seven, 10. Uh, and so because all of these distractions happen, that's why platforms like

church online platform, which is released by life church and, and as a free option to you guys

are basically operate as a standalone website or even broadcasting it to your own website where there

are no distractions. Uh, people who broadcast to a more controlled environment like church online

platform report 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes, 60 minutes, a much longer engagement because there's

not all the distractions of social media. Social media plays a part because you're

you're getting a lot of audience, but utilize the social media to route to a controlled environment

like church online platform. All of the links are available in on that notes page, um, with that.

And so you can definitely check out those, but the next thing I want to talk about.

So Jeff, let me just interject there. So I can clarify. So what you're saying is social media is, uh,

potentially a great first step if, if we're not already, uh, sharing our content online and there's

some, uh, ready-made applications that we're familiar with Facebook, Periscope, YouTube. However,

you're encouraging churches to create their own, uh, system on their website in order that people can

remain focused and engaged longer. So you're going to talk more about how we do that. Correct?

Correct. So a church online platform, there are at this point, there's probably 15,000 churches out

there that broadcast their video to this standalone website and the church line platform. It could be,

um, your church domain that, that has it. So it's branded. It's your color palette. It's your logo.

It has your look. It has your feel, but the difference is, is that, and it actually looks

very similar to how life churches, uh, weekend services look like when they broadcast it's the

same base technology. But as a result of that, it's a controlled environment. That's not distracting

away from other things. Hmm. So whether we're using social media or an, uh, a tool that will allow

us to share to our own website, what are some easy tips that we can start with in terms of where do

we focus? What do we do for the sound? Uh, how do we want to frame that? What, what's important

for people to see and hear? Some of the things that we need to look at in context of, of what the video

and what the audio looks like. The best way to get quality on the audio is to pull it from the board.

And you may have some technical aspects of that, but you can take a feed from the soundboard

and run it into the camera. There's a number of devices and cameras that we, we can look like. And if

we can go, uh, to the equipment slide, we'll kind of reference some of that here. Uh, thank you very

much, Josie for running the slides on that. There's some equipment options and, um, we're looking at

solutions like living as one. We're looking at solutions like Mevo, uh, and switcher studio.

There's different levels of, of buy-in on these encoders. Your process is basically that you're

going to take audio from a soundboard, video from a camera, and you're going to run it into

these encoder devices that are going to broadcast it online. And depending upon how, what your budget

is, how much money is available, uh, is really going to dictate and the quality that you're looking

for is really going to dictate the next steps, uh, that you, you want to do. So the living as one

option is, is 1200 to $4,000. And it really depends 1200. If you're just broadcasting online,

4,000. If, if you are a multi-site church and are interested in doing campus to campus broadcast.

So that's really the difference on that, but that's going to give you probably the best quality

and the most stability of, of any of the vendors out there. Uh, there is, uh, a Mevo there,

which is an independent camera, uh, that is, uh, more of a prosumer level. It's

not quite professional. It's not quite consumer. It's kind of that mid range,

which is an excellent video quality. Um, but it's also a, uh, and then audio, uh,

camp works as well with that, uh, a consumer level product is switcher studio that has,

there's a small monthly, a fee to it, but essentially switcher studio uses your camp, your phones.

And so you position six or eight cameras or phones literally around your worship center.

And then somebody is on an iPad, basically switching between the phone cameras, uh,

and then broadcasting that live. I've got several clients who use that. And then there is a solution

that's called OBS, uh, which is open sourced, which means it's free, uh, which means it's also very

technical and it's difficult. If you have technical savvy people on your staff, maybe they can get OBS to

work. If you are, um, kind of a novice in the technical field, pay some money and go with something easier

and more stable. It is important to notice here on this before we shift, uh, that the living as one

option is only, uh, is the only one that can broadcast to a separate website like a church online platform,

or even your separate website live. Uh, all the others are social media only. So there is some

easability to that, but you also lose the stability of having it on your branded website, as opposed to

just random Facebook that's throwing distractions at you. Go ahead, Nathan.

Thank you, Jeff. So the key is that we will need some sort of a encoder device. The basic level is

what's available on our phones that allows us to access social media. However, you're recommending

churches consider something that allows them to stream and or broadcast directly to their own domain

website primarily so that people can be focused and stay engaged longer, can, can be a part of more of

that service as opposed to the distractions that we encounter in the social media space. So that's step

one. It's making available what we're familiar with, what we are accustomed to providing, uh, at a baseline

level on a weekly basis. The next step is really to engage our community online. And that's different

than simply broadcasting. Jeff, talk to us a little bit about what does it mean to start to engage our

community online? Yeah. So one of the things that we're looking at when we do, um, engaging the word

engagement, uh, literally means that we want to have two way communication. The biggest purpose of what we

want to do is with step number two here is to keep our people on mission, even if they can't physically

gather in the space. Uh, so, so let's, let's talk about this. There's an opportunity for us,

and this is outside of the weekend service. We have captive the potentially as this thing gets worse and

worse. And if we do as a church, if we do experience the inability to gather physically,

that doesn't affect just us, the church that affects culture around us. And that's, that's already

happening. Looking at the NBA, uh, no longer doing games, looking at March Madness with the move that

they have. Here in Miami, where I am two major events, ultra music festival, which impacts 100,000

people was shut down. Caiocho, which is a Hispanic thing, which impacts a million people was shut down. And so,

as a result of this, we're getting the situation where our audience isn't distracted by the stuff

around them in these lockdown situations there, they have an opportunity. We have an opportunity

to be a strong voice at them, towards them and engage and have conversations. So one of the things that I

want to challenge us on the church is how do we keep them on mission through this? So there's definite

challenges with how to do this on the adult side. And we won't get to that here in a little bit,

but I even, cause I know Greg and his passion, uh, for doing ministry with kids and every child has a

church. I love this passion that, that Stadia has all overall has a great man. Would you love to just

share some ideas with us of what that would look like?

Yeah, I think, uh, you know, a couple of things that, that come to mind when we think about children

is we, you don't have to be ultra slick. Um, take advantage of some opportunities. I'm thinking about

my 11 year old son, um, Elijah, who it looks like Ohio schools are going to be shut down this afternoon.

The governor's addressing us as a state and Elijah is going to be home from school eight hours a day

with a strong desire to play fortnight for eight straight hours. Um, I would love a church

to have a set time every day. Let's say 9:00 AM where they're going to gather for 30 minutes children to pray together online.

Um, what an easy thing to do. Um, and the powerful prayers of children will affect much.

Um, what if, what if an hour every other day or every day, parents will love us for this as the church

if we had some kind of kids club online, because see children are going to be missing community.

If their schools are shut down, if they're not able to go to, you know, the

trampoline place sky zone, what are they going to do? Well, what if we created community for them online?

So again, let's take this as an opportunity to create discipleship spaces and fun spaces for community

for children and begin thinking the same way. How does that transition into adult world?

Create times where, um, parents and children are coming together to read a Bible story.

Again, nothing slick. Have some from your, someone from your church volunteer to be the story reader.

Have children read the Bible stories, do different things like that, but keep caring for children,

even when you can't necessarily gather on weekends. But even if you can, we have to start thinking this way

Because our children and grandchildren are all online already.

Indeed. Indeed. So the key takeaway there is that step one is to share some of what we're already doing.

Yeah. And we talked about doing that live, but we're also able to record content and then make it available

on demand. And that's a capacity, Jeff, I'll invite you to speak to, but we've already also pivoted to

engaging with people, which you noted is about the two-way communication, not just broadcasting, but also

receiving, uh, and facilitating communication. So there's some different platforms, uh, that we recommend.

They have pros and cons, each of them that allow for something like that. For example, uh, we're all

using zoom right now in what we call an online meeting room. However, zoom also has webinar capabilities.

Jeff, what are some of the systems and tools that you recommend for.

Yeah. So let's, let's talk about some of this two-way communication.

Um, zoom is obviously it's the platform that we're on right now. And so we've got the opportunity.

Uh, it looks like there's 90 people in this space and love that typically in this type of environment,

we are not, um, utilizing this platform, zoom, this type of room for 90 people.

The average engagement is more of like 70, uh, excuse me, seven to 10. It's a much more smaller,

intimate gathering with that. Um, there's a webinar platform that zoom has and that others

that we'll talk to in a little bit, but when you're having some of this two-way communication,

it's, um, an opportunity for us not to all be muted, but to talk together. And the reality is the way that

we're doing it today, we were spinning this up quickly in order to get the conversation, this

information to you. But realize, and some of you may have experienced something like this, where you're

literally just sitting in a room having a conversation with your, your kids or your grandkids on, on a device

like this. Um, you'll find, and with the Bible studies and the community that I lead, there's a very strong

face-to-face, um, there, it's easy to engage that way. I do find this with the online Bible studies that I read,

people are far more comfortable in having conversations virtually. There's something about the webcam. There's

something about the, the monitor, the separation, the distance, um, the idea of, of judgment, the idea

of I'm safe in this environment so I can be open and transparent. I'll be honest. And in the Bible

studies that I've led, I've actually been able to get deeper in the virtual ones than I have in the physical

one because people tend to hold back when they're physical. They don't trust because there's that, that

physical, uh, judgment that's capable. I don't know what this person sitting next to me is thinking.

But when we look at engaging online before, and before we get into even the other platforms, I do

want to follow the slide here. We have an opportunity to connect with people within the neighborhoods, uh,

with that. In addition to, uh, how we're engaging in the community, there's a lot of neighborhood touch to

that. I wrote a book and this is on your notes page. It's called What Happens When Church Online Grows Up.

And it's this idea of following a discipleship process of, of how we're moving people from our

services into small groups and into being on mission. And so there's an opportunity here

to connect in physical community physically. Um, so things like we see churches like Elevation who do

watch parties, uh, where people gather together to watch the service. Uh, Saddleback uses the term,

home gatherings and where they gather people together to, to watch the services. While people

may not be able to gather in 250s or plus in some areas like where Nathan's at, people can gather in

much smaller areas, uh, in homes to watch this stuff. Within that, what happens when Church Online

grows up? I actually tell the story of, uh, a church that I was at where we had house churches that were

operating three, four, five hours away, as well as three to four or five states away. Uh, and how we

were seeing ministry happen within the community. There's a great opportunity to ask some of your

people to do some of this ministry, maybe within their neighborhoods. Obviously do what we need to do to

clean up the house and make it healthy and take care of the health precautions with that, but turn homes

into small locations to do ministry. In addition to that, I think there's an opportunity for us to

connect to the physical community virtually. I look at next door mobile app. I look at, uh, which is,

I don't know if you guys have it, but it's literally an app that's designed to get our neighborhoods

connected together. And so using next door as a way to connect with neighbors, to hear what's going on,

ring mobile app that is the ring doorbell I've got at my house. And it's amazing within the community,

how much the people within the two miles around my house are constantly talking to each other and

engaging in that invest through the technology into those already existing cultures. Even Facebook

community groups is a great way to talk face to face with people, uh, to talk texts wise with people and

build relationships. There's a, there's a theory that we're, we're coming up to and it's, and it's called, uh,

online to offline. And, and this is it. The, the gospel that we hear in our online world should affect our

offline relationships. Uh, and it comes from, from this, this idea of James 1 22 where it's, um, uh,

let's go to the James 1 22 slide. Cause of course I'm blanked on it as soon as I said to do it. Uh,

but essentially it's do not merely listen to the word, uh, and so deceive yourselves, do what it says.

And often what we do kind of just with this online to offline idea, do not merely listen to the word

online. And so deceive yourselves, do what it says in the real world. So as you're hearing this stuff,

go ahead, Nathan. Yeah. Just an example of that. I jumping back to something you said earlier. I think

an opportunity to do just that are these watch parties, which I think, as you noted, we can do

in person by gathering in small groups in people's homes where that's still allowed. Um, and, or you

can actually have a, an online watch party where you might use a platform like this or otherwise, or

perhaps even just, um, all access something at the same time and then, you know, engage via text chat

or something that affect. We talked about, um, making, uh, services available on demand in addition to

streaming so that people can access them really taking advantage of the opportunity that the digital

provides us for the both. And, uh, these are some really creative opportunities to facilitate

these types of connections, as you know, in the real world offline, um, taking the church online

into real life. Say a little bit more about some of those different, uh, platforms or tools

specifically that facilitate that. You mentioned Zoom, which we're using here. There are a couple of

others, uh, and they each have some pros and cons. Uh, what are they and how do we use them?

Yeah. So Zoom, uh, by far right now, industry standard is probably the most stable.

Um, Skype is available as well, but obviously here with Zoom, uh, we've got 90 people in this room at

the same time straight and, and has a Zoom has a much larger, uh, roof of the people that can fit in.

Skype, uh, is limited to the number of people that can have simultaneous conversations. Uh,

but Skype should be on the list as well. There's an option called talkie.io and talkie.io is actually

very similar to Zoom. It's web-based and not app-based, uh, but it's free. And so if you go to that website,

talkie.io, that might be a good, uh, inexpensive option. In context of Zoom, uh, I think the start,

starting account is $15 a month, but that's for the leader. And so if you were doing small groups,

there's an option for each leader of the small group would need the account. Um, Google Hangouts has,

um, uh, is also a very popular option. A lot of people have Gmail accounts and if they have a Gmail

account, then they have access to Google Hangouts and can log into that. It's easy. And, uh, I believe

at some level it's free on the Google Hangout, but I think you may have to pay for some of the larger features.

One of the things that I recommend for churches overall is that they be platform agnostic. And agnostic

is a scary word, but what I mean here is I don't know that I care what platform somebody's using to have the conversation.

Uh, if you have a bunch of soccer moms that all have Google accounts, let them use, uh, you know,

the Google Hangout. If you've got a bunch of video gamers and millennials that want to use another

platform, let them, they're already there. Uh, what I normally recommend to churches is that they have

one platform that they utilize, but if somebody wants to go a different route, that's fine. I'm,

I'm more concerned about what we're talking about from a pastoral context than I am the platform

that they're on. So those are some great options for you guys to investigate.

Some of those platforms are virtual and can function in both capacities. So a situation like this where

we have a large group of people in a room, we might normally use a webinar system, but we could use

even zoom. In fact, uh, this is something that Stadia is quite familiar with as a virtual organization.

Greg, maybe you would share with us a little bit about, uh, how this is similar to a Stadia team meeting.

And one of the ways that we would leverage zoom at this scale to, uh, have breakout rooms and, and go

from a large audience like the one we're in right now to smaller discussion based opportunities.

Yeah. I don't know if I would have been so convinced, um, everyone about, um, online, uh, community,

had I not been immersed in a leadership role with an organization that is 100% virtual.

In other words, we literally have no offices anywhere. So this is what our staff meeting

looks like when we have a Stadia all staff meeting, this, it looks like this, it's multiple screens.

And so I'll spend part of the time casting vision and talking. And then immediately what I love about

zoom is Janie Mahaffey clicks a button and we split automatically into groups of six. And we have

discussion questions that are printed at the top of the screen. Someone facilitates the discussion.

They can be very intimate questions. Um, you know, feisty discussions. And then 10 minutes later,

we're clicked automatically back into the large group and we can report out if we so choose my,

my point is, is that I'm absolutely amazed at what we can do with discipling and with inspiration

in this kind of gathering. And for us, this is just normative.

So as you said, there's a real opportunity to go from the large scale broadcast to the engagement,

the two way communication back and forth. And Jeff shared with us a number of different, uh,

tools and resources that are available to us to do that. I want to take a moment, however,

and step back from some of this technical and talk a little bit about the pastoral. Um,

this is obviously a unique time and we as a church are uniquely positioned to speak into

some of the anxiety and, uh, concerns that people hold. And so to hear from that perspective,

we're grateful to welcome Ben Kacheris, the lead pastor of Mountain Christian Church in Joppa,

Maryland. Uh, Ben is a Stadia board member and they have been a fantastic partner with Stadia.

And so Ben, offer us some insights on how we can be ministering to people pastorally in this,

in these days. Yeah. Uh, our team is doing the same thing that probably everyone on this call is

doing. Uh, we met, uh, this morning, yesterday, watching the news, trying to get a read on what's

happening, uh, locally, uh, for us, what that looks like is, um, you know, the local community

college just shut down. The local schools are going down. Every, everything is shutting. So for us,

it's, it's definitely sort of, uh, culturally tone deaf for us to hold the line that we thought we were

were going to hold and say, we're going to be a meeting this weekend. That was what we came into

this morning saying. And just in a matter of hours, it's like, yeah, no, we would, that's,

that's, that's not cool. Uh, we're being really advised against that. So we're shifting quickly.

And, uh, we were going to be trying to figure out digital for next week. Turns out we're figuring

out this week. So I'm over here scribbling notes, uh, with, uh, from everything Jeff is saying,

you know, as we've thought about this the same way, I'm sure other churches are, um,

kind of things. I thought about things in maybe three categories. One, one kind of the general

posture, which I think has been well articulated already, but then some, some super pastoral

things that might just kind of get your juices flowing on how you can respond. And then some

practical stuff as well, but just the posture, I don't think it can be overstated. I think there's a

huge need for, um, us as leaders to cast some vision around how we respond to this. The posture

being as Greg articulated so well, and Jeff has said so well, we're really going to step into this

moment. It's not like, Hey, we're probably going to cancel something and we're withdrawing, but we're

going to step in and seize this moment as a leverage point for strong, positive leadership. We're not going

to go dark. We're going to communicate probably more rather than less and see this as huge opportunity.

Um, I think back to some of the real critically defining moments of our church. Um, they have

been these crises moments, whether it was a hurricane or a shooting of a local police officer or whatever,

where we had opportunity to kind of

and, and, and, and, and passable.

But for, so I would really just, you know, and we've got me right now. It's like, you know what,

the coronavirus isn't going to stop our church, you know, I mean, not to be melodramatic, but you

really need to kind of bring that kind of perspective to seize the moment. The gates of hell aren't going to

prevail and that sort of thing. So strong, positive leadership. It makes me remember that, you know,

Rodney Stark, that sociologist talks about how the church flourished like never before in the first

few centuries for, you know, what 40 decades in a row at 10% growth or whatever. They didn't have

buildings. They didn't have not just smoke machines. They didn't have anything. They didn't even have a

Bible and they flourished. And so in those kinds of settings, I mean, this really provides an opportunity

and we have digital at our disposal. So just some, this, that posture, I think I wouldn't overlook the

importance of, of conveying, hey, what a great opportunity that is, and that strong, positive

leadership. And the second thing, just kind of talking about pastoral, I think there's plenty of

people now that are telling everybody what to do about washing their hands and, you know, keeping their

hands out of their mouths and all that. I think what we need to provide is, is, is not so much, you know,

what, what to do as much as how to think and be. And so we, we traffic in hope. So I wouldn't shy away

from just unapologetically stepping up and, and providing the things that we do best. I, I do think

of 9/11. I remember that event happened on a Tuesday. We all scrambled and had a service on Thursday and

our church filled with people that we didn't recognize who were saying, you know what, I am

interested in kind of coming together around something of faith and hope and hear what it has to be said

right now. And it kind of positioned our church as we gave this calming effect and this sort of,

let's hold together here. I gave a message of hope, a biblical message of faith. It positioned us. And for

years we had people come back to our church and their first exposure was then at that 9/11 deal. Well,

we can't gather now, but we can go to them. And so I would just say, as you prepare your,

I love the distinction between doing what you normally do online, which isn't going to reach a ton of

people other than who you normally touch, but really be thinking about how can we package this and present

this in a way that truly engages new ears because there will be people that will look to your church now

that don't normally and wouldn't otherwise. So it's a real opportunity that way. Just, you know,

some of the things pastorally we need to bring are peace. Jesus talks so much about peace in all circumstances.

That's a radical concept. Our culture doesn't apparently understand very well based on the levels of anxiety. So,

you're going to talk about and bring a sense of peace to people that helps them see they don't need to be

freaked out. The presence of Christ is another basic Christian teaching. This is a time to talk about

the presence of Jesus. And perspective is another big deal. You know, historically the church has been

through a lot of stuff over the years. And it's, I find myself, I just wrote a blog post about the 14th

century when the Black Death killed, you know, millions and millions and millions of people. And it was the

Christians who rose up and just had their finest hour loving people, you know, better than anyone. And, you know,

kind of posted that on my blog and people were like, you know, that perspective was really helpful.

You know, Max Lucado's got a great book called Anxious for Nothing. And I just did a short video

yesterday where I stole an illustration he uses called, where, you know, it's the scene in Jaws,

where they're out there, everyone's scared to death about the circling shark. And this very bad

special effects shark comes up and scares them all. And the great line that the sheriff gives

there while they're out there is, when he sees the size of the shark, he says, "You're going to need

a bigger boat." And, you know, the implication is clear. If they're on a battleship looking down

at that little tiny, it's going to look like a minnow, you know. And so we've got all these

circling sharks of fear and panic right now with the stock market and whatever else, but aren't you

glad that we're on a bigger boat? You know, just these basic analogies that remind people of the

size of our God and the size of our faith are important. Gene Apple was just saying this morning,

this is a good time to pull out John 14. You know, trust in God, trust also in me. That's the recipe for

my peace I give you. And we need to give that kind of word to our people. I think I'm looking for

passages in the Psalms which talk about the firm rock that we stand on in times that feel shaky to

people. You know, there's lots of language about quarantine going on right now. And it's like,

yes, if that's what has to happen, be great, but think to do that, but be safe. But think of all those

passages that say, God is my refuge and God is my fortress. He hems me in and I'm safe there.

So, you know, I think those are the kinds of things that I think of pastorally. And then,

you know, Psalm 112 is just a great one that we're using on the close of a lot of our e-notes

right now. Psalm 112 7 says, don't fear bad news. The people of God confidently trust in the Lord to

care for them. They're confident and fearless that they can face any foe triumphantly. So you all are

experts at this, but sometimes it's helpful to hear, you know, what others are grabbing onto. So those are

some, some pastoral things, just, just quickly, then maybe some practical things.

We, do you want to jump in there?

Okay. So, so practical for us, we have made the decision this morning that we won't be

having services this weekend. So we're busy right now. Another room full of people getting our

communication plan all together, a sequence of 10 or 12 communications, but one of them will be a video.

And I, rather than, than a written e-note or something, I think it's important that we try to

be physically present as much as possible and demonstrate the power of media and digital

rather than sending out an email. And so that way they can hear your tone of voice and you can

pastorally lead in a way you can't through an e-mail or something. But we're, we're not going to say

we're canceling services. We're going to say our worship gatherings are all online this weekend.

We're, we're, we're, we're pre-recording that. And it will be a abbreviated service just because we don't

want to just sort of say, hey, mountain people, let's go online. We want to say, you have a friend

that probably needs to hear what we're going to say. And I'd rather have them invited to a 35 minute

sort of loop than a 70 minute one as a first touch. So we don't want to just do this for our people.

We want this to be a moment by God's providence. We jumped on the bandwagon months ago and said,

let's do the anxious for nothing series. That series has been done by a number of people.

There's a host of great resources. There's a book by Lucado. There's free resources from Grishel.

Ashley Woolridge did it. I just completed it. Gene Apple's done it. Tim Harlow's done it. So you know

how this works. We all steal everybody's stuff and it's all good. Give credit where it's due,

but the timing could not be more beautiful. So we just ended that series. We were going to launch a

new series. We're pivoting and we're going to continue with anxious for nothing. There's plenty

more that the Bible has to say about this and be able to just talk about that from a real practical

standpoint, uh, in light of the current reality. So that's our plan. There's a separate video recording.

We're going to do for, for kids and a separate one for students. Um, and the, and the kids is going

to continue immediately after we're finished with the recording for the sort of main service, which is

going to include a time of, you know, talking about how to be faithful to God and giving and ways to talk

about that. And also a home communion, you know, just we'll, we'll have that kind of, um,

um, pre-packaged get together with friends if you want to, but in your home participate with this

worship. We're going to have a message. We're going to have some songs and, and worship together that

way follows immediately with a kid's presentation, um, that our student minute kids ministry is doing,

and then a link to what the kids are doing. And that, that will happen, uh, separately.

Then in addition to that, we'll be saying in an email today, um, Hey, this is our decision and what

we're doing. Go to the website. That's where you'll link to the experience. But in addition,

Hey, uh, here's some new things we're doing. And if you don't know anything about mountain,

we'd love to have you join us. And we're just going to do some pop-up zoom groups. Uh, we'll do

one. That's just like Greg gave us a great idea this morning, Greg Nettle. We're going to do one just

on how you talk to your kids about, you know, stress and anxiety, what's going on. How do you

talk to your kids about Corona virus? You're going to have some time at home with them, uh, with schools

down. Uh, and so, uh, that's just going to be a pop-up kind of zoom. And we'll just put the, um,

the, the, uh, the invitation out for people to join us and spread that social media wise. Uh,

we'll have like pizza with the pastor, except buy your own pizza and eat it in your house. And we're

just going to talk out, uh, talk through a passage of scripture and, and do those kinds of things.

Now, all of our other groups are encouraged to either to avoid canceling, but to postpone

or go live, uh, on, uh, digital and our large groups. Um, we're going to do those on zoom and the

rest are group specific. And so the group, if they're more comfortable with Google, they can do it that

way, but the groups will decentralize and decide how they're going to do that online.

So those are some practical things we're thinking about. We just got something come across the wire

there locally. They're wanting to train a bunch of people to deliver groceries to the elderly. Um,

so we're going to let our people know that and say, Hey, here's a way to do that. As things unfold,

I think it's going to be really obvious that we're going to have some new opportunities to love

our communities, wherever you are, uh, through these kinds of ways. And, um, but we've just kind of today

made that shift to saying we were holding on, holding on saying, Hey, if you want to come, come,

we were advised by some medical professionals that because of the delay in the symptoms, you've got

people that are going to be asymptomatic. They're gathering and they're healthy, but they sneeze and

they give it to someone else who goes and gets sick. They're going to track that. They're going to say,

where were you? They're going to say, we were at mountain church. They're going to come back and they

very well, well, we're on a quarantine, everyone who shows up, which is not the kind of press we want.

I don't want to get into all that jazz, but in our area, it's clearly the right thing. Uh, and so

rather than regretting it, we're just, uh, we're going for it and saying, Hey, this is a great opportunity.

So, you know, just, uh, hopefully some of those categories will get your juices going in the things that

are important to you and your setting. Your posture is important. Some of the pastor

touches and the language of scripture. This is our finest stuff. You know, this is what we have is

what we have to offer. And then the practical stuff about, um, engaging deeply and the last P

obviously would be prayer. You know, I think people are people who don't pray regularly are willing to

pray now. So, uh, we're going to do some online prayer meetings and see if we can get better attendance

at those than we can when we do them in person. So hopefully some of that's helpful.

Amen. Thank you so much, Ben, for both the pastoral and practical insights. Uh, just that posture of

maintaining a calming presence, pointing people to the rock, the peace that we find, the hope that we

have in Jesus, all of those are really critical. And those are ways that we as the church can embody

the church, even if it's not physically, if it's done virtually. So we just have a few minutes left in

our time. I want to encourage people to continue to make use of the chat to a direct specific questions

at Jeff, Greg, Ben, or others also to be sharing some of your insights. Uh, many of you may also have

some unique ideas. Uh, I know, uh, our team has designed some just potential crazy ideas, things

that we could be doing that would be a servant to you. But as we look at ways to go from simply

broadcasting to facilitating engagement, to facilitating connection, to, uh, creating these types of

environments with some of the different tools that we've talked about, um, this is going to prove really

helpful. And I believe this is going to be an opportunity for the church to truly shine. Um, Jeff, what are

some of those, uh, ideas that we've talked about, examples of things that you've seen in other churches, ways that

churches are leveraging technology, particularly for the engagement? Uh, those are some things that I think

we could all use insights from. Yeah, I love that. I love what, what Ben said. And I'm actually, uh,

somebody texted me when they said it, that was a great idea. The whole student ministry pizza thing. That was

awesome. Uh, some, some crazy ideas, some, some things that just might work with y'all. Um, I, I can tell you,

it seems like in, in discipleship, as the 101, 201, 301, 401, kind of like the, the, the baseball

path, nobody ever gets to the home plate that, that being on mission, that discipleship or that evangelism piece.

Offer some of those classes online, uh, utilizing a webinar or a zoom thing. You got to realize that our

audience to, to Ben's point, it's a captive audience as this thing rolls out. Um, they're not going to get

distracted by a lot of the things in the physical realm. And so we've got an opportunity to speak in and some of that stuff that

never really gets traction in your church because everybody's just too busy doing other stuff.

Do it here or, or do a book club, uh, with moms or friends reading through, uh, a Christian book or

maybe even a book of the Bible. Uh, you know, just an opportunity to do something different. Yeah.

Try to like a book, book way, but like grant gather them together virtually and give them an opportunity.

Maybe it's trying something different than what you're more of a felt need, uh, as opposed to

more of what you maybe typically do. Try a different technique, train parents and how to disciple their

kids. Uh, yeah. So, so I got two kids, nine and 11. Um, I mean, I'm not saying I'm going to get stuck

in the house with them, but if I do get locked in, I'm going to run out of stuff to do at some point.

There's only so much like, uh, Nintendo I can play. And so maybe start to help me understand how to

minister to my kids so that I can be that spiritual leader. That would be awesome. There are services

online like, uh, Vomo.org and on flourish. And these are actually crowdsourced volunteer things like

databases where people post opportunities to serve and the churches and organizations can partner with

them and then do those service, uh, opportunities. And sometimes it's like large numbers of people.

Sometimes it's individual people needing a help in a situation. Maybe it's just making aware of,

of utilizing services like this. Um, and, and, and doing that within the communities where you are.

Here's what I do know is, is that, you know, oftentimes our staff are so busy creating that experience that,

that 40 hour a week, uh, driven towards that weekend service. We've got an opportunity to be highly

relational with this. And sometimes when we do technology, there's a level of, okay, the technology

is cold. And so it's, it's, it's non-responsive. It's distance. Um, what I, what I would argue is there's

an opportunity for us to be highly relational, highly personal when it comes to the technology. And so

the more high tech we use, the more high touch we need to be in those environments, uh, to build those

relationships to utilize the technology for individual conversations and crazy ideas like this, uh,

man, that, that, that'll help get you started on that.

Even just recognizing, as you said, there are platforms been mentioned hearing from their city

that there was a need for people to do groceries. If we're paying attention online to some of those

websites, you pointed us to Jeff or other community forums. We talked earlier about next door or Facebook

groups or different community groups where people are going to begin posting needs. And the church has

an opportunity to respond to those needs and to be the church again, embodying the church and the

gospel message, the hope that we bring, um, even when it starts online to take it back into the real life

experience. Um, we just have a few minutes left. I want to open it up for some questions. Uh, maybe it

could be on some of the technical aspects of the different tools or services that we've talked about

to up until this point, or, uh, to share different ideas that we're hearing from one another, uh, in terms

of how we can be engaging.

I know it's difficult to take advantage of that opportunity, particularly when we're in this space,

uh, virtually to come off mute, but, uh, recognizing that, uh, yeah, zoom gives us that opportunity.

Go ahead, Jeff.

Yeah. I tell you one of the things, uh, who's, who's a friend of mine. Hey, right.

Um, I, and we hadn't said this, but do a prayer service, um, gather together virtually on zoom

and, and pray. I'll tell you this. And, and, and well, yeah, I'll go ahead and say it. One thing that,

that I've always wanted to do, and, uh, maybe this is the catalyst that actually launches it,

but there's an opportunity. What if we spent a couple of days and just read the Bible together,

like reading it, not like studying it, doing a one-off conversation, but like starting at Genesis

and just take turns rolling in and out of an open zoom thing, uh, studying the word of God,

you got to realize like there's opportunities to be incredibly creative. The best ideas are ones that,

that you guys with your teams will talk through and find out, but there's opportunities to engage

and do things because they're not getting distracted with everything else. It's, it's our turn to come

in here and utilize online to push our mission forward in, uh, in the future. Go ahead, Nathan.

No, absolutely. It's just recognizing the opportunity that exists before us. And just, uh, as a reminder

of where we've been and where we're going, um, we've talked about the importance of making content

available, whether it be streaming and, or, uh, platforming content that people can download or

access on demand. We've talked about the importance of creating opportunities for engagement for that

two-way communication, particularly as people may become more isolated. Uh, especially I think about

someone like, uh, my mother who is less technically savvy and is less comfortable and recognizing,

introducing a tool like zoom or some of these other platforms we've discussed may be, uh, unfamiliar,

but really helpful. And so taking advantage of the opportunity that we have now to help get people

set up with those types of systems, uh, will be really helpful to facilitate that engagement

as it becomes difficult. Uh, the key being keeping on mission, even if we're not able to gather in large

groups, as has already been mandated, uh, here in Washington state and likely will be in other states

as well. Again, I love the way Ben reframed that we are not canceling. We are not discontinuing.

We are going online. The church is going to continue to be the church. We're just going to do it in

different ways, given the situation and the context that we find ourselves in. Once again, all these

resources, the links, the tools, uh, that Jeff has pointed us to Greg and others have mentioned,

they're going to be available in the notes that are on our landing page. And I'll invite one of my

teammates to just share that link directly in the chat. If you're dialing in and you're not able to

see that you can go to stadia church planting.org forward slash Corona resources. Also the church.digital

forward slash notes to speak to some of these opportunities. Um, as we begin to wind down our

time, I'm going to invite our president Greg to pray for us. And then I want to just let you know

that Jeff and I, and a few others will stick around. Uh, we welcome some dialogue. If you have some

specific questions based on your context, or you want to know what's going on in another part of

the world, as we said, we're leading out here on the West coast, those of you in the East and in

the heartland are going to be following, I suspect. So we'll make that available. So closing thoughts,

Jeff or Greg, as we begin to wind down. Jeff, um, what's the licensing they need to do this stuff

online. Anything? Yeah. So, um, that was a great question. Uh, whoever said that in the thread,

one of the challenges with, with Facebook is, um, is that they have their own DRM digital rights

management. And, um, oftentimes worship music gets flagged as, as being, um, uh, illegal, not illegal,

but you don't have permission to play that, um, not to get technical, but, um, it's specifically

when the band is using what's called a loop or a track underneath their music that they've

specifically taken from another band. So if you're singing a Hillsong, it's not a song,

it's not a problem, but if you're singing a Hillsong song and you're using Hillsong's kind of drummer and

beat, believe it or not, Facebook's figured out how to recognize, Hey, that's, that's your,

you're singing a Hillsong song. And even though you have all the legal rights to perform it in the

building, uh, and you may even secure the rights with other places to broadcast it online.

Facebook is doing their thing to lock it down. Now you can tell Facebook after the fact, no,

I do have rights and they'll, they'll open it up for on demand. But at the moment with the live

broadcast, it'll, they'll literally black you out. Um, and, and if you're a repeated offender,

they'll black you out like over extended broadcast. So yet another reason to go ahead and, and create

those systems to share that content on your own church's website platform. Yeah. We can start with

the social media tools that are available at our disposal. And if that's all we have the capability

capability to access, go ahead and do that. But for this reason and a myriad of others,

others, we want to encourage church to go online themselves and make use of their website so that

they can serve their community. I do want to respect our time, Greg, please.

Yeah. What, um, how can they, you're going to stay on. They can ask more questions about licensing

after you have one day seminars coming up, you have cohorts starting. How do they get involved in those?

Yeah. So great. Thank you for Greg and Nathan have loved this. So through the church digital,

as well as stadia, we are offering, uh, several, uh, resources available for you guys. First off,

I understand that as a church, we're, we're under the quite literal gun as, as we're trying to figure

out how to proceed quickly. If you need help, specific one-on-one help, uh, through stadia,

we are offering, uh, individual consulting, uh, towards that. If you go to the church digital

slash notes at the bottom, you'll see a form, uh, as we have availability with, uh, consultants

and people who know online ministry very well, we can connect you with them. And through stadia,

we can help get the needs met. In addition to that, we are offering long-term, uh, cohorts

and strategy sessions. The next one's going to be, I think June 23rd, where we are going to be meeting

in Cincinnati, Ohio for a, uh, a 24 hour, uh, bootcamp essentially to help you develop your strategy for

church online, how it, so that it matches, so that it compliments, so that it can effectively help you

as you're doing your, your church ministry. This isn't just a, a band-aid job to get you through,

uh, you know, coronavirus season, but it's more of strategically, how can we help you develop

church online so that it's effective part of your ministry? Uh, there's information as well. We can put

the, uh, the stadia, um, link in there, or you can fill out through the church digital either way,

and, uh, we can get you connected more information on that. I provide a number of resources online,

blogs and podcasts through the church digital, and I would love to invite you into that as through the

church digital and through stadia, um, we're coming together literally in real time here, helping people

like you develop effective ministry so that we can create disciples in virtual space. So thank you for

this, uh, back to y'all. Okay, so here's the deal. Real quick as we're wrapping up, we have less than a

minute. Um, here's a couple things we've learned about these big zoom meetings. There's a reason we're

popping back and forth from person to person talking. You need to do that as well. In, in digital space,

it's, it's really difficult to listen to one person for an hour. Okay. Even if it's Ben Kacharis and as

good as he is, um, the optimal sermon and listening time is actually going to come down, typically be

shorter than what you can do in your weekend gatherings. And so, you know, be aware of that. Use a host,

use multiple speakers, things like that. And people aren't going to engage in a large group like this.

They don't in the all stadia staff meetings, but they wouldn't in our weekend gathering at Rivertree

either with a thousand people sitting in the auditorium. If I said, does anybody have a question?

Very few people are going to ask a question. Same online. The questions have to come in smaller groups.

And when you break people out. Okay. Thanks for your time. Let me pray and bless you as we go.

Father, so grateful for these leaders and the church, your church that you've entrusted to us.

God, I pray that you give them supernatural wisdom in making the decision to, to gather this weekend

or whenever they gather of what, you know, digital platform to use of all those difficult questions.

God, I pray that you protect your church, that you pray, protect the health of these leaders and their

families. Please bless them in Jesus name. Amen. Have a great weekend, folks.

Nathan, can we address maybe some of these other questions if people want to stick around?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Jeff, start us off. You've got some great insights on this.

Yeah. If, if y'all have questions and you're interested, I probably got 10, 15 more minutes,

so we'd love to address some of that as you're interested. Somebody's asking about what worship

looks like in context of broadcasting it live. The biggest concern that you're going to have,

the biggest problem with broadcasting worship is the mix, especially if you're mixing,

like for the audience and not for the online people. For example, if your drum is live on stage,

not in a box, a drum cage, but in the room, chances are your mix for the house is very low because the

drums are acoustically loud. Now, if you listen to that online, it might sound weird. Just, it's going to be

a unique mix. Figure out ways to overcome that. Hopefully your sound engineer can, can help overcome

that. So just recognizing even that there's a difference between that mix for live versus

something that would be either streamed and or recorded and made available offline. That's a great

first step. Yeah. One thing that's also, and we didn't really hit on this much, we just kind of flew

past it is this idea of pre-recording and on demand. So there are, when I was online pastor at a church,

we recorded our services Saturday night and then we were able to adjust it on Sunday. Now you guys may

not have the opportunity, but there's also an opportunity to record things live in an empty room

and to make adjustments to it, utilizing technology and then scheduling it to play back at a later time

or just making it on demand overall. Here's Jeff. Yeah. I see, I see the advantage to making something

available on demand as opposed to live. I'm almost questioning what's the value of a live stream.

Is it primarily so that people can engage with one another in real time, perhaps as they're watching?

And if, if that's the case, how do they do that? Yeah. So the, it's, it's, it depends on

the environment and the people that you have. So I can't give you a solid answer, but I can tell you this.

You'll receive more views on demand, which means people watching it Monday through Saturday than

typically what would happen on a day. However, um, they, the ability for you to engage with people,

talk with people, chat hosts, do ministry in that space. It's much more effective on that Sunday

live broadcast. In other words, like I may be at the workplace. I'm like, Hey man, let me put on the

service. It was a great service from this week. I'm just doing some work. Let me put this on aimlessly

in the background. That's what oftentimes your on demand viewer is on a Tuesday afternoon. Whereas

maybe like actually engaging with that person and driving them towards the discipleship process.

A lot of that happens more on the Sunday service. Um, and so, plus your, your Christian audience and

the people who are more used to physical ministry are more used to attending on a Sunday. And so they're

more likely to engage with your content, just realizing, Hey, it's Sunday, nine o'clock. I need

to go to church, but it's not at the physical space because I'm on lockdown. So let me, let me go watch it

online. Uh, there's opportunities and there's benefits for both. It's just knowing the context of, of what you're

trying to achieve. And the nice thing about digital is that we don't necessarily have to choose. We can

do both. We can make available content in real time in order to engage with people in order to facilitate

those types of chats, whether they be via our own systems or something like a messenger, a group chat,

or, uh, we talked a little bit about WhatsApp, some of these different tools, but then also utilizing

digital to make either that same content or something similar available on demand, whether it be a

podcast or a video cast, or even our church here in Seattle is pre-recording services, uploading the file

to a link, uh, that churches or that members can download in their homes. And they're encouraging

us to watch that not only as a family, but with our neighbors. And, you know, Ben said earlier,

they're even customizing what they're doing at mountain in order to make it more accessible and,

and to say, Hey, why don't you come over? We're going to hear some encouragement in these troubling

times from our pastor, uh, and, and making that available to engage your community, to continue to be on

mission. I love that. Somebody's, somebody's asked here, sorry, I'll just cut, cut you off. I apologize.

Um, uh, Michael's asked, how do you handle worship when you have to do offsite because you don't have

access to the building? Um, I have seen people, small churches, um, literally set up a good acoustic

guitar and a gym bay in a living room, have three people on a couch and lead worship that way. Uh,

that, that specifically was a good Friday service. It was done by a friend of mine last year,

but super unplugged, super low budget. I'm not, the phone, the camera may have even been a phone,

but it was a worship environment that that was created. If you're in lockdown and you can't even

enter the building, your audience is going to appreciate you're on lockdown and you can't even

enter the building. Just find ways to be creative in that. Or maybe even here's the, here's a step two

challenge. Do you have to do musical worship in that environment? Or can you be more creative with

doing some things, um, with that? Maybe, maybe worship in that context looks different. Maybe it's

more of a prayer service than it is a whole, uh, musical expression that we're typically used to

seeing. Be, be creative with that space as you're, you're fleshing it out.

I know a lot of churches will put together a virtual set list, their worship set. Um,

but then they'll just go ahead and, you know, tag the actual artists on Spotify and, or, you know,

Amazon music or iTunes or whatever, uh, system you use that you say, Hey, these are the songs that we

sang, or we were going to sing, or we're singing together, but you can listen to them directly,

you know, via the artist. There's something neat, however, about the personalization. Uh, yeah,

maybe Hillsong music sounds better than, uh, the team at my church, but being able to see and hear

from them, particularly in these times, I appreciate, I know a church that is a multi-site and they're

actually recording services uniquely for each one of their locations, utilizing people from each of those

distinct locations in order to reflect their community, their respective communities. So it's not as if

they're only going to take advantage of, Hey, the one that has a centralized location, they're sharing

that. And that might be a way that churches that do have physical space could, uh, share with those

of us that don't. There are a lot of church plants, obviously that's our wheelhouse, who don't have

the 24/7 space and an existing church or an established church with the location

being willing to open up their space, even maybe share some of their technical equipment so that

a church plant can do that and make those services available to their congregation. What an opportunity

for us to band together as the church, as the body and share those resources.

Some of the other technical questions we saw, Jeff, speak to, uh, more on, on platforms and systems,

processes. We can get into weeds now. Yeah. Um, uh, man, I don't even know where to start. Somebody throw

a systems question in here if, if you've got it, but let me address, because this, this one's close to

my heart. Scott, who's up, it's seriously to send questions. I, I, I, I'm open. Um, Scott, uh, he's,

he's out of, he's out of school. Uh, it may be shutting down, trying to figure out options. Uh,

so the church that I attend in the same situation, Scott, we have one of our campuses is at a high

school. Uh, we actually received an email, maybe not as strong as what you have, but that the contracts

are being invalidated, uh, as we speak because of this situation, we are not officially getting kicked

out, but there's grounds to the county has basically ripped up all the contracts as a result of it. Um,

once again, as stuff like that happens, I think there's opportunities to be creative in the space. Uh,

I think your audience is going to recognize that there's this problem and that they're going to

appreciate what you are trying to do as a result of it. I don't, I don't know that I would challenge

anybody to go against, you know, leadership, leadership's in place by God. They're Romans.

We can have that conversation. Uh, but essentially I think there's an opportunity for you to look at it,

at it differently. Yeah. In many cases, that decision is being removed, but for those of you that are

wrestling with, uh, it's still our decision to make. We haven't been told we can't gather yet

via the state because we're a larger group of people or via whatever, uh, facility that you may be renting

space from. That's where you're going to have to really pray and discern, uh, because there are

advantages to coming together corporately. There's a reason that we want to do that. Uh, and what we've

tried to talk about here today are what are ways that we can continue to connect, continue to convene,

to gather people, uh, even in this sort of disembodied virtual way. Uh,

that's where the contextualization is going to be really critical.

One of the things I'm excited about our, our neighborhood, since our schools and churches

have all already been closed, uh, we're seeing a lot of activity on social networking sites where

parents are banding together and saying, Hey, let's, let's pool our resources to, to care for,

continue to educate our children and, uh, you know, making our homes and places of worship available

for those types of gatherings. Um, particularly to the community that may be in search of spaces

that they could gather in again, in deference to whatever the guidelines are locally with regard to,

uh, what, what's being asked by the authorities. Uh, but if we can continue to gather in small groups

to make the spaces that we have available to others presents an opportunity to be a real witness and a

source of hope and encouragement. All right, everyone, let's close in prayer. Father, thank you for this

opportunity to reach the world for Jesus. Thank you for this opportunity to be the church,

your church in our community, to care for people by bringing them food. Ah, God, to enter into even their

illness and care for them. Father, I pray that you'll protect our, your church, that you'll protect us as

your church caretakers. But Father, I pray also that we will boldly go where you ask us to go and that

we'll lead so that people look and all they can say is Jesus showed up. We pray your blessing on every

single person on this call, Father, as they lead and make hard decisions in the days and weeks to come.

May you empower them and lift them up in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Thanks, everyone. Thank you all for joining us. We appreciate, uh,

the, the, the desire and the intention that all of you have to continue to be the church in these

tumultuous times. Uh, we will, uh, make the notes available on the web links that have been shared here in

the notes section, as well as the landing page as we leave this, uh, zoom room, uh, and encourage you to check

back in, uh, and follow along, share your insights. What are you learning? And, uh, what, what are the resources that you

would make available? Uh, thanks to those who've already done that in the chat space. Um, yeah, the church is the hope of the world, and we will continue to be that, uh, and provide that hope, even in these times. So thank you all for being with you.

Thank you all for being with us today. God bless you. Um, let's be the church.