EP045: Church In A Bar & Other Innovations

episode 45 here of the church digital podcast if nothing else i'm transparent open and honest

because when i give bad advice to people i at least admit it on public record so that everyone

everyone can hear it so here's where we are we're bringing in two people into this conversation here

evan conley who is it director slash becoming online pastor there at lighthouse church as well

as joey santos from christ church now here's where we are both of these guys are doing some unique

innovative things involving video and worship at micro locations and even multi-site locations and

so about a year ago uh evan conley asked my advice on something his first time i'd met him and i gave

him advice and my advice was horribly horribly wrong and thankfully evan and his church didn't listen to

me and instead did what they wanted to do anyway and then god did something phenomenal with it so

there's fun stories some awesome conversations centering around video worship video teaching

and also a level of innovation here in the core of really what church online needs to be about so

check out this podcast here you go yeah so like i owe evan an apology which is weird to kind of open

up with but like so a year ago first time i met him maybe it was 15 months ago i was talking with him

he's you know asking my advice on some things with church online whatever and um and he says to me he

says yeah we're we're even we're doing like uh looking to like launch some of our our micro site

basically as you know a smaller campus smaller multi-site campus with with video worship

and um and just in the moment being non-innovative non-creative whatever i'm like i don't think i

said this but in my mind i was like that's the stupidest idea i've ever heard in my life

and uh and i can just and i can remember because and i'm pulling that from like i just granger up in

indiana uh tried this maybe a decade ago with one of their campuses and i just remember the stories

of where their the video delivery system failed launch week they literally had no pastor they had

no worship and because it was all video based and the streaming system failed and they had a campus

pastor on stage i don't know doing a song and a dance uh number trying to stall and it never got up

and so like the first week was this giant flop and so i i had that in my head you know not taking

the consideration streaming has gotten so much more effective video has gotten so much tighter uh and so

then like a year later i see evan or you know talking to him and he's like hey that that video venue campus

is going great and i felt like a total you know jerk for telling him that's the stupidest idea when it

works all of a sudden i catch up with with joey and hear from him like you're doing church in a bar

with video and i'm like wait so this whole thing of video worship is working and and i just i want to

have that conversation i want to unpack a little bit here because we got two different churches

not connected in any way who are do being effective in creating micro locations small locations multi-site

locations maybe in context of a video and so i wanted to hear some stories what does it look like how's it

been how's it been receptive kind of what are you what are you learning and experiencing by doing

you know the musical form of worship via video evan why don't you kick us off sure yeah so it's funny

you mentioned um the tech issues because that is something we experienced um very early on as we

were still figuring out our system so one of the things for us that seems to help is the fact that

we have a saturday service as well as our broadcast campus so what we do is we actually have that get

uploaded to um a cloud storage server and we download that in the morning okay so that way we have a

physical copy of a backup sermon we have worship and all that and i think it was our second week in

we actually had to go over to that backup and there was a little bit um you know where things would be

referenced to this evening that kind of thing but if we hadn't had that you know second week into the

campus i don't know what that would have done as far as momentum and the feel of that campus

so having a backup system um it's been really huge but as long as we've been able to get the signal

there um everything's been great um we didn't know what to expect and i remember that conversation

we had so that was in my head going into this too i was like oh i think what you told me was um

you wanted to be like you know keep me updated on that because i haven't heard of that going well

i'm curious to hear how that goes and so i've got that in the back of my head yeah because i'm down

there for the first month and so every week i'm just kind of looking around the audience during

worship thinking about that i'm like are they into this how's this going and i was blown away you know

you see hands up during worship and um it just you really feel like the audience is connected with

what's going on um if the worship leader would pause and pray they'd bow their heads you know

they'd clap to respond to things it really felt like there was a worship team on stage

and i was blown away it wasn't what i expected so awesome hey joey what what does it look like what's

you're you're in a and i i said that quickly people may have thought i was joking you're literally doing

church in a bar yeah so let's unpack that a little bit and kind of kind of share what that what that

looks like yeah and we we started with the online campus idea uh with a full engagement like what's

online church will look like by providing full engagement uh to people and we we kind of develop

this kind of four levels of engagement and the fourth level lands on the one-on-one experience

that is you know when you go from online to offline and that for us lands on the house campuses

so the idea is for somebody like this is my church this is where i want to worship uh and if i'm going to

do this my house i'm going to bring friends i'm going to bring my family and we're going to do this

together so that's what the idea of house campuses for us kind of as a part of this engagement process

uh and then do you know we there's this bar like 10 miles from our church uh and the owners of the

bar go to our church uh and we talked about you know what it would look like to have a church at the

bar well let's take the house campus model and just take it to the to the bar uh and that's what we did

it's usually is on in our um second service we have two services on sunday our second service is the at

the bar uh and our opening day we had 65 people show up to have a church at the bar uh it took a

little bit though to to kind of like introduce the community the idea i mean we did a couple of public

events uh at the bar to introduce say hey we're going to meet here we're going to worship here

um it's about community and that's one one of the focus of the church at the bar is not to try to

replicate the environment that we have in a physical church it's really to to be a place of community

people go to the bar to do a drink and talk so we wanted the church at the bar to be a place where

you go learn the bible and talk uh so that's that's pretty much what we did uh and it's it's going

pretty well it's uh it goes up and down but we see people come in i was there last sunday um because i

usually host online every sunday but i have a i'm second second host now and so i had a chance to

actually worship at the bar sunday uh and i met this young man uh who came to me and said hey i see

you on the tv all the time but i'm glad you're here we can meet in person and he said i've been coming

for six weeks now and i made a commitment to never step a foot in the church ever again because my

experience but coming to the bar has been really good for me uh and you know he's a single father

bring his daughter with him to the bar and they worship together at 10 30 on sundays uh so has

been pretty good we i mean let's be to be very strategic uh one of the things i do we now add

two worship singers to the schedule at the bar they don't they don't stand up front and lead they stand

up with everybody else and they just lead with their voices okay so you're modeling the behavior

that's really smart okay so instead of i just like they stand up they're going to be louder than

anybody else so but they're on the schedule on planning center with the entire worship team

the only difference is that that's sunday they're going to serve at the bar okay and that's and that

also helps that to develop their relationship so the bottom line for us is the bar is a place for

relationships like that's why we created that and we're hoping that you know the combination

between that and the online experience kind of brings that together yeah

now so joey you've got the you so this is more of like you mentioned like house church and i've used

micro church micro location like so this is a more elaborate model of that like you know the average

house church probably 20 to 30 in an online context yes 65 right so it's it's a house church at a bar

exactly and i mean that bar if we get really crazy and hopefully we will i can have up to 400 people in

it so wow i have a space to grow uh but for example like here's a very interesting um thing for our

community uh as i start to promote uh the church to the bar through social media i discovered one very

interesting thing i did this a b test with the ads and i i launched an ad with one content and the second

ad with different content and the first ad i got no engagement at all like no likes no shares and the

second one i got a lot of likes shares and actually messages in my inbox with tell me more about the church

the bar and you know what the difference was between the ads the ads that i got more response

did not have the church branding on it

okay so uh it's very interesting to see that uh people are willing it feels like people are willing

to learn more about it to hear more about it but they really kind of there's a perception about

religion that people actually don't want to be associated with and the church name kind of

carries that a little bit so i i just removed everything i remove all the church branding from church

in the bar and and it's part of our cc live what we call our our online church and it's part of our

it's a house campus uh and they when they walk in they want to watch a church service from sunday from a

physical church but i think that a first approach is different so and as a here's here's where it gets

different though uh one things that we're doing now we're partnering with the bar to do community

events so like this saturday we're doing a friends giving so the church of the bar in the bar are going

to partner and we're going to offer turkey and ham all afternoon and people are bringing side dish and

we're going to have this big thanksgiving meal available to the community anybody can come and

have it oh that's cool uh and we talk about you know it's the church of the bar and during that day

saturday we're going to put up two christmas trees and people be able to buy christmas ornaments

uh with uh as a donation for uh to end the the nutrition crisis in local schools

so what we're trying to do is really using that opportunity of the church of the bar that's an

online experience to partner with a bar and help have the community kind of go out and be part of

something in relevance uh it has been a very it's a very like a new for us and organic things happening

do you know like we we're just testing the grounds and see where it goes

one more one more question and i'm really anxious to hear kind of evan's angle on this but

what's the is the end game of the bar church to bar church is the end game more bar churches is the

end game put all these people together into a brick and mortar campus like what's the strategy move on

how you're utilizing the micro the same strategy there is the strategy that the bar is the same

strategy for any house campus this bit they can probably never step foot in the in a in a in a

physical church as we know ever again we're okay with that wow see in our model of online church

if my next door neighbor that lives right by the church engages with us online and truly engage

he's on bible studies he gives he participates he never walks into our building we're okay with that

because he's he's he that's his community and we're going to make sure to to give him all the

spiritual nutrition that he needs online and we give him community the way that that fits him best

uh and we're okay with that so our hope is that the church at the bar are going to grow

and that's going to be a community a place of community and uh and we're looking into

possibilities right now in actually like a cigar bar uh where guys can get together have bible studies

during the week and and uh and do you know what here's the deal it is the cheapest satellite campus

growth we can put together because i don't have to pay for anything i tell you what i may want to

like join the cigar bar church that's that's actually not a bad idea i'm gonna i'm gonna write that down

i might borrow that down here in miami anybody want to open a cigar bar church totally totally in my my

wife is not a fan of the idea at all but i i certainly am right so

well done how many so how many right now joey how many micro campuses house uh we have uh we have five in

the u.s we have four in gunna africa and we have one in pakistan okay wow pakistan let's let's hold on

that i want to come back okay um evan so centerville um but you guys are grow you use the micro model as

kind of a a preface and introduction to a a multi-site that was kind of the strategy there right what what

does that look like yeah so for us it's trying to meet a different need so we're not necessarily

using it to reach people who normally would come to a normal church service but for us the reason that

we started that to begin with was with our online broadcast on facebook and youtube we were seeing

week and week again comments from people who live uh in what's the eastern shore so if you're not familiar

with maryland we have the eastern and the western shores which are separated by the chesapeake bay

and then we have the chesapeake bay bridge which especially during the summer the traffic can be

really rough but we have people who are making that commute on a weekly basis to come to one of our

campuses mostly to our broadcast campus but we also had a good number of people that we were seeing

with online connect cards and in the comments who were saying we can week again hey we're watching

from this area we'd love to have even and even specifically asking like can you guys plant a

campus over here like we love what you're doing and we want to have this over here but that was a

challenge for us because we had never planted a campus that far away and it was going to separate

us as far as resources and the personnel that we send down with that kind of commute we couldn't

support it in the same way that we support our campuses which are closer to our central broadcast

campus and so we didn't think it'd start quite like it has meeting in a high school originally we're

thinking maybe a fire hall or a library even we thought we'd have you know if we needed to we'd have

two or three locations of maybe 20 to 30 people spread around the western eastern shore which is a pretty large

area but um as we're going through and starting to scout out different locations we held an interest

meeting and we had i want to say 120 people sign up to attend an interest meeting for this location

and so at that point we realized it was going to be a little bigger than we thought

and so we went from looking for a fire hall or a library or that kind of thing to a larger venue more

similar to what we're used to but unlike our normal game plan we can't rotate our worship team into this

location in the same way that we could so we had to decide like could we still do video worship even

with a location that resembles a lot more of any one of our of our locations and we decided to give it

a shot because really it was the only way we could facilitate what we felt like we were being called to

do and well location over there your centerville campus it has um how many people attending and

at one point you told me it's like around like 100 i think where are you at now so we're averaging

around 150 we've peaked around 200 but the average around 150 people and and it's it's at the location

it's going to grow into or is are you is the plan to move somewhere else the plan for now is to stay

where we're at so we're at a high school which has a pretty good sized auditorium i think we could

scale to around 500 people per service so just definitely room for growth it's a nice convenient

location um it's easily accessible and um yeah it's been working really well for us plenty for him to

grow so for now the plan is to stay there so you guys you literally have 150 people is that two services

of 75 yeah is that 150 right now one service of 150 people sitting in a room being led musically in

worship by watching a video screen right so the only time that someone's on stage is we have our host

spot at the end of service where our campus pastor will come out and greet the audience you know tell

them what's going on specifically with their location that kind of thing but just about everything they're

seeing is happening on that projector screen wow i i just you know and and i we see it in church online

you see it with watching the individual like a person watching and i can totally see that i've even like

been in the house churches where it's 18 to 25 people worshiping with the tv um you know i i and

i just i've even i just mentally struggle i'm like wow there's 150 people like the the video technology

scales out that that large that's that's awesome yeah that's good has there been any like has there

been any negative feedback has there been any like people asking questions what did your lead pastor say

when somebody like pitched that idea to him i bet you that was a fun conversation you know what um

he was all in on it um i'm trying to remember you know there are a few of us involved in the initial

conversations but um i can't remember who necessarily pitched it first but he didn't have any pushback on

that at all like wow he was all in for that he he's all about um trying new things and trying to break

away from the traditional ways of doing things and so i know our executive pastor who's more operational

focused and how is this actually going to work he had more concerns on that but uh yeah our lead pastor

was all for it um yeah it's been great and i think you know being there for the first month or so as we

launched it it just occurred to me you know i'd sit in service and go out and see all the community

happening in the foyer after and i realized that it's not about what happens on the stage you know you can

have that community regardless of whether you're watching a stream service or whether you have live

performers on the stage and you can argue like is there a better worship experience you know just

like any other worship element you know if you have better lights or if you're adding haze or this or

that like maybe you can create a better environment for worship but you can absolutely do church

in my opinion you know to a very good amount of quality with a stream service it's the community

that's happening that's that's the church it's really just interesting to see how maybe some of

our internal biasness the way from you know it's it's it's an extension of i can't do video teaching

i have to have a live pastor in the room you know that next step is i really can't do video worship

i have to have have a live band well maybe do you do you really and it was was funny we had on um

just a couple weeks ago we had on uh maybe a couple months ago we had uh jim tomberland who's a multi-site

solutions he's one of the one of the founders of the pioneers of the multi-site movement and so we were

actually talking a lot with him about this idea of um video teaching and even like what it looked like

from him back in like the the 90s when he was at willow creek trying to pioneer where he would

literally put a vhs tape on a bus saturday night and a greyhound bus and it would be delivered to the

other bus stop and somebody from the other campus would pick up that vhs tape that's how they delivered

video teaching week in and week out vhs tape on a greyhound bus and a lot of the kickback that he had back

in and it was a great quote he's he said uh not everybody bought into it and even with what you

guys are doing i don't think everybody's gonna buy into it but enough people bought into it to make it

worthwhile to make it effective and and when we look at and that's really has been kind of the the mantra

for me for church online and micro locations and and what you guys are doing where not everybody's gonna

buy into this and i'm i'm done with the days of thinking that i've got to convince everybody that

church online oh yeah it never works it's you're not going to get there but you got to convince enough

people to make it worthwhile and and and show that it's going to impact enough people to make it worth

the effort and i i think honest to god in my experience that's not hard to show um you're not going to get

everybody uh and there are theological questions and things like that at least their perception is

there's theological questions um but at the end of the day like this is a really this is a really awesome

thing that you guys are doing hey so evan tell me this like what with your strategy um do you have

other kind of micro venues that are going to grow up using this video or is this kind of a one-time thing

how is that conversation gone with your with your church your staff now seeing the success of what's

happening at centerville yeah sure so we're starting to think more and more about what that's going to

look like um we are definitely thinking about multi-site probably starting at a smaller scale than this one did

um we just happen to have that big base of people who are watching online or making the commute here

um so we're exploring the idea of maybe finding someone who wants to host something in their own

house or a local venue and just giving them a few resources to help facilitate something of their own

that's not something we're currently doing yet but we're working through that um been reading a little

bit about what saddleback does um jacranda has a lot of information on what they're doing their

approach is incredible just the scale that they're able to pull that kind of thing off is just amazing

so it's our first one and um we've learned a lot from it we're probably going to try to do a similar

thing but on a smaller scale this one is rapidly becoming um its own campus i mean it's already it's

been designated a campus so it started as a watch party which would be our terminology for a microsite

and then i want to say it was like eight or ten weeks um we decided you know we've got over 100

people who are meeting here this is a campus so it went from the eastern shore watch party to lh centerville

in that short of a time we don't think though that's going to be the normal process so we're still

working through like how do you support a group of 20 people or 30 people or that kind of thing we did just

find out maybe a month ago just in the comments on our online feed we had someone who was watching

online over the summer she had a friend who just kept inviting her so she's like you know what i'm

going to watch this um she started watching over the summer and then just about a month ago she works

in a nursing home and she began sharing the service with her residents and so we're seeing pretty much

every week now she checks in that she's got the service off for her residents and so that wasn't

anything we planned or anything that's official but we've got in a way a multi-site microsite location

right there so we're as we're seeing that kind of thing happen we're like you know i mean if people

are even starting this on their own even with eastern shore we heard about and this didn't come up

until our interest meeting that we found out about it but people in this area have gathered in a home

and watched service together um during a snowstorm that we didn't even know happened maybe 20 or so

people just on their own organically formed you know microsite locations so we're seeing that it's

happening even if we don't do anything about it and we're trying to think through how do we support

that how do we do that in a way that's organized where do you draw the line of support because you can't

give the same resources to a microsite that you would give to a 200 person campus that kind of thing

yeah well and hopefully the the support's not as needed because the the the resources the model is

much simpler totally what we're really looking at is making it um kind of equivalent to how we see a

small group so you know our small groups you've got some content you work through whether that's a sermon

study or another book or some kind of thing um and you're just really there to host people in your house

um and so we're trying to see like as much as possible can we just pull the same model that we

use for small groups and kind of make that our microsite model that's awesome hey joey how's how's the

model kind of grown from you from you like you've got you got five america you got a couple of

international uh is it expats kind of down in that or i would love to just kind of maybe hear

how the idea of of micro grew out of online the gathering clustering to kind of where you are now

yeah so we we started with um you know pushing for engagement and telling people you know you've

got to be in community so uh if you're watching at your house and you decide this is my church we

always say hey just become a house campus uh and invite people in and have community so we

we kind of like extract the kind of idea from acts chapter two of a where you break bread together

you worship together and you go out and serve your community uh and and really it really start from

that idea uh so the the virus the the we we have a seasonal online baby studies right now so we we had

the fall baby studies and all house campuses usually they join those baby studies they they they either

like do on their own or some of them just decide to join other people online so they have a bigger

community but either way uh the discipleship is a big factor into this we we really push for for the

discipleship piece but i i think for us the expansion of that is really see it grow um from what it is

we really don't have this big master plan of uh okay when you become a house campus you have to reach this

goal here so we can transition to the next phase no if if that house is going to always have the 15

people meeting there but they're growing spiritually they're growing as a community and they're serving

the community uh we wanted them to keep moving we want to we want to keep them moving forward in that

direction uh so we we don't have this kind of master plan one thing that we kind of feel yet

um because everybody that has been baptized through the online church they end up coming here i mean

even from canada they want to fly all the way here so they feel like at least they've been to the

physical campus once uh and that's one thing i i think is interesting about the online church is that

because the current model they feel really attached to the physical campus yeah uh do you know what i

mean so uh uh one of the things that i've been looking at is uh in you and i kind of chat a little

bit about that before is should the model of the online church really kind of change uh and i know this

might be for another conversation but the way i see it the future of the online church may not be

necessarily just stream the streaming of your sunday service um because that attachment to the physical

campus can can kind of like stop the online church from real growth because people feel too attached to

the physical campus that they could not be they cannot be in uh so i'm starting to look into that

right now like i'm i start to have some conversations about uh you know even even at the church at the bar

uh should we modify the model so people are not attached to the physical campus they cannot be in but we produce

the content that actually drive the house campuses to create their own environments and and that fits them

where they are because culturally every place is going to be different that's that's one of the

challenges that i see for the online churches people can be watching ghana africa but there's some things

that's gonna it's about ghana africa and i cannot i cannot fulfill that those aspects of with the online church

so how i make the original responses is i just met another pastor from pakistan a couple weeks ago he

was here in the u.s and we had a great conversation and he's telling me about the ways to reach out to

their community and he's thinking about going to the tv you know then i'm thinking why don't you go online

and the thing that hit me was like well why don't we give you the support for you to start the online

church right there in pakistan not from here but you right there where you are and you can reach out

to the entire country yeah and he never looked at that way he right now we can we can stream yours

i said you know what it's not the same yeah but if you're on on camera you have the same infrastructure

that i have here but it's there is you and you're part of that culture so that's what i'm saying like

i'm my brain starts to really start to go to different places right now where what's next for

the online church uh because i like evan's model what he's doing because he really fits a need that

they have there and they they grow from it and you see the results of it and you and you just like you

experience that it's it's made for to meet their needs uh in in in like every online church is not

made the same it's not created the same right it's it's not the same format you want to feed everybody

so i think for us jeff is that is it's is looking ahead and see culturally how can we diversify how

can you make the online campus something that is really effective bring in relevant content to

people's lives bring jesus to people who don't know him yet uh uh and at the same time at the same

time allow people to build relevant meaningful relationships through it the the church there's

a perception that the church online today struggles to meet the perception of what today's church is

yeah um yeah so there's a lot of money that goes into creating the sound stages to allow you guys to

produce the video that you do the the lighting the cameras the encoding gear um there there's a lot of

expense that that's that's involved in that there's a lot of technicality it takes a lot to create the

environment for the pastor to speak his his message and to do all these things and so it's it's like

yeah church online struggles to do that not to mention that the way that both our worship and both our

our teaching are presented and broadcast um it's it's very easy to create a consumeristic identity

which is what we the church don't want we don't want to create consumers we want to create disciple

makers who are capable of creating other disciples um but honestly what's interesting at the end of that

is is we it's not just the church online that has that issue right it's the church overall has that

issue many of the things that that church online is faulted with and saying that hey you're responsible

for this so we don't want to do church online because we don't want lazy people sitting on couches

cool let's not do church online you'll have lazy people sitting on pews um at the end of the day

you're still it's that's still model just being being reproduced it's my podcast i can say that um

so yeah just just saying but what in fact what church online is capable of yeah it may struggle

with what the perception of what usa church is today uh but i think it thrives when you look at the

biblical model of what church is much of the things that that we perceive as as a biblical standard of

church i'm reading the bible and it's not in there like when you look at the man standing on stage for

40 minutes preaching uh there's value to that and i don't want to discredit many of the pastors who are

out there who uh as their job are the spiritual leaders of these organizations but lead pastor is not

a biblical position uh the orators that stand on stage actually came more and closer to three or 400 a.d

and and in fact at the time culturally it was they were these celebrities like it was like the tv star

who was on stage because they had so much value in the order capacity in those speakers and so a lot

of the things that it's like yeah church church online struggles with that okay well that's not really

the core of what biblical is and you know joey some of the the conversations that we've had is

maybe it's a whole other thing yeah and i just i i i i think you there's a there's a whole other model of

church yeah that is waiting to be revealed um and once again i don't want to disparage the model that's

here the church growth model in the big building uh because i think it's done a lot of good it's in

it's reached people in a big way and it continued and it will continue to do so but i think there's

another way i think there's another model um it was it was interesting just just today i had a um

i had a had a a doctorate student doctoral student at a at a seminary call uh to do a zoom thing with

me hit me up to the website and honest to god the conversation was so i googled how to plant a church

digitally and and you came up so can you talk to me about what planting churches digitally looks like

like and and i spent an hour educating like challenging the way his paradigm of how he views

and it was funny along the way he too was like yeah that's that's completely that's not biblical that's

not the way that it isn't but it's the standard that we've been so used to over the years oh yeah

and you guys just to bring it even home even you guys just challenging the paradigm of i'm gonna do

church in a bar i'm gonna do church in a um uh in a building and we're not even gonna bring a band in

um we're just gonna watch this via video my gosh if if that type of model worked um and as we continue

to see the success stories of how god's using these things um could you imagine the opportunities we

have to expand the gospel and to literally put it in the communities that are reaching people

that would not set foot in the church building it's i mean there's a phenomenal opportunity here

honestly if we would just get over ourselves a little bit and realize that god's bigger and it's

more capable than i think we sometimes give them credit as okay so can i run the risk to look sound

like a real real jerk for some churches here yeah sure i'll cut this if i need to are you okay with

that so i had a conversation with a friend of mine yesterday he's a he's a big producer and um he he's

i mean he produced some big guys and uh he called me because he said hey i want to get your take on

kanye west and what's going on because he actually might be involved in some production that will

involve kanye and and so he's like before i jump into these i want to hear from you what do you think

and we talk about it uh because kanye is doing this worship thing at his house yeah uh and because my

involvement in the online church he wants my opinion i said you know what i it i sometimes feels that i i

hope i i don't want to offend anybody but i'm just just hanging there for a second

sometimes feels that the church today is more like a real estate business than what church really

supposed to be we build this big infrastructures infrastructure these big buildings and now the

fight is we got to get enough people in and have enough activities enough stuff going on so people

can see the value and give them money so we can pay the bills and that's really that's just a real

estate business so we got to build more right so let's build another building because the business

is growing and i know this is a very the black and white way of looking at it but that be that becomes

the priority yeah well and not not to mention sorry to cut you off but there's a ticking time bomb

right because we keep buying more property we keep building these bigger buildings and at this point

we're tax exempt when it comes to property tax guess what that's not gonna be that way forever

well that's what happened that's what happened in north of indianapolis so the county came in and

said we're done giving licenses to churches we're done that's right because they want a revenue

so what happened now the churches are trying to buy other churches so to grow their multi-sites

so they're looking at churches they're like falling apart so they can buy to preserve because they

grandfather in so they can actually preserve that taxes again i'm not taking away the value of the

physical church at all i think the value is there has to be there uh exist is real they they add value

to the community but i think the priorities shift a little bit and again you just read the book

if you read the book culture trump strategy you you just get to a point where culture is doing that

right now culture is dead in the church the way we do church is not building value in my life

and i need to find a someplace else and the place where they find that is the internet

that's what they're fighting so i don't need to go to my church to hear the message from my pastor

every sunday because i can actually find that message in the internet somewhere the same thing or

probably better and i have more options so i think that the sense of value has changed for the culture

so we got to look at ourselves in the church and ask the question what is the value of someone walking

into my building and the same thing for us doing online what is the value of someone tuning in online

and and participating in a church service that's the question keeps coming back to me that's why i've

been questioning the model we were doing just by streaming our services that's a really like it's good for

us to ask those questions and trying to discover do you know the answers like what what is it what is

actually drive people win and why should they come in that's it like why people should come to my church

because sometimes feels like the back door is wide open and the front door is just this little thing

that nobody can get in and i think a lot of church in america today are going through this

i think they're they're asking that question there's less people on the chairs uh they we don't know how

to manage this we don't know what you're doing guess what we still have to pay the mortgage

now do you know what i mean and now now it shifts the purpose of the church let's get people in so

we can keep up with the mortgage i mean that's just the reality of it i mean if we if we can sit in

the room with no microphones and cameras and have these conversations i think a lot of pastors say man i'm

going through this right now yeah well let's have the conversations joe joey and i and evan i'll get

to you one second joey and i we were hanging out in colorado we would say we met each other i don't

know maybe a couple months ago and uh joey i didn't tell you the story but after i left you guys i hung

around for a couple days for some other meetings and i was i was uh driving around an uber somewhere i

don't even know where i was somewhere denver area there's a big giga church over here on the left

left and uh i'm talking to the uber driver and i just make some comment wow that church is huge this

is a it must have been like a four thousand person venue this is a giant church um and i was like man

that's that church is is beautiful what church is that this man starts f-bombing and copping an

attitude at the mere idea of this church and i'm not going to drop the name of the church i don't even think i

could remember it but he was not happy about this church uh and the perception at the end of this

very um um diatribe that was coming out of his mouth was that church has all the money and look

at what they spend it on this glorious beautiful building and they don't give a crap about me joey

uber driver whatever his name was he just they don't care but that's perception of this guy it's it's like

we we build these castles um that go towards yes good is done in the building and i don't want to

to demean that or or to speak ill of it because it is an effective model but not for everybody and

there needs to be other models to get out there and help evan you were you were wanting to say

something earlier yeah you know as i'm hearing we talk about this i've just got this phrase that keeps

coming to mind that's um different content for different people i think when you look at technology

companies especially everything is personalized you know when you go into instagram and you're

scrolling your feed you're the only person who's going to see that exact feed you've subscribed to

certain things artificial intelligence is learning your preferences and what's best to show you

you know no one is it's not the same approach for everyone to give them the best experience and i think in our context that means

you know we're not going to be able to do the exact same thing replicate that at every location

the more we can personalize things whether that's with a microsite having a different approach for

a different group of people or online even if we can find different ways to offer content differently

for different people of where they're at what they're going through i think that's what the technology

industry probably just the world at large is moving towards and yeah that's where we think i tell you

what joey like i i would be more interested in hearing about you reaching bar number two

and finding that niche yeah we're gonna be like the bar church yeah and just i remember what's his name oh my gosh

um mark batterson out at uh it's actually out in your world evan out at uh was it national

yeah ntc national community church yeah like back back a decade ago like he was he was the movie

he was the movie pastor the movie church pastor like i think he actually had that.com

i think that it was

something like that something yeah yeah but because it's like okay so we're going to create our content

we're going to reach people in this and that when that was his stick well you know he's bought coffee

houses and things have moved on past then but yeah so once you find out how to reach people in the bar

man knock on every bar in town and just try to replicate this this model well let's see the results

what we start seeing is out right now is the impact that the church is having on the staff of the bar

didn't even think of that but you are right and the owners you start to point it out

so what they they for example the bar doesn't open until noon on sunday

but he said they start seeing the staff coming early on sunday now and they start moving around but they

listen the tvs are all on on the service so they start listening to it well recently um

they discovered that one of one person worked in the bar for a long time uh just discovered has cancer

and so i you know the bars close to your house we we go there a lot really they have food trucks and

it's a great place to hang out um it's by the river beautiful location uh so i'm there on sunday night

to meet some friends and i saw the guy and listen the bar is packed and we're in the middle of the

patio and i stopped him and said hey i just heard what happened to you uh how can i pray for you

and he just told me i didn't ask him if he was christian i didn't ask anything he knows me he's

no i'm the only he knows i'm the only pastor who runs the church the bar deal and so he turned to me

and said man i if you can pray for peace and i mean he told the things and i just lay hands and we

pray for him right in the middle of the bar where people are like drinking and having conversations

all around wow we just pray right there uh and i when i was done praying he got tears in his eyes and

he's just like so we're we're just doing this like church thing out you know at the bar and we're

being getting known in the area by you know we have so it was kind of funny because it was not weird for

the people around to see us praying for him right there in the middle of the bar uh and the staff

it was a big thing for the staff to see that happening so uh we've been asked about lately to

like hey our two of the employees are leaving would you guys come and pray for them before like things

like that wow would you guys come before they leave this is their last day i show up they're having this

thing oh let's stop let's pray for them you've become the the church of of the bar man exactly

exactly so uh it is a pretty kind of fun to watch that kind of development because it's something that

for the for the model we have today these people need to make a decision to step into a church building

to receive that uh and that's not the case anymore that we are there we're going to pray for you and

it's no longer like uh would you be okay if i pray for you and then we don't ask the questions like how

can i pray for you hmm uh we kind of skip that step because this is who i am

doing me i'm a christian i'm a i'm a child of god and i'm going to pray for you regardless if you like

it or not i'm going to pray for you so i'm not going to ask you if you want me to pray for you

i just want to say how how can i pray for you give me something so that i can help that's fine exactly

and and they and they like it's kind of hard right for somebody to say uh oh no no i don't want

you to pray for me people are usually not going to say that they have they have the freedom to say it

but usually they won't say that uh so i think that's that's the one of the impacts for us like

to me like if we did all this to get this entire bar staff in a direction in a path

of becoming disciples of christ that's enough that's sufficient for me for us to do all this

uh but i think god has a lot a lot in store for us there well i tell you what there's there's a lot of

innovation in these in these conversations um and they're not it's not big innovation like um joey

you've got bars all over the city finding the relationship networking with the one

we build a was it his idea or was it your idea whose idea was it to go into the that was my idea

because we talk about house campuses and i yeah keep going you know i go to the bar and i was like man

what do we look like to have a church at the bar and they got tvs everywhere i mean yeah so he

and he literally he was like dude do whatever you want and they go to that bar to the church of the

the bar the owners now so that's where they attend yeah uh and and here's what happened this last sunday

they uh broadcast on their facebook page come to church yes so that oh my gosh the bar promotes

the church on their facebook page and they rebroadcast our services on their facebook page

that is unbelievable i know so i just but but but i guess my my point is like this is such an innovative

idea but this is not an expensive idea it's and it's not we're not building anything even evan's

stuff with with broadcasting worship it's it's a video encoder and using the infrastructure you already

it's a hundred it's a hundred dollar expense it's a apple tv box okay apple tvs are more like 229 in

fairness but still you can do a 40 dollar roku i bet if you're really gonna exactly you can do that too

but it's it's like look at it's it's looking at what you have with fresh eyes right yeah and and it's

like okay there's a concept there's an idea there's something here that's unique that somebody's that

nobody's ever thought of in in a way that is is completely new um we recently did a podcast and this is a

this is a an elaborate story but it gets there's simpler ways to do this we did a podcast with the

the guys over at uh christ fellowship west palm beach and we talked with um talked with their pop-up

church pastor which is a weird thing but essentially they used to do like portable church and uh and one

of their campuses shut down so they still had all this like gear from the portable drawer it didn't shut

down it became a permanent campus but anyway they had this like excess gear sitting around and uh and

somebody came up with the idea hey what would it look like if we actually like just drove around the

different neighborhoods and did church just you know different neighborhoods every week nobody in the

country is doing pop-up church everybody talks about it there's this room these people are all are

doing it utilizing for the most part gear they already had upgrading it and yeah christ fellowship

west palm beach is very over the top production value but what they've developed as a result of that

is in 2020 next year they're going to launch four campuses they are on schedule to launch four campuses in

one year because they are curating and cultivating and maturing this audience this city this community

with the gospel right now so like they're going so fast they're having to tell church some of these

areas hey we're gonna have to stop because we can't keep up but we're gonna come back and we're gonna

finish the job here's here's what we're doing here's how we can make it work see what i like about

this is look how evan is doing look what we're doing here look at west palm beach gardens you can see

that there is people looking out for the change the innovation uh the new to get the word out that's

what i like about this because there is there's this word that you know for a long time has been like a bad

word in church that innovation and we finally we're finally getting to a point where there's enough guys

enough people get involved they're innovators they're being innovators for god yeah and i think it was

about time for the church to set that tone man this has been a great conversation i did not i did not

think we were going to land on innovation when i started this this podcast whatever it was an hour ago

this is this has been really cool i love this this is great um man hey joey or let yeah joey um any any

thoughts as we're landing the plane and wrapping up here well man i just thank you so much for the

opportunity to hang out here i mean kind of kind of miss you from that meeting colorado and we spent

some time together um it was kind of funny how we we connect through facebook and all of a sudden

we're in colorado for for that meeting him i don't know where uh but thank you so much i i i really pray

that god continues to use people like you evan uh all the churches that are like just jumping into

innovation and be open to what god's doing to what god is wants to do uh to not be just locked down into

what has been but what could be yeah and he's not afraid to take risks sometimes you just we got to

be okay just to say hey did not work out but you know what we're not going to sit around but thinking

what could have been uh we're going to just go ahead and try it out so i'm saying we if i i tell

people if i'm going to write a book i'm going to write a book about the things that i tried to

not work out so it's a really thick book uh because that's the things that we usually don't talk about

right the things that we try and do not work out or people don't know people look at even like

people might be listening to this podcast and man you got it right for this church in the bar you did

everything right now you have no idea how many things we try and do not work we change and we

modify we adjust and we move on so that's the things i think would be great for people to kind of continue

continue to explore continue to pursue uh but let god take the lead there's so much good like and i love

having these conversations and meeting with with guys like you i was doing a i was doing an online

bible study i do an online bible study with online pastors some online pastors and um one of them one

of them canceled out in in long story short he's like yeah i'm getting pulled into a budget conversation

and you know vision casting and pray for me and it's going to be an ugly conversation um

and and i've been there i understand i've sat in that seat i know anybody who deals with online

ministry has had those conversations because leadership often doesn't see the vision doesn't

understand the purpose doesn't align necessarily or loosely with what the church overall is doing and

so there's lots of of questions and in that and so joey you alluded to a lot of it just there know that

you're not alone and that's that's the one thing just that that when i was that guy when i was in that

seat when i was the only person out of a a large mega church that thought the way that i did um i had

nothing but alone in me um i thought i was weird i thought i didn't belong um and and and honestly i managed to

get myself into this dark place because i i just thought i was different and because these ideas

were what i had because nobody bought into them it was i can't there's i'm not valid there's something

strange about me you know fast forward a year or so everywhere i go i meet the online pastor

who thinks like that and so the answer is you're not alone you're not wrong you may not be the season

where it's right yet but that doesn't mean you stop uh you keep having those conversations you keep

casting that vision you keep fighting for for what you can because and i cannot say this the org the

church big c church has shifted within the past year where it was 2018 versus 2019 absolutely from

from an outsider perspective i can totally see it and in conversations i have with others they see it too

and so where we go in 2020 and how we continue to press forward uh man it's it's it's you people out

there listening to this podcast that are gonna um gonna swing that pendulum you you've got more power

um than than you organizationally realize it's just how to get the people the church the leadership to

yeah so man thanks thanks for that joey evan that was a long landing the plane there evan uh landing

the plane any thoughts man um anything as we wrap up yeah so i mean just going off of what you just

said you know i think it's so important that we as a community especially those who are trying to

innovate within the church and the online space like we have to stay in contact and we need to share

what we're doing because it's so easy to feel like you're alone i remember a few years ago we first

started having the conversations about offering online expressions of church and broadcasting and

first conversations about what would a microsite look like like it was much harder to get buy-in back

then and i did feel largely alone with it um but at the time i don't think there were many resources but

there was um jay kranda from saddleback and his blog and i pulled so much information from that blog that

i realized you know here's at least one church who's doing this really well here's you know some of the

frameworks they use and that really without those resources and being able to see if there's someone else

doing this i don't know that our church would be doing what it's doing right now so it's so important

you know your podcast your blog jeff that you've started those resources are just so important to

constantly just be sharing whatever churches are doing so you can see that you're not alone with

this and just learn from whatever churches are doing yeah and and we're on my side we're we're

ramping up 2020 is going to be a great year man this has been an incredible podcast once again i

just want to thank you guys for taking the time to jump on this um we're going to do stuff again uh

evan i've loved in engaging with you and uh and joey we're going to have to find some topics and some

more time i want to i mean there's there's several layers of stuff we've yet to unravel that that are

still needing some attention so yes but we're gonna we're gonna break for now uh for evan for for

joey my name is jeff thanks everybody for being here and we'll see you next time here at the church

digital podcast. Y'all have a good day.