EP042: Church Online Cohort // The Beginning

episode 42 of the church digital podcast we get a lot packed into this episode here

you know some of the most fun we have here on the church digital is when we pack a bunch of people

on a call or in our room somewhere and basically just talk church online stuff what's working

what's not working what are we going to try next stuff like that well this is essentially what

we've done in this week's episode we brought together five people from around the country

who are doing some sort of church online and let them talk and basically learn from each other

figuring out what to do next the best part is we brought in people from different denominations

different strategies even different sizes of church together for this conversation from a 20,000

person giga church all the way down to a sub 100 person church plant we hit on different topics in

the conversation from creating community discipleship volunteering micro locations and did finally did

somebody say digital church if you want to skip around the podcast to hear certain topics feel free

we've included the time code in the show notes so you can dive in there by the way these are the types

of conversations we have regularly with church online people if you're interested in jumping into a church

online cohort just like this get more information at the church dot digital i'll let the guests introduce

themselves in a minute but for now let's go ahead and welcome to the podcast andy mage mark brant tj winters

adrian feldman and joe radicevich in the first of hopefully many church online cohorts hey everybody here you go

hey mark why don't you take a minute introduce yourself your church online ministry tell us a little bit

about yourself sure mark brant digital outreach minister for lutheran church of hope in west des moines

iowa we're a church of around 20 000 plus members six campuses five micro sites about 12 000 annual

worship or average worship and we started streaming about five years ago which is about the time that i came on

board with our online ministry and um my real heart has been to start and get people connected uh that

can't or don't live near one of our current campuses so the idea of those uh micro sites is really where

my heart beats is just connecting people to the larger church story it's awesome so mark's up in in iowa

at a arguably giga church up at that level and then we got tj uh down in san antonio san tj why don't you

just tell us a little bit about yourself yeah my name is tj winters i am at concordia lutheran church

in san antonio texas and um we have been around for 60 plus years um we've been streaming actually

very early so we started streaming in 2005 using windows media video and a pc for like 10 people a

sunday you know and it's just grown since then we've really taken um the church online focus uh

has become a forefront over the past few years more than just streaming um but we've gone through a lot of

a lot of hurdles a lot of growth uh challenges you know with with mobile coming into play and stuff and

it's awesome to be where we are today where we can just hit go and the tech is the least of the

problems now we get to focus discipleship follow-up community things like that so that's awesome we've

come a long way from windows media player real networks do you remember that that was i don't even

know if that was around in 2005 but like that was the the prerequisite to some of that stuff and that

was that was crazy and some millennial somewhere is like what but that's that's another conversation

uh then we've got uh adrian who's in kentucky i want to say yeah right yes i did something right

kentucky a little bit about yourself um my name is adrian feldman i'm at northeast christian church

in louisville kentucky actually our very first online campus pastor we started streaming our services like

three years ago but it's really been just pushing play and letting people watch the services for a long

time so my job actually i started as an intern in january uh in bible college and i wrote the plan for

how we were going to go from just online streams into an online campus and they said hey do you want

a job and i said okay so i'm here kind of trying to translate that from just streaming to a full

fledged campus and match that with kind of our church's dna so yeah i mean you're beginning to see

some of the um the the paradigms here where you've got you know some larger established church has been

doing it a long time then you got adrian who's coming at this literally she was an intern what a

year ago six months ago yeah yeah and and now she's she's running her own show uh and now we've got

andy mage from the tampa area so andy tell us a little bit about uh your church down there your

ministry sure yeah i am the online campus pastor for bay hope church uh formerly van dyke united

methodist we are a methodist church uh we're uh we've got what three campuses about four micro sites

uh we run about three thousand to four thousand on a weekend that type of thing like tj we were very

early into streaming um uh bay hopes been streaming since 2006 2007 right around there like tj the tech

is the least of the worries right now they brought me on actually i was a worship pastor for 10 years

not 12 years but 10 of them full time and they brought me on um to be the pastor over this this

brand new wing kind of the they they saw this opportunity for digital discipleship and that's

kind of where i'm at is i've been in the job six or seven months now and it's uh we're getting to form

community we're getting to form groups we're getting to form relationships in this weird online context and

it's so rewarding and it's so challenging all at the same time so and just to continue to develop up this uh

this cohort here we're putting together i wanted to bring in a unique perspective as well because we've

got different size churches different places and maybe ministry experience we've got joe radicevich

coming in from belgium wisconsin i wanted to give joe a chance maybe to set and explain a little bit

about who he is and where he is in ministry uh so my name is joe radicevich i am the lead and only

pastor of belgium community church in belgium wisconsin this is a church plant we had 55 people on sunday

and we use really online tools to extend our reach really all throughout our area this is an area where

most churches have closed their doors most and most if not many towns have no christian church at all

it's kind of strange to be in an area where lots of people have never heard the gospel that doesn't

make any sense to them if they wanted to go to a church there's not a church to go to so we this is

actually a church that closed its doors we restarted after a year and a half we restarted so as a church

plant i've just been in conversations with jeff because we kind of function as an online church

with a physical campus because that extends our reach on our ability to disciple all week

so because we're small and i'm the only pastor that means that some things that would take a chain

of command to do it we can just say hey it sounds good let's try it so that's kind of where we're at

yeah i love i love the small church that's being willing to experiment but we've got a really

kind of rich structure here from a 20 000 person multi-site church uh all the way down to a 66 maybe

55 person church plant all looking to utilize church online uh and all looking to do online ministry in

different ways and so i want to open it up i want to start talking through some things and um and just see

where we get to so there were five topics that we we hit on um that all of you said hey these are the

goals and as i started to group them together there were five kind of key topics that came up from it

the first one of it uh was creating community creating community and so adrian um you were one of those

who said that you were like that was something that you wanted to work on maybe tell us a little bit

about what you're hoping to do what you're hoping to achieve as a church that hasn't really spent a lot

of time with an actual online campus we've just been doing streams like i said earlier um online

community is something well community in general not even online community is not something that we

have done very well as an online campus so for 2020 we have some really big goals to

start creating i mean i know a lot of people are doing this but creating facebook groups so that

we can start getting our people together on a regular basis so that they're talking to each other and

really starting to get to know each other um and and then from there we're hoping to not far into 2020

launch some real community groups that exist both in the digital space but also face to face from

meeting in the digital space so that's where we're headed this year um community is something that is

vital to the online church you know it's really easy to get in this mode where you're just watching

church every weekend face to screen and not ever taking that opportunity to plug in and i think the

online church has a really cool opportunity to connect a lot more frequently than most of our people who

come every weekend to our campuses really get to do who have you guys who else is working on on community

um andy why don't you talk a little bit about that yeah so it's funny adrian i um our back when i

stepped into this position here our social media coordinator uh this brilliant brilliant uh lady named

jessica she had had that same idea hey we're going to set up a group it was just a it was an online campus

quote-unquote group and it was around for a couple months and she just started inviting people that

were normally involved in any sort of chat that we had and it was really rudimentary at the time

we had like 30 people so it was just like this kind of core group of people i stepped in and i said

okay that's great we need to really start pushing that and so we've you know we've grown we have like

just under 300 people right now it's great it's fine it's awesome it is what it is but it's the

how do we keep them connected throughout the week type of mentality and what i've found and what

i'm trying to do in 2020 is to be um less intentional about the things i say and more intentional about

engaging with people on their level because i came in with this sort of blistering mentality hey i'm

gonna i'm gonna uh bazooka down this wall and everybody's gonna be best friends and we're all

gonna want to get coffee with each other except we all live all over the country and all over the world

and what i've found is the organic creation of community will happen you just need to give it time

i'm not i'm not very time friendly i i like to i'm very type a and very thousand miles an hour

you know one of the things that i'm trying to be intentional about in 2020 is is letting that that

community organize itself and then pastoring into that and over that instead of um doing the thing

that i did so my wife and i and this is gonna be a quick little story my wife and i um back when i was

worship leading we stepped away from worship ministry to open a non-profit faith-based gym

and it was kind of this crossfit high intensity type gym and we were very intentional about community

building then and that's how the gym grew and jim's still around all these other things and so we had to

force meetings and gatherings and all these other things and we had this very tangible very

present present thing of hey you guys are doing these intense workouts you're suffering your

brothers and sisters in arms type thing we don't really have that shared experience in the online

community realm we have that maybe one hour that everybody's watching something and then we have the

rest of the week where we need to let things happen and so i i just want to see things bubble up

throughout the rest of the year and and and respond into that is there is there an intentionality shift

though when you do something like that like if you want to intentionally like create a community 365 days a year

but your your main vehicle for creating contents the weekend services that happens you know one hour on

sunday like you're going to run out of content for that that 365 like how are how are you intentionality

or how do we intentionality create community 365 days a year so the plan that we've been outlining with

our comms and our creative team has been to create content such that it creates conversation

and what i mean by that is we're kind of creating videos podcasts reading blog you know things that

will intentionally ask one big question each time and that one big question is then does that so i'll

give you an example um we're making um this entire video series for the none of the above the nuns is

what we're calling it this this video series on sexuality and and and the bible and spirituality you know

all the things all the questions that the nuns are answering and we have a we have a couple of really

brilliant graphic designers um our one of our junior designers she's actually not a believer which is

really cool uh to have on our staff and she's kind of just fresh out of college and all this other

things and she loves our church and loves the people and loves but she she lives in that world that she

doesn't really believe in jesus and yet she still wants to be around us and so we started asking her hey

what is so um beautiful what do you what do you like about this and so she started answering

so our director of communications he said huh we can do a thing on that and so we're creating a video

series on that and i'm i'll be starring and we'll have other people that are kind of answering these

biblical questions you know that with these questions about budgeting and how to adult and how to how to do

taxes and why do we listen to this and why i've lived my entire life without a biblical biblical

community why do i need one now that type of thing three to five minute videos with one big question

attached to it designed to create engagement so jeff i think you're right in saying there is an

intentionality there but i don't necessarily want to try to force an answer joe you were you were one

that i think was looking for a community as well but in in a small church does that look different

than what they're describing like what what it's the what's the community needs that you guys are hoping

to achieve there in belgium so one of the differences between us and some of you guys is

several of you guys if not all of you guys are online campus pastors and so your goal ends up staying

there although i realize some of you want to do some out um uh connections outside of that we end up

use online you know and uh an online experience online campus if you will to drive those personal

connections in our community so we so the purpose for us to connect people is for discipleship throughout

the week the next step for us which has been to kind of create an online presence if you will an

online brand for our community so that people can connect with us at any time is not just connect

people with us but the online community element is can we actually create a community where people

minister to each other online we're really exploring what is the whole purpose of community groups

small groups those kind of things and it's relevant to this because oftentimes churches at least in my

experience at large and small churches has been we create community groups to serve the church our

church can grow bigger if people have the community connection in a small group and so they'll grow as

a disciple and our church can grow bigger the description somebody gave is of a toilet bowl where the swirl

is basically to try and get everything to the middle and that's often how we end up using small groups

um is to serve the church when the real purpose for any kind of group that we have is how do we

actually send them out better and so that's kind of in my mind as i think through we want to connect

people to each other but not just so our church can get bigger or so that we can you know just reach

more people although those are actually fine goals and fine reasons but ultimately can we make them

can we equip them to be better disciples by connecting them to each other and so we're actually sending

them out rather than drawing them in and joe i understand exactly what you're saying and i think the

goal you know we talk about engagement we talk about these things in in perhaps a the online campus

quote unquote uh space but that looks very much like exactly what you're talking about that looks

very much like engagement not for just time wasting sake and not just for hey we got another cool video

sake but really delving into the discipleship aspect so you know maybe you know the be one make one type

mentality that i think we all need to have our online campuses everywhere yours included because you know you

you have an online presence you can technically call it whatever you want but the the online space is such

that we have an enormous quick rapid response way of discipleship and i think that's so beautiful

not just for that not just for a large church and not just for a small church but for churches

everywhere and that should be the challenge for church online in general the word church online and

we've talked about this before it's lost its meaning the majority of churches that are out there

that are doing anything in an online community or just broadcasting or just doing that that one-way

communication billy graham did that in the 90s he preached one message a billion people heard it as

it was bounced off of 34 satellites around the globe online gives us that two-way communication

joe i love what you said about connecting people to people that's where the technology is and is now

well let me ask a question before we shift off of community because i want to hone in here are you guys

looking at facebook as the main community are you looking to as the platform for community are you

looking to create communities in other areas i'm just curious like the nuts and bolts of okay so we

say we want to create a community we want to focus on this how are you actually doing it we are starting

on facebook um i like to see facebook as a digital church lobby if you will you know we've got all these

people who are tuning into a service they never get a chance to walk into a service and have

communication with other people so we're looking at facebook as that place where people are going to

mingle and people are going to chat and all of those kinds of things but our end goal is to push people

into those face-to-face groups that are going to be away from the internet or if they're going to be

participating in any sort of community group that's happening online it's going to happen a lot like this in a zoom

call or with um other types of messaging technology that's going to get them in a little bit more face

to face you know a google hangout or whatever that's going to look like so i don't see facebook

as the uh you know the be all end all the solution that's going to solve all those community problems

but i think it makes a really great living room for people to start having communication with each other

start in the church lobby like at actual in the physical locations you get to observe how other

people act and decide who you're going to walk up to and talk to you can do that on facebook pretty well

you get to start to see who people are before you make that decision to step into a call with them so i

like the idea of using both of them because you get these opportunities to observe people from a distance

before you really engage and i think that's important for people especially our online campus people who

sometimes need a minute to to observe before they walk in a lot of people use online for that anyway

well i'll tag on that on the end of that as well we're we're facebook yes we're also um leaning heavily

into youtube in 2020 we're finding a lot of the the demographic around us the younger demographic

they're shying away from facebook for very righteous very uh well-known reasons the facebook thing is

it's kind of one side the youtube side the youtube um um kind of group there is no youtube group

building tool and so ideally we're funneling everybody just like you said adrian into zoom calls

into discipleship groups and into um small groups like we are in right now uh but youtube is is very funny

uh you can it's very powerful and yet at the same time it's very expensive and that's the unfortunate

part right now it's expensive because you create you're paying for a lot of ads and things like

that on youtube yeah yeah so that without a group building tool uh without it with you know facebook

groups is very powerful uh and you know you can do a lot of stuff with it and we're doing things like

that announcements and uh notes and discussion groups and things like that within a a localized

group that is branching off of your main facebook page youtube doesn't have that and the only way

that you lately get any visibility is to throw ad dollars at it we've been running an experiment with

our um our worship side of the entire church throwing some ad dollars at it and watching the subscriber

numbers go skyrocketing uh just with not meager amounts of money but enough money to where you get

clicks and get uh subscribers and things like that now we're going to try to transfer that to our

actual youtube our actual main youtube page but again the group dynamic is not there so we need

somebody that can speak into chat and draw them somewhere else so that's kind of the 2020 goal right

now i had uh and you guys are we've talked about jay crand on the podcast before he's been on recently and

um jay told me this this quote once and and i'm curious if this is uh relative to you guys if this

if you connect with it in a in a in a physical church um there was a time where people would connect

to christ before they would connect to community in in virtual church and church online uh it's easier

for people to connect to community before they connect to christ i'm just curious like that's that was jay's

take i've seen it go pro and con within your own church and ministries um like does that do you think

that relates do you see that what's been your experience it's interesting that people are longing

for something deeper i think that's the bottom line even in what you ask you know i i get a sense that

when we look at who's connecting to us online from around the country there's a reason for why they're

choosing to to connect with us you know even from thousands of miles away versus finding something

that might be more in their backyard and i don't i'm i'm trying to discover what that is

because you know if i can find out what that is i think then we can best speak into maybe where

they're at in life and connect them to a larger story what we're really wrestling with is you know

how can we create a sense of community that is both authentic you know if it's going to remain

online or uh opens the door to the possibility of in person you know so that they could find a

connection in real time where they're at i love the fact that i've got this couple that just joined

our church from redding california there are no other hope folks in redding california you know and

so if they're going to be in a small group that's going to happen one of two ways in an online group

which will work great for a time but i think even online groups have a short shelf life in the sense

that eventually you're going to want to connect to people that you can have over to your house

and sit on a couch with you and um and so that's in essence i think you know joe to kind of something

you were saying you know we're trying to actually use online to to get smaller you know as as a large

church we want to use online to help people connect smaller um because you know otherwise we're just a

big church and there's a there's a lot of big churches and being big isn't all it's cracked up to be

if you're not connected to somebody intentionally in relationship where you can grow for the folks

that we have watching that we've seen a lot of them are coming for the word they want to hear the

word you know we skew more traditional in general we're we're more traditional church um you know from

a liturgical standpoint at least our practices so a lot of those folks there they seem to be less

engaged in online chat they seem less engaged in the comments they want to hear the word they want to

connect now they will connect with somebody maybe after the service email they'll reach out things

like that but in general a lot of the people they want to hear the word they want to hear the gospel

that's that's why they're there they want to grow in their faith and they do grow in their faith by

hearing that way if they don't have an opportunity to go anywhere else but i haven't seen as much

community for a lot of those folks it's it's the word first tj sorry to jump in here are those are

those we're kind of wrestling with that that same thing right there um are those folks that are not

engaging in chat and i think chat metrics are kind of a push comes to shove type type um measurement

uh are those folks already engaged in something locally are they local to your church now like how

what is the breakdown of that do you know the ones i'm talking about specifically are out of town

and sometimes they're shut-ins or or snow or you know weather or circumstance whatever um the folks

locally we have a lot of those folks who yes they love the church community church family um but for

the those who are out of town they're not there to join a um for the most part they're not saying

that they're there to join an online small group or to engage and have these conversations in the chat

they're there for the service the hardest part of church online to to get it to be a justified full

functioning ministry is discovering the people who are watching the services and get them can getting

them connected into a discipleship pathway uh into something groups next steps membership you know

whatever it is that's the thing that that we have to work the hardest on as as online ministers that's

not different from the physical church by the way the hardest thing from a physical church is as as a

campus pastor as a multi-site okay we just watched this this message now i need my job as a campus pastor

is to get these people connected into into ministry and you know they're wanting to run through that

lobby as quick as possible to not engage to not talk to people to not um and so like that's that's

the challenge before the church is to really figure out how to create opportunities for people to connect

in community uh to to get that next step to to get involved in it and that's that's not an online

problem that's a that's a church problem well not then that's a robust issue you know when you think

about you know obviously in online we cannot recreate everything that that a brick and mortar church can do

um and there are certain things that still i think in the church need to be experienced in person and

yet at the same time we have an opportunity in the online sphere to uh to really care for people in a

unique way you know so when one of our growth curves for this next year is noticing that you know online

folks have the same care needs that the folks that walk through our doors have how do we do pastoral

care for somebody who's a thousand miles away how do we connect with local churches there that might be

able to provide you know much needed help and resources for somebody who's in need that we can't provide

from as far away as we are so there's some there's an interconnectedness to what we're trying to do in

the online sphere as well because we never want to assume that whoever that ip address is that's watching

us from saskatchewan canada or wherever it might be has has got this wonderful wow isn't it great they

stumbled upon us this is awesome they must be a perfect person and great have this no there's a

reason why they're connecting with us and getting to know what that reason is also involves care

discipleship mentorship it's a big big deep awesome challenge to beyond just hey we're putting something

out over the airwaves and and i think that's really and i don't know andy one of your goals was was

talking about that uh discipleship piece but it really comes down to who had the who was who had

the people in redmond california earlier uh mark okay great mark you got two people in redmond they're

all by themselves and to your point mark you said hey um at some point they need to get into a physical

relationship because even talking through a zoom there there's a limit to that and and and i i agree

which opens up um you know a discipleship relationship where now i'm going to empower

these two people with redmond california my job is to disciple them to the place where they can start

their own group you know maybe they want to stay connected with with my church where i'm at and but

my job is is not to get them addicted to my content my dot my job is to empower them and create a

a disciple maker who's capable of making disciples in redmond and and if that equals a small group if

that equals a micro location and some of these other things that that we're talking about then that's

awesome if that just equals somebody who's dedicated to to god that's pretty cool too um but at the end of

this it's not a consumer product of church online if anything i think there's more should be more

intentionality and focus towards creating disciples virtually than there is is physically andy you

had um you had some questions on discipleship or or a goal like what's the context of what you're

trying to achieve discipleship uh down there at bay hope i mean it's kind of like exactly what mark was

just talking about it the idea that well first of all groups then just groups at the base level um

our church right now we're in a weird transition phase where groups are there but they're not

really there and it's like well you know what i'm just going to create groups and i'm just going to

do it i'm just going to rip it apart and that's not really healthy and that's not really team building

and that's not really team oriented uh we did it i mean we've been uh over the fall of 2019 we

were doing kind of a test flight in the groups and um how's it going to work and i was just running

kind of a test group just to see and it was great it worked perfectly fine the technology again

was never going to be the issue it was always going to be the content and how the content was

distributed i've led small groups for 10 years of my life and so i know how to lead a small group

none of that was was the thing it was the actual one-to-one connection with people and what i found

was um one of the guys that i was in a group with in the group with he and i we just haven't started

having regular one-on-ones just caught and still do just but actual physical coffee with each other

um so he would drive from his house and i would drive from my house and we would meet in the middle

luckily he lived like within 15 minutes of church so it wasn't that big of a deal i think right

around this time jay cranda put something out about micrositing and i went ah this is the way of the

the future isn't it and i just kind of unabashedly let my head fall and went okay how do we do that

how in our context because what jay is doing out on the west coast looks completely different than what

we're doing on the east coast his his culture his people everybody's totally different deservedly so

then on our side how do i as a pastor speak into the lives of people with the truth of jesus with

the mission of the church all with the love and care of the holy spirit how do i then make disciples

not in the name of bay hope but in the name of jesus how do we do that but i'm finding that

i'm having to reorient my metrics as well so gone is the hey man we had this many views and this many

likes and this many clicks and this much traffic gone is that and now it's being replaced by

three things that every church does number one love god number two love people number three make

disciples and it's that number three piece that i'm actually starting to put a goal around a a

numerical quote-unquote goal um because obviously you need you need to have signposts and you need

to have you need to have goalposts when you're judging effectiveness of ministry or else you're

just gonna um you're just gonna spin your tires a little bit so i guess for everybody else my question

to you guys is is how do you judge disciple making and what are you doing to make disciples

in your online groups right now and i suggest that the question would also be what is a disciple

which is let's let's do that let's okay very good let's define what a disciple is our discipleship uh

pastor here uh the phrase he often uses is you look like a sheep from the front and a shepherd from

the back okay that's you know in the sense that you're following somebody but you're also leading

others you know and you know every i think everybody has to be false somewhere on that spectrum you

have to it's a both end relationship but being able to articulate your faith is i think another

big thing is that you have a story you can articulate doesn't mean it's perfected doesn't mean you get it

all figured out yet but i think it's something that you recognize you know there's there's a growth here

one of our core values is uh following jesus is a growing experience you know we haven't yet arrived

and so i think a disciple is somebody who's also you know constantly in that refining mode

you know where are my pressure points now where are the things that i need to identify that i'm working

on in my own personal faith whether that's in your um in your own personal growth and quiet times or

whether that's in a small group or whether it's in a community group of some way shape or form that

you're constantly working toward uh knowing jesus more fully go ahead joe what's yours so we really

wrestled with this um and we define a disciple as somebody that is growing in the character and

leadership of jesus okay we we use an x and y axis character is the x axis and y the y axis is

leadership or practices because what we don't want is somebody with high character but no they don't live

like jesus they're a sweet person but nobody would ever follow them for a moment but we also don't

want somebody that has all the leadership of jesus but not the character because they can do great damage

and so we invite people specifically to grow in the character and leadership or the character and

practices of jesus and we find that that helps people crystallize okay i know that there's character

i need to grow in i know that there's leadership or practices i need to grow in and so then that helps us

train them to help others do the same thing so anyway that's how we define it whether it's um a bad mullet

like a sheep in the front and a shepherd in the back or more of the character and leadership of it

there's a couple metrics there to look at what's interesting is i don't know that one hour on sunday

does a really good job of creating that type of person which unfortunately the butts and seats metric

is probably the most valued metric within a church so what's your attendance on sunday whether you're

being successful or whether you're not successful is is gauged strictly at least in churches that i've

worked with is gauged very strongly on that attendance on on sunday do you guys relate to that maybe like

what are some other metrics that move you away from that one hour on sunday that really start to move

towards measuring maybe a more holistic view uh 168 hour a week view of of whether your church is

successful or not just just nickels and noses right you got to get away from that i mean i know but i mean

that's that's the that's the reality of it let's count the people let's let's count the money and then we

we just we get stuck because our church there's so much more to the church than one hour on sunday at

least i hope there is if we're truly out there going and making disciples per matthew 28 we got to do

something more than that one hour so and actually brady um uh what's the guy's name uh sheer yeah man he

wrote a great article on this um uh it's on pro church tools we'll include a link on the uh in the

show notes but for what he said there and he was talking about how we shouldn't be measuring the one

we should be measuring one hour a week we should be measuring 168 and really what it comes down to

is is that to effectively measure the 168 you don't count the people who are attending the service on

sunday you really count like that next step the thing that's after the one hour on sunday because

your effectiveness in getting creating disciples is hopefully your church has a plan for it it's

just you need to measure that next step of getting people on that pathway for it because the discipleship

isn't happening on on sunday um most churches you know are of the size and especially the ones that are

talking year uh joe aside like you're not going to get the intimacy the one-on-one conversations the

relational equity out of a of a giga church or a mega church service there's there's pros to that

there's things that you can do in a mega church service that you can't do in a small but there's

a lot of things you can do in a small that you can't do in a bit mark i think you were the one

that said you want a church online to be the effort to make things smaller instead of big that was a

that was a great line as well what is y'all's discipleship maybe just even for your physical

church what is your discipleship process look like like what's the goal after the physical church

service what's next we always encourage people we want them growing in their faith so we want them

attending more than just sunday morning we want them to go to a bible class and whether that is in

person or on podcasts we recommend people do that we also recommend and ask them to go to a retreat

we have uh annual men's women's and youth retreats to grow closer uh with others and to grow closer in

the faith with god and just kind of have a reset and then we also uh encourage people to be in small

groups and that's that community connection um and to serve we have a lot of serving opportunities so

it's it's we don't have a specific step one is always this it's encouraging wherever you are in

your walk or wherever you feel called to at that moment we we try to provide as many opportunities as

we can to do all of that for us uh and i haven't seen it yet but it's i think it's almost ready to go

live our adult team has developed a an assessment tool if you will we offer a ton of things and it's so

hard for a new a new guest to decide okay where do i intersect with what should i do first and so

what i'm gathering from what they're telling us is that this assessment tool is really simple it

takes you no time to fill out and it'll help give you some next steps it isn't a 101 201 301 concept

it's more of a hey this seems like it's going to interest you and it'll give you some categories

on under which you might fall within whether it's marriage and parenting whether it's um

financial planning uh you name it it's going to help them navigate our our class offerings

in a way that's going to be more helpful to them with where it applies to to what i get to do

i've asked the adult team then to take that same assessment tool or that those same things that we're

offering and help me understand how to bring those into the online so i've asked them for a three-tiered

approach uh with what they're going to offer um the first tier being hey these things should have been

online yesterday you know and make and do an effort to start to bring those available whether on demand

or in real time the second tier are the things that we want to bring online in 2020 we're maybe not ready

yet but we know we want to have them available to our online folks whether they're five feet down the

street or 500 miles around uh the state that's the next year the third tier are those things um that we

identify um will probably never go online that are still best experienced in person i can't tell you

what those are but i've asked them to give me some of those things so that we can develop a strategy

um to best maximize our our efforts especially with regard to folks that that primarily intersect with

us online because this this idea that you know we are going to have people show up at a specific time

you know in a specific place i think is is almost not possible anymore and we have to begin to offer

them chances to to grow beyond just showing up on thursday at seven o'clock in classroom 201 joe what

do you do so we really spend a ton of time on trying to define what a disciple is because if we couldn't

define what it was and people couldn't grab their hands around it then we would just be doing stuff

which we've done some of but we just said hey let's just go slow and wait until we you know discern what

does it mean for it to be a disciple in this in this area 30 minutes north of milwaukee and so now

that we have some clarity around that around who god has made us as a church vision and values

we've actually now been able to make momentum we we ask everybody who's new to our church

to go through an eight-week small group it's the kind of thing that could be done in person or online

but it really helps embed in somebody's life some just life-changing dna that we've seen multiple

generations of people being changed by it so then we'll recruit somebody from the last generation

that was really growing and being changed by it to to learn to lead it so that becomes some forward

momentum in them and then um we have small we call them discipleship cohorts i don't have a good word

for it i hate all the discipleship words um but it's just three guys that meet with me on thursday

morning for six months where we're growing trying to grow in the character and leadership of jesus and

so with the goal that after really some foundational stuff and growing in those ways my hope is to if

not all three of those guys would then be leading other groups so that's that's our real main discipleship

pathway yeah with the in between it's more topical small groups because i found in an area that's

affluent where people can travel and be in all different places kids sports mean a whole lot

asking somebody to be long-term committed to a group for the sense of the group doesn't really help

but by saying hey we're going to be spending eight weeks meeting in my home on sunday evening over dinner

learning what does it mean for me to minister one another ministry kind of to another believer

you could call it discipleship or counseling or whatever but hey we're going to meet for eight

weeks around this topic or have somebody hey we're going to be eight weeks learning and looking at the

issue of sexuality as we raise kids in a world where it feels like you know things are up upside down and

we don't know how do we talk about these issues how do we think about them from a christian

perspective people really gravitate towards an a time-based topical thing and so those are kind of

the three strands to us growing in the character and leadership of jesus well and that's that's where

you it really gets fun right once you start to get people who are are set free by the gospel that's where

you start seeing things like volunteering volunteer culture volunteer recruitment skyrocket because they

understand the personal mission of what's involved in it that's where you start to see people wanting to

really get interested in in the micro locations and starting to do things in different areas and which

is another opportunity to create a disciple to the level that they can now start to impact other people

through a micro location or through a small group or something like that so i know several of you

part of your goal was was volunteering for 2020 increasing the culture of that as well as maybe creating some

micro locations and starting to do that mark you're doing micro now why don't you just tell us a little

bit of that flavor of what micro looks like um up in iowa to be honest with you it's it's so funny how

god works because we sort of stumbled into it the rock church miles mcpherson and i didn't even know those

things existed uh when we first started it it was literally a group of folks in a town north of us

that uh had a connection to our church that were worshiping each uh you know of them online

uh separately that said what would it look like if we started to get together to do this

and then when they reached out to me uh i just and i i've known these folks because they were from

a town that i i did ministry in for a short time um i didn't have a reason to say no but i didn't know

what i didn't know what it was and i knew one of them worked at the y in this small town and i said

isn't there a community room at the y you can see if you can you know reserve that and sure enough

it was available so they reserved this community room there was a screen that they could pull down

on the wall uh they found a projector they connected it to a computer they put up a couple of speakers

and boom i had a group of about 20 people in a small town north iowa that were worshiping with hope

online didn't know what it meant other than the fact that we it just started we didn't have a name for

it um it just was it was there uh now as i i found out later this is what a microsite was

you know but we didn't know that we just said here's a group of people that wanted to worship

with us well fast forward a bit there was a couple in another town uh just to the south of them that

heard we were doing this and said man this would be great if hope would come to our town

and now all of a sudden this little you know kind of organic project on the side was starting to gain

some traction i thought we better get a grasp of of what this means and that's when i reached out to

the folks that like mclean bible uh church out in mclean virginia and talked to uh the online pastor

at the rock church in san diego and said you know what is this idea of micrositing and literally it was

just empowering people to worship where they were you know developing a pop-up church you know where it

didn't take a lot of overhead you know as far as you know you didn't need to have the

the huge building to pull this off you didn't need staff to pull it off it literally was a equipping

the believers to worship together and the fact that we could do it through online was was awesome

so now we've we've got um currently we have five microsites or local sites is what we call them

because i'm not a big fan of the word micro that's just a personal thing i think micro feels small

local just is more friendly i think um and we're hoping this year we to start as many as three or four

more um and then the goal of those wasn't to launch campuses uh a nice byproduct of that model is that

we've had one grow to a campus size but we didn't set it up as a numerical you know this is your goal you

have to get to 120 people you know before we consider you healthy no that wasn't the goal a

local site can remain a local site for as long as they're they want to be you know while there's

you know there's still some growth things we've already been talking about discipleship and and

many of those are happening but our first goal in this was just to develop these small worshiping

communities we are finding that these are popping up in places where there wasn't another necessarily

viable you know option for people to go to so uh if we can be a part of that we we're happy to do so

how do you so you want to launch four or five like how do you how are you recruiting how are you

training how are you finding like what's what's the plan in 2020 that is a great question because here's

where where we um kind of run into some interesting uh discussions we're a part of a bigger family

uh and so in many of these places there have been churches that are within our denomination that

have existed maybe they're not viable anymore maybe they've closed um but uh regardless there are times

when there's there's another there's another player in the pool if you will uh so we're trying to be

so there's denominational concerns within your questions yeah there there are we we definitely

want to be um good neighbors to our other uh friends uh that are that are within our denomination

uh so my answer when folks say hey shouldn't hope be here isn't always an automatic yes

okay we we and in fact the first delineator is we we don't launch a site anywhere where we're not

first invited where there isn't somewhat of a hope connection it's not like i look at a map and

point at it and go man let's go there uh it starts by somebody reaching out to us in fact i'll just

speak really quickly about our the the one that's kind of on the edge right now there's a town that's

about 45 minutes to the north and west of us and there's a couple that's been driving in she's um

the wife is one of our small group leaders in our junior high confirmation ministry and they've

identified that hey there's a bunch of families out in this town that that call hope their church home

and there isn't a lutheran church in our town right now uh could hope be a possibility and

my first thought was gosh this would be great let's talk about that some more she and i met met with her

husband and um they went out and they recruited six other families that have said hey we would love for

this to happen and so the next step for us is to to get that group together and to start to build

into them as a launch team you know what does this mean essentially yeah you're you're watching the

service online but part of doing that location i i hesitate to use microsite now because you don't

like the word i'm kidding it's fine uh but part of that microsite is that you're you're the these people

are now at some level spiritually responsible like they're they're shepherding the people that are there

um like i know people who do micro that would call these volunteers campus pastors like they have that

that level of of responsibility you as a volunteer are now a campus pastor for the 20 30 40 people

that are that are at this location so and i and i meet with those high level leaders uh once or twice a

month uh just to make sure you know my my role for them is to make sure we're staying we're staying on

on the on the train tracks you know because there is a responsibility there we want to be faithful to

this and that that's where you know the hope dna is the phrase we use a lot we we infuse the hope dna

across that that channel so that if somebody shows up to our local site in forest city iowa

they'll get who we are you know hopefully within that first you know blush you know they'll know a

bit about who we are as a church you know from the way that these volunteers you know go back

to that character thing that joe was talking about through the way that they are they're not perfect

but what we want them to understand that they represent a bigger story than just themselves

and so we spend a lot of time pouring into those folks to make sure that we have

the right folks in leadership i know adrian i know you were you were one that also said you're doing

micro right you're you're considering starting this this would be your first right yeah this would be our

first um we actually we have the full support of our elder team behind doing the micro site thing

they're really really really psyched about it because they want us to start going down this micro path as

like our path toward multi sites but in a little bit of an unconventional way um they're kind of

disenchanted with the way that multi sites are usually planted by kind of following the money and the

people that we have already you know we can really put all of our resources behind planting a multi site in

this place or this place you know and so what they love about micro sites is that we can plant with you

know 60 bucks right like a chromebook and a tv that somebody already has it's something that is a

little bit easier to do but one of the things that we have struggled with a little bit in trying to

figure out what launching micro sites looks like for us as a church is that we have a little bit of a different

dna than most of the other churches in our area we're really super outreach focused we um we're in

louisville kentucky we've been calling ourselves the love the bill church and we've got some really

successful outreach efforts we maybe have poured even a little too much into outreach over the last

five years or so and so we're trying to kind of pull that back and and pair outreach with a little bit

more intentional discipleship and so it's been my job to figure out what it looks like to marry our

really really awesome outreach program with planting micro sites and so our big dream is to and this is

i mean i don't know if it's going to work we're crossing our fingers and praying a lot but our big

dream is to launch our first micro site actually in a children's hospital here in town um we know that

there are a lot of people who are there in the hospital who basically live there you know you've

got people who are waiting for organ transplants or who are living for months on end doing chemo or

things like that and there are parents of these kids who just don't want to leave the hospital can't

leave the hospital never get to go and do church or be a part of a church community anywhere in any way

shape or form and so by bringing church to them we're going to give them an opportunity to start

building community around something that is more positive than the medical kind of catastrophes that

they're facing on a daily basis so our hope is that we can deploy some of our high level leaders some of

our really strong volunteers to go into the hospital and bring a hot meal and create a venue where people can

experience both a church service which we think is important to bring to them you know the weekend

service experience but also community and also love and also outreach and all of those things married

in one place so that's our big first you know q1 q2 2020 trying to get that off the ground but

that's our dream for microsites for for 2020 is to marry outreach and the microsite in into one kind of

really holistic ministry space yeah that's taking a little some cues there it sounds like from tyler

sampson up at first capital christian their church anywhere program where they're doing they're doing

that they're going into they're doing their micro locations not in hotels or like ballrooms or

there are things like that not that it's wrong but they're being much more aggressive towards going to

where people are in and rehab centers and in orphanages and after school centers and and prisons like it's

it's amazing what happens when you start to take that environment of of church move it outside of the

building and get it more engaged to where people are like there there's a model of this from a multi-site

perspective which is the wind um you know and and i've worked with multi-site churches and i've launched a

a ton of campuses and it's it's awesome i love the model of multi-site because it puts the power of a

church in it in the community um and you've got pastors that are running at the campus pastors and

they're they're doing their thing i honestly i love the micro model more sorry to use the word micro mark

but we'll figure out a better term i love the micro model more because i think it literally gives the

power to the person um the the ability for that church to be successful the hero of that micro story

is not a campus pastor it's not a paid worship leader it's not a it's not even a staff person it is is a

disciple who is passionate about reaching an area whether that's a neighborhood area or whether that's an

and uh an after-school center or a a children's hospital which is a phenomenal idea like i'm gonna

go take that to somebody hey we need to well there's literally this hospital right over here

children's hospital we need to get in there let's figure out how to do it so if you're in miami don't

steal that idea it's mine everybody else let's talk about volunteering a little bit briefly here

because that part of that discipleship process is volunteering and joe i i know you are are are as a

startup like you are as a church plant i should say you're very limited on resources and so you're

lending leaning a lot on volunteers we've had this conversation in the past too so just share a little

bit maybe about how you're utilizing the volunteers this sounds kind of ridiculous as a pastor but

i have to work hard to pray for volunteers because it can be easy to jump into strategies and the best

volunteers that we've got we've prayed for them uh hard because we didn't have them but um so one of

the things that so one we just pray hard for them um and then we kind of do two things one we just tap

people on the shoulder and say hey will you experiment with this and help us out in this area for a little

while um you don't have to do it forever if you hate it you know um but we but then the thing that

really makes a difference is uh leading with vision and the the possibility of what can happen because

then people will give extra time they will give extra effort they will fall all over themselves to be a

part of what we're doing because we don't have the budget to pay people to be involved in these things

i think that's kind of some of what mark's seeing people that are excited about it in a small town

where they're like this if this isn't here there's not a viable church for people to go to

and so in our case by leading with vision our people and i always it always surprises me because

i'm not a type a personality but when i lead with vision then people think that i am a type a

personality and so they get excited and just about jump across the table and say i want to be a part of

this i want to use my gifts 167 hours a week to be a part of this and so then we end up

with people that are really excited and oftentimes people using their gifts

paired to a passion so that's what we've ended up doing and i want to do more of how many of you have

volunteers who live in different cities states countries who are not even within the city where you are

andy why don't you talk a little bit about that we're just now kind of getting the team up off the

floor after you know six months of being here seven months of being here whatever it's been i feel

like i'm just now getting my feet under the desk and just now know where the other side of the

building is in terms of volunteers we have obviously a couple locals a couple people that i've just that

i'm personally able to meet with but we also have a couple people that are one of them's out in new

mexico ish that area um and we have a couple that are i mean far enough to wait far enough away to

where i can drive within two hours but that's not local it's interesting those volunteers i've been

able to glean have not been you know joe joe was very much saying we kind of have to will ourselves

to pray for volunteers i'm i'm very much the same way i think we all are to where those two in

particular one of them the one who lives within an hour and a half of here she is um disabled uh she

literally can't leave the house type thing got has tube she gets fed from a feeding tube you know it's

one of it's that and it's a very tragic story and yet i went to her after much prayer and much

time and kind of training and all that other stuff and i said hey would you help us and she said

and i quote nobody has ever asked me to help because they knew that i couldn't and it was like

this world earth shattering moment two months into me being in the position that was like oh we really

are doing something way different so jeff you talk about engaging people i think we can engage people

that wouldn't normally be you know i would not have her name's heather i would not have asked heather

to serve in the kids ministry because her immune system is constantly at negative numbers and and yet

she can still host a service for us and she can still do content creation for us and she can still

engage by phone call by text by all these other things minister to people use her god-given pastoral

heart in ways that i don't even think she's known and she's starting to tap into that potential how do you

where do you recruit from volunteers where do you recruit the the the pool are you are you looking

outside of the campus what's the relationship recruiting on campus like what what are the tensions you

guys feel i just posted in our women's ministry facebook group this week i was like hey they're

telling me i have to stop having staff host services i need your help somebody please volunteer

like 15 people were like hey call me call me let's make this happen and i've been meeting with people

like every hour all week long so we're just happy to our campus volunteers and it's really cool to see

them get wrapped up in what we're doing with church online and start connecting with our people who are

shut in or who um we have a lot of people with social anxiety who don't come to church and so

seeing them start to build those connections is really magical it's really incredible so obviously

our local site volunteers come from local communities but with our online service i have hosts and those

hosts uh are kind of half staff and half uh lay leaders um but as you can imagine what we do for our

hosting is you know we have a live camera where we cut into the service and welcome people we do that

three different times throughout the service and so you have to have a at least an ability

uh to to talk off the cuff a little bit because once the red light goes on uh you you have to just

start talking and um that was a little daunting to me at first because you know yeah it is what it is

you know we all want to we all want to do over and you can't do that in live uh broadcast so one of

my recruits that i that i uh got for a volunteer team is actually um he's an emmy award-winning

uh journalist on one of our local tv stations and so he just hosted for me last weekend and i have one

of my dedicated you know long-term online viewers uh and worshipers uh reached out to me and said i

really love when eric is on because he is so good at this which is kind of a backhanded way of saying

you know you know brand you need to up your game a little bit but you know these are folks though that

i mean i've known eric for a long time he he's got a heart for jesus and and what he does is you know

he he's a news uh or he's yeah he's an anchor for our morning uh local news programs well he's a

professional i mean yeah he is go you're you have delegated responsibilities he brings his own ear wig

like his own little thing because he's got one i'm like all right whatever eric you're the pro here

but um but i love you know our other volunteers so our uh i tried to to populate that group with

people that that bring a wide demographic into it so our our young adult pastor is one of my volunteers

and she is great she does our um our young adult ministry on thursday nights we have our our sports

ministry uh guy comes in and and he is one of my volunteers uh our alpha leader she is she's one of

my volunteers that helps to host and then i also have uh one of my other volunteers is the uh so we

have two major high schools within about a 10 mile radius of us and valley high school is one of them

and the the principal of valley high school is one of my volunteers and so you know dave maxwell when he

gets on there i mean it's that's a big deal for people that tune in online and see oh my gosh

that's our principal and then those kids are you know we'll go into the high school and they'll

realize man there's an advocate i have on my side this guy loves jesus and he's our principal

you know i just love that the dave is one of my volunteers uh plus he's a long-term teacher so

there's another professional you know he's used to getting up in front of people and talking you

know off the cuff so he does a great job with that too so um and one of my goals is you know with

that team i want that to be i want that to be diverse you know i want to have a wide variety

of voices in there so that you know when people tune into our broadcast they don't just see me

they see other folks because um it's important to have a multitude of voices in that volunteer pool

because they all bring a unique perspective to things love it love it love it cool all right so the

last thing this is going to be tj but i really wanted i want to know this like one of your goals that you

wrote here was that you were your church is interested in planting digital churches online

only churches internationally and and i don't i don't see that a lot um but i want to ask the question

so what does that look like what what are you guys thinking this was something that um we're in the

very early stages of conversation on it was brought to us by another organization as well that wanted to

partner so we are still trying to figure out exactly what that looks like i don't have a great answer

for you right now like we are still wanting to talk through it what does it mean for us what does it

mean for them um who do we bring in to help us do this and and and what's the goal it's it's early

conversations but 2020 is the year that we want it we want to hit it um to at least begin starting the

process of what this looks like in these conversations interesting some just interesting stats uh 60 of

the world has internet now has access to high-speed internet at some capacity uh dsl cable um lte 4g

something at least 4g or up um the next 30 of people who get internet in this in the world today

will be third world countries so like these are going to be people with cell phones because there's

no infrastructure in place so utilizing the internet uh for church to start to get some churches in front

of them uh digitally there's several organizations who are really interested in that and so if you're

interested in that conversation um hit me up hit tj up because i know that uh there are some large

organizations trying to figure out how to crack that um i have no idea what to say right there

how to crack that egg that's weird how to crack that nugget how to figure out how to do that that's

just cheesy anyway i'm going to go ahead and include all that in there because it'll be fun it's been a

great time and and honestly i think as you guys are working through these goals i know that there are

people who are doing church online who are listening this who are wrestling with a lot of these same goals and

maybe hearing some of these things um hearing how you're figuring out how to to do it hopefully is

is uh is a welcome challenge or a way to complement them to help them with the same process we're going

to include all your social media contacts and all that in the show notes so they can get all that and

get connected with you individually uh if they wanted to to kind of compare up but just as we're landing

the plane here um any last thoughts or anything on y'all's side i think the microsites are actually

going to be super relevant as churches across the country are closing um i mean i i'm familiar with

the louisville area because i went seminary at southern and uh that whole area is filled with

churches but so many of them are dying and the small towns around it and the small towns up here

uh so the microsite idea how do we use online ministry to then create physical connections and physical

um churches actually is going to be a super relevant conversation it is i mean you're rural rural

america is so fascinating because not just not only our church is dying but industries are dying

schools are dying um you know whole communities you know farming communities even where i'm at are just

finding that i'm i'm just i'm curious to see what happens but i still feel like the church has a place

in those in those towns and how can online be a way so if you've got a small church that

unfortunately cannot afford to call somebody full-time can online be a way to keep people

connected to the gospel where they otherwise wouldn't be able to do so and um i think that's the real

awesome opportunity that we have and it doesn't have to be one church i mean that's the beautiful part

about online ministry is that so many more churches are embracing this idea and and you know so you

know what tj is doing you know and being able to offer you know a more traditional expression

especially within our within our bigger family the lutherans there are many folks that that's their

heart language and that's not something that we as a church offer online right now and so in places

where that matters i mean here's a church that can do that you know and that can be huge you know as we

help these remnants you know that are still very viable continue to be the church because it just

it breaks my heart to think that the opposite would be true that we're going to have towns like what

what joe is talking about around the country that just don't have a place where people can worship

because yeah they can connect to to a church online but at the end of the day they need to have

community too and if and that community is best expressed locally and if we can help that thrive and

that's that is what my heart is for yeah in in 10 years i don't think we use the phrase church online

anymore i think it's church um and the the vehicle of church uh for delivery i think you're going to see

the microsite be very popular uh whether it's uh you know the video being streamed via church online

methods like today or whether it's just very small churches that are now at a much smaller number because

persecution because of tax changes because of a number of different reasons bigger churches are

going to get bigger smaller churches will continue to get smaller that kind of mid-range church is i

think is going to struggle uh to survive and i think they're going to go to more of this uh multi-site but

even the microsite model in order to stay uh functioning in order for impact by the way and that's i mean i don't

want to like die on this right now but that's actually more of a biblical model anyway and so

we can probably have a side podcast about that we already have you go back and listen to some of them

along the way but yeah i'm very excited about what micro can do uh in the future and what what i believe

it will do in the future and and some of you guys now mark adrian like you guys are are paving the way

for that the one thing anytime i ever talk to anybody who's doing microsites and i've talked to

dozens of people they all start the conversation with what we're doing now we may not do in three months

but we're just figuring it out like it if nothing else that one idea has become so experimental in the

church today because everyone's seeing that there's that there's a need there's a possibility something

organically is happening and we're trying to figure out if god's calling us to capitalize on it and

actually utilize it and start to build more um so we're going to experiment with some things and see

jay crando just had him on um a couple episodes ago he's on version number three of his experiment

he's actually tried one thing it didn't work he tried the second thing it worked really well

but it wasn't scalable so he tried number three um out of out of saddleback so yeah there's going to be

something here there's a model here that i think is going to affect the church of of the future

uh we just have to be diligent to try to figure out how it works today so well guys this has been

great i'm looking forward to doing this again um and but we're going to wrap for for mark for adrian

for tj for joe uh for andy uh this is jeff with the church digital thanks for uh joining in this

podcast and we'll see you next time y'all have a good day