EP039: Greg Ligon & Behind the Screens - The State of Church Online

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Episode 39 of The Church Digital podcast, and I got to tell you, I am really excited about where this

podcast is going to end. Check it out. Recently, two organizations got together and created a survey

to check the state of church online. So we talk about whether churches are engaging or not and

what's happening. And so they did a survey to see where you, churches out there, and how you are

engaging and utilizing this church online method. So we got Living As One. Now, they are no stranger to

the Church Digital. We do a ton of work with Colin Jones and Paul and those guys over at Living As One.

And also, we're bringing a new to the podcast, Leadership Network. Now, hopefully, you guys are no

strangers to Leadership Network. By the way, they create some phenomenal resources out there and do a

number of intensive trainings and things to help the church, you, the church, operate better.

They came together to create a survey. And now we've got the results in of how you, church out there,

and your contemporaries, how you're utilizing church online. So this is cool. The survey is out. It's

public. It's been released. The report has. And so you can download that report. We're going to put the

link in the show notes. You can just swing over there and grab it from there. But more than that,

with this podcast, we're able to sit down with these guys and have a conversation about where we are.

Okay, so we're seeing this, this stat. Why? We're seeing this trend. Why? Where are we going? What's

next? More than just looking at where we are today, let's be proactively figuring out where we're

heading for tomorrow and start to move down that road as, as we continue this growth towards church

online, towards discipleship online. I got to tell you the thing that I was most excited about with this

report is this idea that discipleship is not just a word that's said in closed doors, but it's something

that's happening virtually. And we're starting to see more and more churches trend that way and

understand that. The report shows it, which makes me so excited because it's the stuff that we've been

talking about. It's awesome. So here's where we are with the podcast. We literally got Colin Jones,

president of Living as One. We got Greg Ligon, the chief innovation officer with Leadership Network.

Ray Diarmus, co-host once again, online pastor with Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, Jeff,

with the Church Digital, in a conversation detailing behind the screens. Hey, everybody. Here you go.

I was just curious, like, what were the overall trends that you found in your research? Was there anything

that, like, what's the theme that was maybe discovered through this research? Well, I think one of the big

ideas and one of the things that was demonstrated to me that there's a significant growth in this space

is that those that were surveyed for this project, 47% reported that they had an online campus,

which is up 28% from when we asked the same question five years ago. In fact, when we asked that question

five years ago, 62% indicated they plan not to have an online campus. So we're seeing really rapid growth

in the development of online campuses. What do you think is the relationship? What's causing that shift to go from

not wanting to do a campus to now? What's been the cultural thing that do you think has allowed more

churches to get excited about online? Well, I think, you know, in some ways, it just represents the growth of

social environments online anyway. So I think that that's, it kind of follows that trend a bit.

I think the other thing is, in five years, of course, technology changes, feels like about every 10

minutes. In fact, that's one of the things I'll talk about a little bit later. But because the technology

has improved so much over the last five years, I think more and more people are able to get into the

game more quickly, because it's affordable and easier to use and that kind of thing.

Yeah, and I've been surprised by how quick the perspective shifted from, oh, Church Online is going to hurt my

attendance, people won't come, you know, all those different perspectives. And then now, surveying that on the

data, that was really surprising to me, you know, 46% disagreed that online attendance, you know, doesn't get

hurt by it, you know, online streaming, in-person attendance, and then 20% agreed that it hurt

attendance. So there was, you know, more than double that disagreed with that. And then the rest, I guess, were

neutral. Yeah, that was a big surprise to me as well. And, you know, I consistently get calls from senior

pastors, who have that question, they're like, Oh, my gosh, you know, we started an online campus, and

we've, we've, we've dropped our attendance, you know, x percentage, we're thinking about shutting down our

online campus. And so I was surprised at the growth and the people growth in the number of people who

really felt like that, that was hurting their physical presence.

Excuse me, the growth in people that didn't feel like it was hurting their physical presence. I think

you mentioned the 46% disagreed that adding an online campus hurt their physical presence.

So I think that was very interesting to me as well. I think one of the things that oftentimes,

senior pastors, that it's a, it's an issue in terms of the impact on physical attendance as well,

really, in some ways has nothing to do with online. There's a, there's a significant decrease in

physical attendance, simply because of the fact that people will see themselves as being a regular

attender at church, but they may only come one time a month or two times a month. And so when you

actually begin to look at the actual people, the bodies that are showing up on your, on your physical

campus, your growth is actually, in many cases, you're growing, you're not declining in terms of the

number of people that you're serving. There's a, we work with a group in Scott Thumma at

Hartford Research Institute. And I believe the latest number that they quote is, if you take your

average weekend worship attendance, you can multiply it by 3.2. And that really gets you to be at what

the reach is that you have as a church. Just to understand, our church is also taking into

consideration how this is affecting their decision-making, considering how many people are

engaging with them online. Do you guys see any shifts in terms of how churches are considering both

how they're addressing people, like how they're preaching to them, but also how they're making

decisions in regards to everything from budgets to how, how they're, how they're communicating with

them in terms of engagement?

Well, I, probably the thing that is, that jumps out to me when you ask that question is

Crossroads Church, which is up in Cincinnati, which I think is one of the churches that's really

leading the way, not just online, but with digital, all kinds of digital things, but on their online

campuses, you know, they are really working toward having an experience that is when I, that is shaped

by the physical campus, so you're going to be most likely to attend, to attend. So for example, if I'm,

if I log on online and my locator indicates that I'm closest to the campus that's in the south side of

Cincinnati, then I may, I, they're moving toward the place where they'll actually have a physical,

the stream will actually be, will include the campus pastor from that physical campus,

and they're really committed to that. In fact, they've even changed the name of their online, excuse me,

for their campus pastors to community pastors, because they're charging them with, them with

responsibility, not just for the people that are showing up at their building, but those who are

showing up online in that, from that specific geographic area. So that's one of the ways I see

that happening.

Yeah, I think Matt had a really cool quote from that on the report, where he said, you know, he's asking the

question basically of, you know, from the data in the report, it's the question of what's the purpose of,

you know, live streaming online. And then I think like, you know, the majority right now is just

getting people, you know, like still just keeping people connected. Like, but then if you look at

like the higher echelon of churches, like if you go to like 10,000 plus, their highest reason is for

outreach and evangelism and just like not, not engagement at all for actually reaching people. And so I think

we'll start to see more and more of the smaller churches realize that, okay, this is, you know,

the offline attender, as long as he's still engaging, should count as a church member. And people are

kind of battling with that question now. I think churches like Crossroads, you know, say stuff like,

you know, we don't want to convert someone from online to onsite. You know, our goal is to make sure

they're connected to the church community. Connecting is more important than converting them from online

to offline for us. And so they're saying, you know, they have other ways of them to connect digitally,

digital community groups, and that's more important to them than actually becoming into a button seat,

which is like a huge shift that we see. And I think, you know, Jeff's talked about that a ton on his podcast is

trying to get pastors and people to think through, hey, don't just think button seats in the old paradigm.

And we're really seeing that shift with the churches that are doing digital well.

If it's digital attender, if he's growing in community with others, attending a church body in

whatever way, then that should count just as much as a regular person that's in the seat.

Maybe even more so than someone who just comes and watches it every weekend and then leaves and is not

involved at all after that, you know.

Yeah, we're going to be talking with Crossroads here in a couple episodes. We're excited to roll that

out for everybody. They're doing a lot of really interesting things in that digital and in that

church online scope. One of the things that surprised me with the stats you guys rolled out

is that you capped the lowest size church at about 800 people. The average church in America is probably

closer to 72, 73, I think. 80% of churches in America are under 200 in size. I'm not sure on the stats,

but these are things that I've heard and they sound reasonable. Why did you cap at 800? Like what was

what was the logic at that size versus maybe even digging into some of the smaller size churches?

Well, it's really primarily based off of a leadership network bias. We've always worked with larger

churches. And so our base of churches that participated are primarily larger churches. And so that's really

what drove that more so than, you know, more so than any intention not to reach into the small group

market. That's just really been who we've feel like we've been called to serve. So that's, that'd be the

foundation for that. I think part of the, I think you're part of the reason that smaller churches may or may not

be involved. I think it's really primarily in some ways it's similar to this is not going to make a blanket

statement here that I don't mean to be a blanket statement because there's some actually very incredibly

healthy small churches. But in many cases, small, there's some small churches that they're small

because there's a lack of vision and leadership. And so I think, you know, that translates then into not

being willing to take risks, not being willing to, in many cases, not even being exposed to some of the new

things that are happening in the church.

They don't have time to get their heads above the water. We talked to like quite a few churches in the, you know,

hey, we got 50 people attending and we want to stream because, you know, there's a lot of transient

communities and people, especially in Florida, we hear that all the time. You know, we look at our people in the

winter, or I mean, we, you know, grow, it's the opposite of the way around in the winter. And then in a lot of

communities like that, and the smaller churches primarily are driven by reasons like that. Like, they're not

thinking about it like, well, I want to reach a bunch of people online. But then occasionally now, like,

especially in the digital world, you'll get really small churches that have just some visionary digitally,

and they'll be doing crazy numbers digitally, and have like 200 people coming on, you know, in their service

every Sunday, or even just online churches only. And like, because the barrier to entry for a digital church,

and the amount of people that you can reach without it being weird,

is so many more people than the old paradigm of having people having to attend and do that. So that

model is starting to be challenged. And I think that's really interesting, especially, you know,

you guys have talked about it as a way of church planning, even. And the, and what's cool is like,

we really love when we talk to those smaller churches, because they just have questions about

it all. You know, like, how do we do cameras? How do we do, et cetera? And those are really fun for us.

You're guiding the whole thing. And oftentimes, they're the scrappy ones that are, sometimes now,

you'll come up, and you'll get like a really, you know, active, understand digital church planner

that, you know, has some really interesting visions and views on digital. Yeah.

Yeah, I think, I think that the barrier, you know, just as you said, Colin, the barrier to entry is

going down. And so I think you will see smaller churches. When I, when I say a smaller church,

I'm thinking more of a traditional smaller church has been small for a long time. That last little

piece that you talked about was really around church planters. And I think there is, we are going to

see, already are seeing this, and we're going to see a growing number of planters that are launching

with an online, in some cases, maybe launching online first, before they actually put the physical

campus and building an online community that then becomes the core for launching their physical

campus. Yeah, we have a lot of people who buy gear for that now. And it was crazy because there was,

one of them had, you know, 500 people at launch because they've been streaming for six months or

whatever. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see more church plans take advantage of

that. And I've always wondered why there's this rush to get to the physical building, to pay the lease,

to pay the AV cost, you know, to go with all this when starting in a virtual and then building from

there, building that core team, getting your DNA out there in the community. That's a lot safer to do

on a plant side. And I just, I think looking forward, I hope, my hope is that more churches are going to

start to plant that digital force. Grow physical, sure, but start in a digital realm where people can

connect to you and can engage with you before getting to that place where you have to start paying

all the larger fees. Well, one of the things that I loved about the report is you delved in a lot to

the discipleship piece of this. And a lot of times when we talk with churches and pastors, at least me,

the extent of Church Online stops with the broadcast. Like the win of Church Online is just

broadcasting the services out. And obviously, Colin with Living as One, you guys do an excellent job

with that. But I really respected how you guys asked some more questions to get into more of the

discipleship angle of how churches are doing more than just broadcasting the services, but actually

getting into small groups and into next steps and into this discipleship piece. You know, I saw one of

the stats was it looked like about on average three to six percent of churches are doing that were

interviewed are doing some sort of discipleship virtually, online small groups, etc. I mean, obviously,

when we looked at it, I think 10,000 plus people, those churches were more at like 20%. So there's this

broad range where some of them are, very few are, but then when you get to like the giga level,

a lot more pick up. What do you think is causing? What are the giga churches seeing that the others

aren't? What are those hurdles that's stopping some of the other churches from doing more discipleship?

Well, I think there's a couple of things. I think part of the reason the giga churches are doing it

more is because they have more dedicated resources to be able to try to figure it out. You know,

and so they have, you know, they can, they can put some staff who are given primary focus to really,

you know, developing some of those kinds of things. And that's part of the reason. I think the other

reason that it is, it's not accelerated as rapidly as we might think is, has less to do with online and

more to do with a paradigm shift that is not yet fully engaged in terms of what it means to do discipleship.

I think we're seeing many churches, even many large churches are still, you know, thinking about

discipleship in a very linear, curricular, educational kind of model. Discipleship really at its heart

is really about transformation, right? And so I think as people can begin to get more and more

comfortable with the transformational side of discipleship, they're going to get more and more

comfortable with the opportunities that online provides in terms of being able to actually have

online. Sure, you have an educational model is actually pretty easy to deliver online. There's

a lot. I mean, if you're doing, if you've got a curriculum based discipleship program, you can

deliver that online pretty easily. But I think the ability to really see the online space as a place

to really truly engage, not just to consume. I think we're still in the midst of that shift.

Why do you guys think that it is that so many churches are shy to take their services to social

platforms? Because I saw a significant decrease between the number of churches that broadcast on

their site compared to how many of them actually take it to the masses on social media.

Yeah, we're actually seeing like a huge increase in people streaming to social. It used to be where

they didn't at all. It's pretty difficult to stream to social because you have all these music right

things. And especially if you're a small church, like you get docked and taken down so they get

frustrated. But now like the social platforms are handling that a lot better, which is great news.

And there's a lot more people that we're seeing like we have like last weekend, just for the amount

of new churches that came on, for example, of all of our platform, we had like a 15% week over week

increase in Facebook streaming, which is huge when you have that many churches on a platform. So it's

like that's not new churches coming on. That's like, you know, like people that are already coming on

that started streaming to Facebook that weren't before, which is really interesting. And the

however, like at the same time, they're realizing, you know, if you look at Facebook watch times,

it's like, you know, you'll have, for example, Saddleback numbers, you know, they, I forget the

exact amount, but it's something like 20,000 views and like average watch time of less than two

minutes. And that's every church that we talked to, you know, and then you get like watch times and

the, you know, like on an, on the bed code on church online platform, um, or on your website,

it's like 45 minutes. Right. Um, and so I think, I think a lot of that is like people realizing that,

you know, Facebook and, and YouTube and all that are really great for, for marketing value,

but that it's really difficult to develop community just because of all the distractions

there. And so, you know, there's, there's like the ways that people are doing it that are working

is like Facebook groups, but then inherently you lose the marketing value of that, you know,

so you get getting the community, but then lose the growth. So I think people are trying to answer

all those questions. And that's why I think the building, I think we'll start to see way more

people start to build, you know, social features that on, on platforms that they control. Um,

like, like Crossroads did with Crossroads Anywhere and Church Home did with their app and

lots of churches using actually like social platforms, but that they completely control just

for that reason. So that they can measure, attract, grow community discipleship. Like there's tons of

discipleship tools in those ways of connecting people that, that you wouldn't, that would, you know,

happen kind of naturally on Facebook that are hard to cultivate. Yeah.

You are seeing a natural trend away from Facebook in some areas. I just even were, I was just previous

to doing this podcast recording with you guys. I was doing another podcast with a number of,

of online pastors and, and one of the, one of the pastors in the room was going, um, into great

detail on why he does not broadcast to Facebook. And the reason, the reason why, honestly, and what we

talked about in the podcast was I felt like his, his view of it was, yes, he can,

get far greater engagement on church aligned platform using that embed code because the platform

itself is meant to generate that next step. It's meant to keep people engaged from a longer,

there's not as many of those distractions, but it's easy to lose that, that marketing piece of,

of what, what you're talking about, Colin. You know, so often we, um, we, we feel like, you know,

you got to count that butts in seats. Uh, you got to count that. And how do we, that, that two minutes

scroll through that person who sneezed when they're looking at the newsfeed and maybe that counts as a,

as a, as a view, like, does that count on, on the reporting? Does it not? What do we do with that?

And instead of actually like figuring out what's best, let's just throw it in there and then online

goes higher or let's not count it at all. And then, and it's not, instead of looking at more of the,

the discipleship model of, of what's happening and how the broadcast is helping you get people

connected either into, into the physical or virtual model of discipleship.

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I mean, one of the things that I think it was about 20% of those

that we surveyed indicate they didn't even have the capability to measure their online attendance,

to really be able to know if it was impacting their physical attendance or the level of engagement,

or, and I think that's also going to, that's a, that's a big question in terms of what does

engagement look like? I mean, you, you've compared Facebook and online in terms of the amount of time

they're there. But, you know, I can, I can be also be online and it appears that I'm online,

but I'm in the next room, you know, fixing lunch or, you know, whatever. And so it was fascinating to

me when I talked with the guys at virtual reality church last week, we were just talking about metrics

and some of those kinds of things. And that was one of the things that he said was he, he thinks,

I think there's going to be a real difference in the way that churches think about, particularly if

they're comparing virtual reality experiences to an online experience. He said, because a virtual

reality experience actually requires greater engagement, right? So, I mean, if you're in

virtual reality, you're actually interfacing, engaging with the, engaging with the content. I mean,

you got your goggles on for goodness sake, you know, so it's, and so I think that's going to be a

fascinating thing for us to try to figure out too, is what does engagement really look like? How do we

measure that? Is it, is it simply about, you know, the number of minutes that somebody's, you know,

logged on or are there ways that we can begin to get at actually transformational kind of metrics,

particularly when you go back to start talking about the discipleship side of things?

Yeah, I think engagement and discipleship are the two things that we hear the most of churches

that have been streaming for a while of how do we unlock that? And the thing that probably the podcast

talks about the most, you know, is how, hey, how do we move to the next level, engage and disciple the

people that are coming and not just have them be passive followers. But the, and there's, there's

so many cool things going on with that, you know, there's church online platform trying to make a bunch

of updates in their platform to make that easier. And there's streaming providers like us that are

trying to do cards and stuff that comes up. And then, and I think that too, is like the churches that

are killing it on the, you know, marketing side of the church aren't, aren't at all killing it and

probably the discipleship online. You know, it's like very different. Like you have like, like

everybody wants to do at Elevation does because they have so many millions of views. Right. And

there's so many, and it's so cool. And what they do is they, they cut up little chunks and they post

it all. And they do like, if you look at their marketing team, it's amazing. Everybody wants to be

that. But when you're a small church, it's really hard to mimic that. You know, they do things

really excellently and have the numbers to where the algorithms work to their favor and do all that

really well. So it might be good for a smaller church to say, Hey, let Elevation be Elevation and

God bless them in that way. Like my 15 year old, you know, cousin, you know, whatever nephews just

watch Stephen Purtick all the time and never go to church, you know? But then does it, if you're a

small church, do you care more about discipleship online? You know, cause that's your niche.

It's interesting. The whole influencer, the marketing stuff really is that influence at some level,

particularly when you talk about Furtick and Elevate Church and those kinds of huge followings,

but in some other realms that are impacted by online, for example, I do a lot of work in publishing

as well. And one of the things they're discovering in publishing is you have a great, you have a much

greater conversion rate, if you want to use that term, when you're actually working with not necessarily

the biggest number, but with the right number. And so they've begun to talk, use this terminology of

micro influencers. And so in many cases, you know, there are some of the major brands in terms of

books and authors are having greater impact by taking a subset of their big fan base. But these are really

the people who are totally engaged and are really going to be able to, are really champions of the

product. And so there's probably something for the church to learn there as well, as we think about

the engagement and the traction process as well. One of the other things that's happening in that space

is we have a partnership with an organization called Glue. It's a big data subscription platform.

And one of the things that they're being able to do, in addition to being able to more accurately

understand who it is in your community, so that your communication, whatever the marking looks like,

is really hitting, hitting, hitting with connecting with the people that are going to most likely say,

yeah, that that's what I need. I'm gonna go to your church. The other thing that is really in the

beginning stages, and that we're actually working with them on a couple of places is developing some

assessments. And I think that's going to be something that's going to get built into a lot of these

platforms as well that will help with measuring some of the transformation. So you've got some

kind of pre and post test. So you have the ability when somebody launches or begins to engage in a

small group online, there's a some kind of an assessment that they take. And then when they've

completed the season or a six week series or whatever, there's kind of a post assessment. So

I think that part of what's happening digitally is really growing as well.

That's good.

Yeah, I've been running some betas with glue on that assessment and, and, and kind of the,

the vehicle engine they're building around that. Arguably for me, and I've told them this,

this is some of the most exciting things I see, honestly, in the church online today, because it's

starting to now develop a system that I can build a discipleship process around online. And it's not,

oh, I got to utilize this platform and get it to integrate with this and this and this. And,

and the data is all over the place and something breaks and on all these different people are

pointing at each other. Glue's really starting to figure out how to do that and are putting

something in place that, that any church relatively easily can build a discipleship process in place

to get people connected online.

How many churches are actually thinking through that next step process in terms of, hey, so they're

watching. Now, what's their next step, depending on what platform they're watching on? Is there

a unified next step? Is there a bunch of different databases kind of roaming around in different

churches and they're struggling? How are they kind of managing a lot of the concepts?

That's a good question. It's a, it's early on, I think, in terms of, I would say they,

most aren't managing it well. You know, we've, again, kind of our leadership network, primary

client are really large churches. And even the really large churches, as we've worked within the

data space, you know, they're, they, before they can even actually begin to effectively engage in some

of this big data, this third party data, they're just trying to get their first and second party data

right, you know, get their database to a place they even know who it is that's in their, you know, in

their own church. And so, but I think that there are, you know, there's a, we work with a group of

churches, probably about 45 churches that I would say are kind of on the front end cutting edge. They're

the ones who are building out the resources and the tools. They're figuring out how to use data,

understand, you know, how to close your back door. You know, what are the indicators that somebody's

about to leave? In terms of ministry, they're building out some propensity kind of profiles

to help them to understand who are the people in your congregation that, whose marriages are likely

in trouble. What percentage of your people are that way or in that, in that scenario? As a result,

what kind of discipleship and tools do we need to put in place? And so a lot of those conversations

are beginning to happen, but I would say it's, it's still pretty early in the stage. All the assessment

process that we talked about, that I talked about previously with glue, those are all built

in such a way that when you complete the survey, based on your responses, there are customized next

steps that are developed. So based on kind of where you are in the process. And so I think some of that

next step process is going to be cooked into the assessment tools. We touched on it earlier where

Church in Line is great for like a front door. These are our visitors, people that don't even know

who you are and are just trying to really start to learn more about your church. They're interested

in the side door approach of, of how, okay, I'm traveling, I'm away. I'm a snowbird in Miami Beach,

who actually is from Canada, back and forth and able to connect with the church that I'm attending

from, from a distance. When we start to talk about maybe this digital door, maybe these people who are

not physically in the space, but this is still part of their church. They are engaging in spiritual

instruction and discipleship, but not in the physical realm. Like what, what needs to happen for the

church to see this? When we have this conversation, often, at least I do, when I talk with pastors,

they're like, Hey, that person on the other side of town or in another country, in another time zone,

that's not my responsibility. All the discipleship that I do is in the physical realm. What, what are

some hurdles that we need to do to kind of get past that? What advice could you give for some of us in

the, in the church online realm that maybe see things differently? How, how can we help change this

culture? Well, I think anytime you're making a, any kind of cultural, anytime you're wanting to make a

significant shift like that, it's really a culture shift. Um, and anytime you have, you shift a culture,

the primary way that you do that is through storytelling and giving examples over and over

and over again of how, you know, how it actually is working. Um, it's the same thing we talked about

multi-site all the time. You know, if you really want to become a multi-site church, you know, um, you need

to be talking about not the fact that you're at opening another building, but you're talking about the,

why you're doing it kind of goes back to the why as well. Um, Chase Oaks church, uh, where Collins

did as the pastor, I think when they were a master at it and when they started by launch their multi-site

strategy, their kind of framework was this value of you have to love where you live. And so they said,

you know, we're going to really live into that value. We can't have people that are driving in 45

minutes to get to our campus on legacy. We need to be able to allow people to worship and engage,

you know, in their community. Um, and so I think some of that translates, um, into online as well.

Um, so anyway, that's, I think that's a big piece of going back to your question. How do you help

people get to that? It's telling the stories of transformation, telling the stories of where it

works, an online campus pastor, a senior pastor, whoever the gatekeepers are and the influencers are

in the context of a church telling those stories of success, um, is, is really, really important and

key. I agree with that. And I think, um, thinking about it as a funnel is really, really helpful.

So the reality is if you, if you, you know, the, the purpose of streaming is there's a lot of

benefits, but if you do stream, there's, you know, 40% of them is what in the report are irregular

attendees, people that you don't know that, you know, when Seacoast backed up the number, they said

every time they run anything, you know, 30 to 50%, um, are people that they don't have any,

track, uh, don't know, aren't in any member database, never filled out a contact card,

um, et cetera. And like the, and the, the interesting thing about that is like, that's,

you know, 40, like for most churches are really concerned about growth. So in that funnel, you have

some of those people that have never been to your church, they're just watching online, right?

You have some people that if you ask them at a grocery store, they would say, I'm a Chase Oaker or I'm a

whatever, but they haven't been in three years, right? But they watch online, um, every however long.

And so I think the question is of like, Hey, what's your strategy for getting

those out of the funnel? You know, it's, it's probably okay to say some of those we want to

attend in person, right? Um, but for a lot of those, that's probably not okay to say for whatever

reason, um, whether they're out of, um, the city and attendant person or whether they just

personality wise would never come to a church until they receive more transformation or maybe

never, you know? Um, and then you have, you have all those buckets of people. So I think as a

church is thinking through, Hey, let's be honest about, you know, 40%, whatever, um, here's the

funnel. Um, do we have a plan for those different people in different walks of life? Right. So like,

are we, are we thinking about and trying to shepherd the spiritual development of people that we won't

ever see, you know? Um, cause that's, that's ours to steward. Um, and so I think I'll be thinking

about it of, Hey, that's the reality of what's happening. Um, no matter what you believe,

you know, um, so how can we steward them the best? Yeah. Yeah. And the other cool thing,

I'll go ahead. I was going to say, uh, because, you know, we, we used to think in terms of that,

in terms of Christmas and Easter only, and now there's this whole other category of online.

Right. And so it's interesting. Uh, you guys chat with any churches that actually have a strategy

for that, or they're at least they're thinking through that process.

Good question. None that come to mind immediately. Um,

Yeah. None that come to mind immediately. Um,

calling anybody that you're engaged with. Yeah. Jeff would know all their names. I sat in the

session. Um, but there, we did a session basically that what ended up happening. I don't know if

this was the session title, but we talked about the funnel of church online and how to get from that,

um, and how people see that. And there's, it's cool. Cause what I, what I think it's happening

is like the churches that are between 500 and 4,000 people that are really doing the most in that

cause they're, they're driven with growth, right? They're not, they're not the 10,000 people churches

that really care about growth, but they're comfortable. You know, it's like the churches

that are like, we need this to grow. Our senior pastor sees this as like a strategic difference

of our church, how we're going to see this differently. So Jeff, you probably, I would like

if you talk to that. Yeah. So we did, we did, uh, it was at the church IT conference and we did a

podcast. It's, it's redefining the why of church online. And, um, and it's, it's, it's on the podcast.

I'm not sure what number, but what we really, the, the challenge is, and it's really the biggest hurdle

with, with church online is trying to figure out who that person is that's watching. Um, you know,

and so like you can create code, but there's privacy issues. And so like, we want, we want privacy,

but at the same time, we want to be able to, to access information and figure out how to do ministry

with them. By the way, like that issue exists at the physical church too. I mean, how many of our

people sit in the back of the room, completely disconnected during the message and try to haul

out of that lobby as fast as possible without somebody even saying hi to them. I mean, there's

a large percentage of people, unless their kids are actually checked in to the, uh, the children's

ministry and they, or they give, we have no idea who they are. They're not active, um, in members.

They're not serving. And so the, the challenge of church online when, when people are like, yeah,

but I don't know who they are. Well, you don't know who they are in the physical realm yet. You

work hard to figure out how to engage them. You come up with ways, gimmicks, solutions to get them to,

to join in a group, to, to meet the pastor, to put a face to a name and, and do that. A lot of that,

there are some churches that are figuring it out. There are a lot more that are, that are trying and

experimenting different things. But at the end of the day, it's, it's that same intentionality

towards, I need to figure out who this IP address is because that, that person, that IP address has

a soul. And as a result of that, I need to spiritually care for that person. Yeah. At the end of the day,

people have to raise their hand, right? In the digital world to be able to say, yeah, I want to be

contacted. So I think, you know, I think some of the churches that are doing a good job of trying to

figure out how to get, help people raise their hand, um, are approaching it from a little bit

different perspectives. So again, I'm going back to Crossroads. I've been going back to dipping in

that well a little bit, you know, but they have a series of podcasts that they do now that are

specifically targeted at different demographics. So one is targeted at, um, women who are in executive

leadership. Wow. And it's primarily a podcast that's around, I mean, it's around, you know,

things serve, things that would serve someone who's a woman and leading in a, in a company in some form

or fashion. So they're serving that, that person, um, and then weaving in through that, the opportunity

for people, for them to be able to talk about what they do at Crossroads and why that makes a difference.

And then people have had that felt need made, have that felt need met, and they're going to be more

likely to raise their hand to figure out how to be connected with on a, on another level. Um, so I think

that some of those kinds of things are really key. I think the other thing though, is we do, there are

a lot of people that show up online that we do have information on. Um, and so it's figuring out how we

create the system for a digital solution, much like the analog solution that I use back when I was in my

very first church in a long time ago. And we had, we had this, one of my responsibilities as associate

was to follow up on the people that were irregular attenders. Um, and so I had this process that I

developed where I would, you know, regularly call these people. Um, and it was a, it was in some ways

it was a little bit like a drip campaign. If you put it, if you put it in today's, uh, uh, in, in today's

vernacular, because it just, every once in a while, they'd get a note from me, or they get a call from me,

or they get some kind of, I'd drop by their house back in the day when people actually visited, your

pastors visited your, your, your home and I'd leave my business card or whatever. But over time, um,

probably some of the most significant ministry experiences I had as an associate in that church

came from some of those people because I'd had this ongoing kind of contact with them. And whenever

there was a crisis in their life or something they had, somebody was going to want to get married

or whatever, there was a big, they knew they had somebody to call. And so I think that that's

the thing we have to think in another place we have to think about in terms of next steps

and continuing to nurture people is how do we, uh, how do we help people be exposed to the

opportunities for next steps for those that we do know as well?

And I think this is where hiring a digital marketer for that role is really good because they think

through, you know, buckets of people online. Right. And they think through, and it's all about,

you know, getting people to interact is all about personalization and workflows. Um, people can do that

really well. I mean, right now there's, if you hire a good digital marketer, they'll know like right

now there's something that you can get that it probably won't last very long, but you can get

the personal email address of like 80% of the people coming to your site. Um, and you can match

that and you can email them even if they don't give you their info. Um, which is like probably total

privacy, you know, rule, but then like, that's what businesses are doing. Right. And so you've got to

decide like, Hey, what's, what's okay for me to do versus whatever. Um, and then break down that law,

but at least have someone that knows, um, how to connect with someone digitally and, and,

and workflows, um, and have paths and thought through paths digitally, um, for each person

that's coming. Cause taking that person, um, that's just, that's just visiting your site. You

don't, you don't want to do it on the fourth or fifth visit. You want to do it on the first

visit. You want to have them engaged. Cause you know, that's the only time they might come.

Right. There's huge drop off rates after that. Um, and so you need, you need someone to think

through, okay, the first person, this, this person's coming, are they in this, what's the best way to engage

them? You know, are they in this boat? Are they, um, someone that's, um, elderly in a, in a, you

know, nursery home? Are they someone that's watching? That's not a believer. That's never

attended church before. Let's check it out. You know, and then if so, you know, you interact

with those people in different ways. And, um, and there's, there's a lot of great smart ways

that churches are doing to, to get those to engage, um, and move. Yeah.

So let's, let's jump in our, our DeLoreans. Let's get in our time machines and go 10 years

in the future. 20, 20, 29. What, what trends, what is church online going to look at then?

What is, um, you know, we're seeing micro churches now we're seeing some start to start with, uh,

with kids ministry and starting to explore in that space. Um, what's church online going to

look like in 20, 29? Anybody? Everyone's quiet because everybody will be wrong if we videotaped

this. I'm okay. Well, I mean, I have a very limited sample size, two conversations I've had,

actually three, um, two conversations and then one application. So I, I talked with, um, the, uh,

pursuit church, um, Angela Craig, excuse me, pursuit church live. And it's a totally online

campus. Um, fascinating things that they're doing. They have, uh, they have an amazing international

reach, 45 countries, 43 languages, uh, 49% of the people that are logging in are coming in

from developing countries. And so I think we're going to see some online campuses that, um, that

are, uh, never moved from being online. Um, they have, uh, they have a reach, they have an opportunity

to connect in some unique ways. They're, they're beginning to talk about, you know, development of

their teams. They're putting together an academy to help train people, you know, how to lead in this

kind of context. I think we're going to see, uh, more and more of those. Um, I also, you know, I,

I was a little bit skeptical when I, um, uh, went and spoke with, or didn't go and spoke with,

but I had a conversation with, um, uh, virtual reality church. I'm drawing a blank now on his

name. Help me, Jeff.

DJ Soto.

DJ Soto.

Yeah, DJ. Um, but I think it was fascinating for me to hear him talk about, um, the, not so,

not so much the virtual reality side of things and the technology, uh, but just the way they're

thinking through that. So he was, he's even talking about the different platforms. So there, um, the,

uh, one of their primary, uh, virtual reality platforms, he kind of equated that to a mega

church kind of model. Cause it was kind of the most well-developed and you have the ability

to do all these special, uh, kind of things, event registration and all these different kinds

of things. It's kind of this mega church kind of model. And then he said, they also have a

lot of people are on this other platform whose name I don't remember right now, but he said,

that's kind of more like a house church, you know, kind of model, um, because it's a little

bit, um, it's a little bit scaled back. It's a little bit kind of more organic. Um, he's talking

about the new platform. That's kind of the new Facebook, uh, virtual reality platforms. He said,

we think that will be kind of a new model as well. And he even began to talk about it in terms of

launching either new campuses or planting new communities, um, by using these different kinds

of technology. So I think the virtual reality thing, um, has the potential to begin to gain some

traction over the next 10 years. Um, it was probably 10 years back now, maybe a little bit longer than

that when Life.Church, uh, Bobby Grunwald and those guys, you know, had a developed, uh, was it called

Second Life or something like that? Second Life. Yeah, it was maybe more like 15. You know, it was

pretty, um, it was of course way advanced for its time, but it was still pretty clunky. And, uh, I think

the advances that have been made in the last 10 years will only accelerate over the next 10.

I want to, I want to ask a question and forgive me if I'm getting personal because, because I'm really,

I want to try to figure this out because I'm, I'm all about the digital church and maybe culture isn't ready.

For us to accept the idea of a digital only church. But I think that from a theological standpoint,

it's there. It's just going to take time for acceptance. Greg, you asked a question. And when

you said that you went in a little hesitant, where did that hesitation come from? And at what point

did that kind of appease for you? Help me. You're a little older. You have a good perspective. I'm not

dating you. I'm sorry. But you're very kind, a little older. I'll take that. A little older,

gracious here. Um, but, but tell me about that. Help me unpack here. So like, what was the concerns

and, and how did it dissipate or, or did it like, where do you stand today?

Yeah. So I think that it was interesting because one of the things that I, when I interviewed him,

I asked him what was surprising to him or what was surprising to others whenever they had conversations

with him. Um, and he said, well, most people think that when they hear about virtual reality church,

that it's just fun. It's a bunch of, you know, punks that are gamers, you know, that are, that's all

they, they're living in this virtual reality. And he said, actually our, you know, the demographics of

those that are participating in our online church, the average age is like 42. And there are leaders

that, that are actually leading and they're trained to lead are in that kind of forties age range as well.

I think I just probably in general, I had this perception about virtual reality as being this

gamer kind of thing. Not really, um, I'm not really real. Uh, I think that, you know, for me,

it's probably still going to be, um, there's, it's still going to be a process of transformation.

I don't know that I'll ever get to the place where I'm going to feel comfortable just going to a

virtual reality church or only going to an online church for that matter. Because I do think there

are some, um, when, when the opportunity affords itself, there are some things that can happen,

um, um, in a, in a face-to-face kind of conversation, uh, that don't happen online.

Um, so that's probably, you know, I may be showing my age, I may be, but, um, I think there's some of

those kinds of realities. The other thing that was kind of fascinating to me when I talked with, um,

Angela at pursuitchurch.live, which makes total sense to me, um, because they don't do any kind

of visual kind of thing. And I think it's, you're just, you're logging on, but you're totally anonymous.

You may, I think you may have an avatar or whatever that you develop, but you're totally anonymous.

Um, and so she had actually, she's up in the Pacific Northwest and she had a gathering where she

invited people to actually come physically, um, into, to come together for a physical gathering.

Um, and she said, what was so fascinating was the diversity of the people that showed up.

Um, and people had no idea, um, age diversity, uh, theological diversity, ethnicity, diversity,

socioeconomic diversity, um, a lot of people with handicaps, you know, that they physically

couldn't participate in a church on a regular basis. And so this had kind of opened up the world

of church and a, um, a relationship with Christ and an opportunity and community, um, in some really

significant ways. And so, um, I don't think, I don't anticipate, uh, that it will ever become the

only mode for doing church, either of those, but I do think it has the potential to increase as being

an amazingly effective way to reach people and allow people to be in a process of transformation

and discipleship. Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate the time, uh, Colin, Greg, in any, uh,

closing thoughts as we land the plane. Yeah, I think, um, you know, church is historically very

long behind culture change. And, you know, when you look at the 20 and 30 and 40 year olds,

just the way their behavior changing is that they go home and watch Netflix, right. Um, and many less

people are getting out. And so if we think about how church drives change for that, it gets interesting,

you know, like who knows what it'll look like in 10 years, but it does get interesting. You know,

when you look at the behavior shifts happening now, and, um, if we want to meet people,

uh, if we want to reach people, we got to meet them where they're at, you know, um, they're not going

to come to a building if that's the only place they go to every week, you know, um, that has social

reaction. I mean, that's just unrealistic to think, you know, that's so scary. Um, so I'm really excited

that, um, churches are rethinking kind of, Hey, what, what does culture look and what does it look

like to be Jesus to the culture? And it's, it's really cool to get to see that happen all over the world.

And, and small examples like virtual reality church and, and bigger examples. And it's just,

it's evident that God that move in the digital world, and it's really fun to get to get to watch

it. So if you're, if you're doing it, please continue.

I think it's a, it's an opportunity for us to, um, it's a tool that God has provided for us to be

able to engage, um, different groups of people in ways that we haven't been able to do just as

the other, you know, major technology transformations all the way back to the printing press, you know,

have done. So I think it gives us the opportunity to do that. I think it's interesting too, to think

about, um, the fact that I think it would be, I think there could be a natural tendency for us,

for many churches to say, okay, I've got to have an online campus or online, you know, service or

online experience. I'm going to do that in some ways they end up, um, not thinking through it deeply

enough to understand what uniquely has to happen in that online experience. And maybe even how that

online experience shows up online. That may not be as an online church. Um, it may be in some other

digital kind of expression, um, where people are living, uh, that, you know, as you said, calling

people go home and watch Netflix. Um, there's probably not a whole lot of those that are unchurched

that go home and look for an online, for an online church service somewhere. So I think that,

that hard work of really understanding how you, um, make an online experience, one that will actually

intersect with where people are living, um, I think is a really important thing for churches to think

about as well. Yeah, you got to have a strategy behind it. And so with that strategy comes intentionality

to figure out who you are as a church and what that representation looks like online. My challenge

is, is that if you're broadcasting services, you should be considering a discipleship process because

you're missionally engaging people anywhere around the world. And if somebody gets saved,

there has to be some sort of an intentional discipleship process, small groups, next step,

something for them to, to get further in. But no, those are very good words, Greg. Thank you for that.

Hey, Ray, as we're wrapping, anything on your end?

Yeah, just to piggyback on what you're saying, Jeff, you know, so many churches don't really think through

the discipleship process on the onset anyways. It's an important factor. You know, they think

about having small groups, they think about having messages, and not even just in an online

environment, but even in their in-person environments. And so that next step, especially

as we enter a new decade where engagement is really the driving force. And, you know,

we've talked about that often, um, how churches need to understand better. And we all need to work

harder at helping people through those next steps, whether it's in person or even through digital

platforms and thinking about how they are the same next step, no matter which environment they're

engaging in. And so, you know, my hope and my challenge and listen, guys, great study, very

encouraging stuff. Um, good things to hear. Our hope is that more leaders, more church leaders take a

look at their next steps and think through how that can happen on all platforms in person included.

Yeah. And we don't want to downplay the streaming and what's involved in that. It's definitely a part

of it. By the way, if you're not, I'm going to do cheap commercial for Colin, because I'm not going

to give him time to, if you're not involving living as one, uh, in your streaming process, you

certainly should. Uh, I can't tell you how many hours of sleep I've lost on bad streaming solutions.

Living as one solved many problems for many, many churches that I work with and others,

and you should too. Colin, is that where commercial wise you good thumbs up? Yeah. Good. Awesome.

So living as one.com and of course, leader, leadership network, lead net.org. I think we've

.org, right. Um, phenomenal organization that's helping push forward, uh, the cause of big C church.

Um, at very, very impressed. I've loved the stuff that I've done with them in the past and even seeing

the stuff that's coming out now is phenomenal. So Greg, Colin, thank you very much for being here

and being a part of this. Ray, once again, thanks for jumping on. This is Jeff with the church digital.

Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time at the church digital podcast. Y'all have a good day.