EP037: Joe Radosevich & “Small Church” Church Online

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Episode 37 of The Church Digital podcast. We're taking a different approach here as we're going

to look at things on the small. Normally, when we talk about small, we're talking about microlocations,

small groups, things like that that are happening in church online. But honestly, I was called out

recently by our guest on Facebook for having a different view with church online. You see,

historically, I, Jeff, I've been working with multi-site churches that are mega church, even

giga church level. And so just transparently, my view of church, and even church online, is more of this

mega giga church level. It's a much larger church. Here's a fascinating stat that I've just discovered

here recently. 80% of churches in America today are under 200 in attendance any given Sunday. While I've

been focusing, and I'm transparent here, I admit this, while I've been focusing on the big church,

come to find out that the majority of churches that are out there aren't big. The majority of the people

that are attending aren't big. They're attending the small. And there's this whole other level that we

should be reaching at the small church and helping smaller churches or discovering how smaller churches

are utilizing technology. How are they utilizing church online? And to this point, I bring in our guest

for today, Joe Radicevich, who is a pastor of a church plant in Belgium, Wisconsin. Belgium Community

Church is a small church plant up there. And Joe's got a big heart to reach the people in his

neighborhoods. He's got a big heart to impact people with the gospel and create disciple makers who are

capable of creating other disciples. And it was a pleasure to have this conversation with him today as we

dove into this idea of small church, church online. So for this conversation, I'm bringing in Joe

Radicevich, obviously church planner and lead pastor there at Belgium Community Church. I'm bringing in Tom

Pounder, who of course, anytime Tom comes into the show from YM Sidekick podcast and digital boot camp and

all the things that he's doing, man, it's always a pleasure just to hang out with him. I'm bringing in

Ray Diarmus. Ray is a common guest host here at the Church Digital. And of course, online pastor at

Christ Fellowship Miami and my course, myself, Jeff with the Church Digital to have this conversation

on small church, church online. Hey, everybody, here you go. This church was actually started 25 years

ago. But long story short, after a period of health, it declined to so that they closed their doors. So

they closed the doors strategically for a year and a half while looking for a pastor. The denomination

chipped in money to renovate the building. And so basically, it's more like a church plant that has

a building. There's some history, but basically, we have a new name. It's a new church.

And it's in a community that really surrounded by communities without churches, without gospel,

evangelical churches, even mainline and Catholic churches are closing up in this area. So there's

half a million people within 25 miles of us, but they're made up in small towns. And they're little

towns where oftentimes there's not a there's no church at all, or there's no church that's preaching

the gospel. And so anyway, so we're kind of coming out of the church plant circle, looking at a town,

looking at a series of communities and saying, how do we reach these people? And quite honestly,

the front door of our church is online. We know that we know everybody has a mobile device.

They've got computers and TVs and smart stuff and all over the place. How do we use these things to

get our front door as closely as we can, or as close to people as we can get it. So that's kind

of where we come at the church online live stream kind of conversation is using it to disciple the

people that we have and using it to reach people that are in our community and wouldn't be reached

any other way.

So let me ask this question, Joe, how long have you been that you're relatively new at the church,

Belgium community, right?

So I moved up here June of 2017. So two and a half years, the church restarted a little over a year and a

half ago. So the first six months was a helter skelter, renovate a building, gather a core team, launch a church.

Yeah. So two and a half years.

Um, and I'm realizing that was a pretty breakneck pace for the first two and a half.

So did, did you, did you move there for the specific church or did God, just curious to kind

of backstory. So you moved up to Belgium, Wisconsin with visions of, of rebirthing kind of this,

this existing church area.

If I had known it was a church plant, I would have run.

I thought it was a church revitalization is what I thought it was, uh, and it had a failed

church plant in Illinois. The Lord used it to really teach me and grow me, prepare me, uh, for some

things. But if I had known this was a church plant, I would have run away, but I'm actually glad I didn't

because I really found a lot of my gifts in the middle of all this. So anyway, so I, uh,

this was a position that I thought was a revitalization. And so we moved up here and said,

okay. Um, and I really wanted to go north because I wanted to go to a place where we're

not just another flavor of church, which I realized that's even changing in the south.

Uh, a lot of churches are closing super fast and people are not hearing the gospel,

but I wanted to go to a place where people go, I've never heard this before. This is really good

news. Um, and really that's what I found here in Wisconsin. I'd never been to Wisconsin until I

interviewed for this position, but, um, to hear people go, I've never heard this in my life.

What are you talking about? Um, and for the people in our church to get division for that and go,

yeah, there are people in our lives that thought Jesus Christ was just a swear word.

They didn't realize he was actually a person and that we have a message and that there's good news.

Wow.

So for me, that's super exciting, um, to be able to be in a play. I call it be a big

fish in a small pond in the sense that it's not just, Hey, we've got a better,

we've got a better worship band, a better preacher, a better something.

It's a, we have something that you've never heard before and you need it. This is good news for you.

I'm not, I'm not much on, on numbers. And if you listen to the podcast,

like we make fun of numbers on, on a regular basis, but I want to put a number on this to

help define to the audience, the scope of, of who you are and kind of where you are in your ministry

journey. Um, like what, what type of, what's your average attendance on a Sunday? Like what,

what does this actually look like? Um, so we had 55 on Sunday. I think our current average is

more like 60, but that was, that's probably our current average.

What's interesting. And this is, this is a stat that, that I just discovered. Somebody told this

to me maybe a week ago, 80% of churches today are under 200, uh, attenders on, on average.

And for me, that is, that's an area that I just transparently, and I've said it before, like I

wasn't as aware of the small church as probably I should have. Um, and working with Ray and, and some

others like the church digital, we're going to start to turn the corner and work more towards

not only a mega church, not only a multi-site church, but, but also start to create some resources,

uh, towards the smaller church to, to help them. Because the majority of churches by far,

the majority of the churches are more like you, Joe, in the, in the, you know, 200 and under range,

then, then the, the gigas and, and the, the megas that, that are out there.

Yeah. So several years ago, I read something by Seth Godin, where he was saying,

what's the best way? And I don't even know what his point was, but he said, what's the best way to, um,

reduce car fuel consumption. And he said, is it to increase, uh, like the, the, um,

miles per gallon that the top end cars go so that the cars that go 50 miles per hour,

or I'm sorry, that go 50 miles per gallon instead get 65 or 75, or is it to take those trucks that get

17 and increase those by four? And he said, you can make a bigger difference on gas emissions by,

by just increasing the low end a little bit, much more than the, taking the, the cars that get 50

miles per gallon and increasing those. He was saying, you can make a bigger difference on that low end.

And when we look at the church landscape and there's 300,000 churches in the United States,

1300 of them are over 2000. Um, let's say 10,000 of them are over a thousand people.

Then if you just increase those 300,000 other churches by 10%, 15%, you would see a massive difference

in the Christian landscape across the country, just by empowering those smaller churches to reach 10%

more than they're doing, or for some of them reaching anybody. But anyway, um, so anyway,

I just think of that analogy that reaching, like really equipping smaller churches, a church like

ours, it would be a lot easier for us to double in size than it would be for one of you guys to

double in size. Right? Uh, the kinds of things you guys talk about helped me a ton. And so we've got

people that follow along and say, Hey, we've been following you guys online for months. And we finally

decided to come in the door and then we get the chance to disciple them and walk with them and equip

them to begin reaching the people in their circles. That's powerful Joe. So what digital tools are you

guys leveraging right now at a church your size? There's a bunch. So this week we're really getting

ready for Christmas. We're doing some community Christmas of being involved in other community

events for Christmas. We use our website, we use Facebook, we use Instagram, we use a live stream,

we use digital invites, we use a mailing list that, uh, of every guest that's come through our church.

Um, and then we really build a series package like a larger church would do and use that to invite

everybody in our community. So we use Facebook ads. Um, another, another example of what we're using

right now is, uh, creating a, uh, for us, we have the good enough designers. We've got really high-end

designers who attend our church and that's part of their day job is as a graphic designer. But for us,

they basically see this as a ministry tool. So they create motion graphics as both a sermon series bumper,

but also as a Facebook invite for our community. Nobody does anything custom for anybody in our

community. And so when we like reach out with our stories with, when we reach out with the same kind

of tools that they would see online for any other kind of company, people in the community kind of sit

up and go, Hey, this might be worth paying attention to. So they're kind of leveraging all of those tools

to make sure that our live stream is a front door for people to connect with us, that we can do

Facebook invites for people in our community. Um, some of the stuff that I kind of learned from you guys

is, I think you guys have had discussions about front door, side door, and only door. Only door is not

really a part of our strategy just because we don't have the resources or really the need. We would

rather say, Hey, let's let larger churches like Christ Fellowship and Elevation and Life Church.

Let's let them reach the people that the only door they'll ever have is online. But can we use, um,

video of either all or part of our service so people can kind of can get a flavor of what it would be like

to come to our church before comings. And we're kind of, we're part of the discussion I started with

you guys was to be figuring out what can we do better because this has been helpful to us, but

what can we do to make it even better because it's been a front door for so many, whether it's guests

that kind of come in and then just kind of come in once every six months or people that are kind of

lurking and kind of saying, is this place for real? Is this a place that I want to go to?

We also take those video and then we've turned them into video clips.

The part of the idea for us is, since I work hard on my sermon anyway, can we use that the rest of

the week to be a blessing and to be an encouragement, not just to go slap it up on YouTube and it's full,

you know, link, but to go, is there like 30 seconds or a minute and a half that could be really encouraging

for somebody that needs to hear, that needs to hear God's not done with them. And so we kind of go

through and take all of the, you know, Adobe Creative Cloud to take motion graphics and to take video

clips and to make graphic and podcasts and do all of those things. And so all of those things help us

try to disciple during the week and connect people to our church so that they can grow as disciples

and then be a part of the mission of reaching this community. Because really what we're after

is, can we reach and disciple people to reach the other people that will never come in our doors?

Not just to, hey, let's add 15 people, let's add 20 people, let's try and get to be 120 or 200 people.

But can we, our vision really is every block, every community, every people. Can we get to the point

where we have a family in our church, discipled and engaged in the mission of everybody else on their

block? We can't fit all of them in our building. So how do we use digital tools and the in-person,

you know, relationships that we have to equip them to reach everybody else?

So that's good. How are you now? How are you managing some of those tools like the live stream

and the podcast? Is that volunteer driven or are you the person behind the scenes making a lot of that

happen? How's that working for you guys?

It's mostly volunteer driven. I spend some of my week on some of those things because I'm like,

hey, if I'm going to spend that much time preparing a sermon, I might as well make sure it's in a good

form for a video clip or a podcast. So some of it I've learned to myself, but it's mostly volunteer

driven. So like I said, we've got some really, really capable volunteers who are like, wait,

God can use my gifts for the kingdom? Let's do it. And so they just, they take things far

beyond what I could ever imagine. That's awesome. And then, you know,

not that we're trying to plug a particular tool, but what kind of tools are you guys using for that

so that other churches can learn? What kind of live stream tools are you using? What are you guys

using for podcasting, et cetera? So it's funny because this week I found out there is a church

probably 15 miles away that's spending a hundred thousand dollars upgrading their cameras.

And we had, we spent less than a thousand dollars, but our volunteers are good enough

that our quality is higher than the hundred thousand dollar camera system.

That's good stuff.

But the big thing, so we use a, I don't even know the name of it. It's a small Canon HD camera that

we said, hey, this is going to probably work. It's going to give us enough of a zoom to work,

but most of it is really built around Adobe Creative Cloud, which because of the nonprofit

discount, I'm like, it's absolutely worth it too, because it's just so much easier and the volunteers

can do it. But we've also used things like Audacity, the free music editing tool for podcasts. That's

super helpful because what I find is in this community where people largely have a family

religious background, even if they don't practice, they would never come in the door of our church

as a first step because that would be to reject their family. And so they will actually download

our podcast every week and listen, but they haven't taken that step. Ultimately to follow Jesus,

they're going to have to reject their family to follow him. But at this point, I'm like a well-edited

sermon podcast, which this may be something helpful to small churches is we do them in series,

but then we package them in series, both with our graphics, with an intro and an outro for every

every sermon so that it feels like I could binge listen to this series from, we called it Adorn,

you know, like lives that make the gospel attractive. It was a look at the book of Titus, but it's like,

oh, I could listen to five sermons in this series or failure is not final. I could listen to four

sermons from that series and you get a music intro. A couple of other tools that we use that I love is

Soundstripe. It's a music subscription.

I think it costs about $130 per year, but you then have a license to use custom music in video projects,

podcasts, and things like that. And that really ups the level of our production

for, like I said, invites,

we're going to use Facebook ads, video sermon bumpers, our live stream. We're trying something

new. I was meeting with my volunteer after talking with you guys to say, hey,

what could we do that would improve our live stream? And we would say, you know what?

It's not an introduction from somebody in our church, just doing a video to say, hey,

we're so glad you're here. This is the series that we're in right now. Run the sermon bumper that we've

already made, and then goes into the service and then leave that. Helps kind of give somebody a

connection point of, oh, there's some intention to this. And at the end, they ask me to reach out

and give their contact info. I love what you're doing here, Joe, in the sense of you're making it very

personable. And again, I think there's a lot of churches, my church included, we all share our sermons

online on podcasts. We use actually sermon.net. So I'm not the brains behind that, but I'll just share that if

anybody wants to know that. But we just share our sermons. The fact that you're doing an intro and an exit to

that really makes it personable. And someone can really kind of maybe identify with that a little

bit more. Same thing with your live stream. You know, having someone welcome everyone and greet

everyone. We stream our, we live stream our church services, but you know, unless I'm, you know, because

I do a lot of the mid-service stuff and the end announcements, unless I'm directly talking to the

people online from stage, which is kind of weird because we've got people in our campus right there,

but you know, we're, I'm talking to the people in the state, in the auditorium,

and also the people online. But I like how you're making it very personable. And I think that that

draws a connection so that maybe when they do come in through the front door, they can maybe see that

person and say, Oh yeah, I saw you online.

Yeah. And they do say that. And so that's kind of my hope for having other people in the church get

featured, but they will say, Oh, we know you. Cause we've seen, we've been your website and we've

watched the videos. Like we know you, Joe, even though I've, you know, I've never met them before.

And so we actually got the idea for the intro and outro and stuff from stuff that I saw you do, Tom,

is I was like, there's more in their live stream and it's super helpful. So how can we make our

live stream? Not just a video of our service. Hey, just watch a video of the service, but instead,

Hey, please connect with us. Like, let's make this personal. Let's make this intentional.

The other thing that we, that may be helpful to other small churches and, um, is to begin to

think through all of the stuff that you guys talk about. So you guys interviewed leaders who talk

about pop-up churches and some other things to begin to think through all of those things

through the lens of how am I actually blessing and equipping people right where they're at right now.

So that instead of it in the church world, we can easily be, Hey, look at me, come here,

come and do this. We, I've tried to tell our people regularly, like, let's maybe once per week,

invite somebody to something. Let's instead try to figure out how do we bless them and encourage

them right where they're at right now. Let's let the live stream be a current blessing,

not the live stream as an invitation to some kind of youth event or some kind of other event. Use

every digital tool to say, you can actually hear about Jesus today. You don't have to wait to hear

about Jesus on Sunday. You can, your marriage can be benefited today, not later down the road.

So are you purposefully driving toward the next step for the folks watching the live stream as well?

Encouraging not just the people in the room, but the people on the live stream and saying,

Hey, this next step is for you too. Like, are you directing that at them as well?

That's what we talked about this week where we said, Hey, how do we,

they're already connecting and watching the live stream. We've got faces. We've got fairly good

production quality at this point. How do we use that to not just drop the ball and say, well,

hopefully, hopefully we see you again next week, but to say, Hey, can you connect with us? Can you give

us your contact info so we can reach out? If we can pray for you, can you let us know? The answer is,

we're trying to head in that direction. One of the things that we've done at CF

and Jeff was part of this too, is we've created a standardized URL that leads to a form. That's

basically our online connection card that we leverage both in our on-demand services. And also,

I'm at the end of every live stream where, Hey, if you want to connect with us,

go to CFMiami.org slash online or slash connect for us. It's been online and it drives towards that

connection card. I even got it as a pop-up as soon as I hit that site. Boom. It's in their face and it

gives them the same options that they have with a physical card in our context as well, just to drive

towards that next step of, Hey, we want to connect with you. Or in some cases, Hey, you know, if you want to,

you know, if you, if you pray to prayer to receive Christ, you know, and you want to take that next

step in baptism, we want to connect with you. All that stuff is there so that it gives them an option

to connect with us. And then from there, we've got to do the follow-up. We've got to do the real-time

pastoring of exactly like what you guys do. When you receive data, when data comes into your context,

live at church, that it drives towards that next step of helping them get connected. And that's worked out

well for us. That makes sense. And that's an easy thing to do. Any, so anybody who's listening to this

and is in a small church, I recommend Squarespace for a number of reasons, but one of which is the

thing that Ray just talked about is something that you can easily do. We do that for Easter series. We

do that for any big series that we do. We can make a landing page that gives contact ability like that.

And so that idea Ray just had is easy to work on, especially if you're at a small church. Squarespace

means you can do that as many times as you want. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and I think having one

standardized URL that you're leveraging the entire time this way, you know, no matter what series

you're in, the URL stays the same. So, you know, in our context for cfmime.org/online, it's just been

that communicated over and over and over again. And it's been like a driver so that no matter what episode

they're listening to is they're binging. It's the same thing over and over again in their ear. Ah,

I've got to connect. I've got to connect. I've got to connect. And I know where to go to.

It's a good thing to have. Cool. That's a good tip.

What is the URL with you guys? Is it cfmime.org/connect?

It's slash online. We used to do slash connect and actually slash connect actually drives back

to online because I was like, all right. So for all of our former episodes, I've got to make sure

that, uh, that we've got, that we've got it like all, all working together and it works great.

And it's, it's actually helped increase the amount of engagement that we get online. Like

we get more small group signups. We're getting more, we're getting more engagement in terms of

people wanting to connect more. And then for us, we're even taking further next steps of treating

them like a first time guest, like we would live. And so in a lot of cases, I'm even sending them,

you know, like our first time guest gift if possible, you know, like if they, if they give us the data,

if they engage with us also in our context, we do a mug for like a first time guest gift,

but we've also leveraged content, uh, free content, like a song download from our worship team,

you know, or, or maybe Joe, if you've got something that, Hey, here's like an extra bonus sermon

from me that you want, that you can't get anywhere else. That's stuff that we've been toying around

with or to give extra added incentive. And that idea, that idea kind of sparked from, you know,

kind of the old days when we would listen to, uh, you know, people on the radio messages on the radio

and say, Hey, if you connect with us, we'll send you a book. I was like, well, they might not want a book,

but they might want extra bonus content for free. And that's stuff that we got. Let's just leverage it

and send it to them. Yeah. That's a really good idea. I've, I've toyed with that kind of an idea,

just around surrounding our community, being the hub for our community, like things to do or something.

But that would actually be pretty easy, um, to figure out because, you know, in churches,

we come up with material all the time for all sorts of different purposes. And it would be easy to

package a PDF of something. Absolutely. Yeah. If you could give them like a quick download,

like, Hey, here's my ebook. I love that. We've toyed with that. Um, I think we actually did some

of that back, back in the day with, I mean, and there's so, it's so easier to do this now where,

but we had, um, back in the day we had a, like a, I want to say she was a 90 year old lady

who would literally type out the message, the manuscript messages of it. Um, do you remember

her name, Ray? What was her name? She, she, oh man, no, no, we were, we lived in Miami literally

was this 90 year old lady who lived in, uh, I want to say Oklahoma city and she would watch the messages

online. She would doubt she would like recorded on a cassette player. And she had one of those like

transcriber machines where she'd type it and then like use the foot pedals to pause the audio tape

and literally just type this thing out. And, uh, we started giving it away as books, like at the,

at the front desk and then ended up turning it into like PDFs that we would give away as well. And that

was, that was well received for a season. You can go to Timmy.com T E M I.com. And, uh, it's,

it's what I use to manuscript out my, my podcasts. It's essentially like, um, 10 cents a minute to get

it typed out. So if you're preaching a 20 minute message, it's two bucks. Um,

That's a win. Yes. Huge win. And it's like 85, 90% accurate. The majority of it's, you know, I,

I pay somebody like $15 to go in and clean it up, but it's, it's very good. T E M I.com. And so,

but you, once you get that text, then you can turn it into PDFs and eBooks and, and, and whatever you

want to put it on, on a webpage. The reason I put it on my blogs is SEO value is huge. And so a lot of

these, these blogs that I've done, people are searching for, and it generates a lot of traffic

to the website. Um, basically because I taught, did a podcast on it and I used the word a bunch,

and then I turned that into a manuscript that Google could pick up. So that would actually be super helpful,

um, to that, uh, uh, to making your series like bingeable because if you had on your sermon page,

a, um, you had both the audio video and the transcription and maybe some study guide questions

that could be super useful to people down the road because then they have every kind of format that

they want for that. You can use it. Somebody could use it as a small group curriculum. Um,

that would be super helpful to put in a place like on your podcast or on your sermon page,

instead of just having audio, you could put all of those things, make it bingeable.

For me, one of the things that, that I kind of look at when I look at some of these online

small churches, uh, that are, that are doing this honestly, and, and Joe, like I, I've not seen your

stuff, so I don't want to be like labeling here, but it's, it's low quality video and I'm a video guy

and there's, there's a high level of forgiveness on video, but a lot of times smaller churches struggle to,

to pull something off live that honestly, I don't know that has to be live. Like there's ways that

you can sim live it, or there's ways that you can, can fake the liveness or pre-record something

in an easier format that doesn't necessarily have the audience like, or the, the wide shot that, that,

that's further away. Um, like, so if you're not like, if you're not wanting to do worship in the broadcast,

you know, one of the things that I, that I've talked with, uh, with pastors in the past on,

Joe, and I'm just curious, how long's your message typically? Uh, between 20 and 28 minutes.

Well, that's actually on the short side. I honestly, I'm just going to be transparent.

I don't know that I've met a pastor who's preaching a 20 minute message. So well done.

Um, the majority of pastors, I, yeah, the majority of pastors I talked to are, you know, in that 40 range,

uh, my, the church that I, that I attend Christ journey, uh, bill preaches about 30 to 35, but

uh, previously it was 40 to 50. And so, you know, I would encourage a lot of times to preach a shorter

message online. Uh, you know, maybe it was like the opening and the point one and point three and

the closing, you cut out point two, or sometimes some of the longer stories or illustrations that

can kind of get cut to, to make it more, uh, easier to digest for an online audience,

especially if you're trying to reach that front door person, that visitor, that person's probably,

and if you're a longer sermon, that's the person's probably not going to hang around for a 40 minute

broadcast. But if you could preach a smaller sermon on a Thursday, on a Friday, on a Saturday,

just even consider it a rough draft, a trial run on the message, preach it. And then you can bookend

creative video for like front door people around it. Uh, maybe it's a two minute welcome that shows,

you know, the, the campus, your church and how to check in kids or, um, you know, something else that,

that's more designed to help people get connected to your church from that front door status.

You can record all this stuff before the Sunday morning service. And even in an, um, a much more

creative welcoming environment than like the worship center would be, the camera could be much closer

to get your detail of it. Um, and then render that video down. There are services like, uh, restream.io,

uh, that is where you can upload the, to the cloud and you can use restream to actually schedule the

playback of these, of that video file. Christ Fellowship Ray uses it every week.

Absolutely. Yeah.

I, I want to say you've been on one year, two years. I think I did that before I left. So yeah,

you've been on restream for two years where essentially, yeah, they are, uh, they upload,

um, and I'm going to let the cat out of the bag. Sorry, Ray, but they upload their Saturday night

service and, uh, and they ended, they edit in announcements and things like that and then

upload it to restream. And that plays back Sunday morning, like at the time they specify. And so it,

it feels live, it looks live, but it's got content outside of what happens in the service.

And so your content, you can even spend some of your message to really aim more towards those

front door people without having to sacrifice what happens in the worship center. Does that kind of

make sense? You ever thought about something like that, Joe? Yeah. So when we started having that

conversation last week, I've just began brainstorming, man, what are all the different models that you

could do? Cause different churches have different needs. Yeah. Some of them have that too big of a

wide shot. Um, or the pastor is preaching specifically just to the people in the room.

And that, so that makes total sense to kind of break the mold and say, Hey, what are the different

things that we do best and that could communicate best to other people? Um, if, if you're cutting,

like just straight up, if you're cutting worship out of the mix, using a restream, in my opinion,

is a lot cheaper than doing something like a, uh, a wire cast where you're going to start to,

to time slip that message around, um, other sim live elements, like a prerecorded, um, you know,

welcome to visitors and guests. That's different than the live, like live is easy to do when you've

got a solid block of content that is live. But if you're trying to mix live with prerecorded,

um, it just gets, especially on a small church, uh, because I'm assuming, you know, most small churches,

they want to keep it, or they should keep it simple because things tend to like roll on top of it.

And all of a sudden you're over budget for what you're trying to do, you know, try to either keep

it all live or keep everything prerecorded and then figure out a way to, you know, prerecord some

sort of a simple message. But it was fun. Like there was, there was a, one of my clients was a small

church. I say it maybe, maybe 250, maybe 200 people. It's probably the average church in America.

Honestly, it was a church plant five year old. They met in a, basically like a theater, uh, a lecture

hall. And so if the camera was in the back of the auditorium and that was maybe a hundred,

150 foot like shoot. And so we had to get a very big lens to get close to it. They ended up spending

a lot of money and for this, but it was still, it was like, it was a head to toe shot. Um, and actually

they had a screen above them that they wanted to work in. So, you know, the actual teacher was very

small on this lockdown shot and the teacher was, was walking around the stage and we'd look at their

Facebook stats and they'd get 150, maybe 250 views. Um, and it, and it just, it wasn't, it wasn't great,

but it was, it was okay. They thought it, they thought it was as good as it was going to get.

There was a, there was a month where the camera broke and instead of using that wide shot,

the, the university actually had like pan tilt zoom cameras built in. And so they paid a little

extra to utilize those cameras. Well, the cameras were further up and they had a much tighter face.

Um, and the, the engagement on those videos were like five fold. It went from 150 to 250 to like

750 to 1200 and same, same, same preacher. So it's not, it's, it's not like it's paid advertising that,

that drove it up. They, they treated the videos the same way. Everything was related

related to how the video looked in the frame. And I know a lot of times, you know, you're trying to,

trying to have a camera in the back, trying to be unobtrusive. Um, and that being further away

doesn't give people the emotional connection to, to the face, to the detail, to the person speaking.

And that if you can get that much closer, I, and I've seen it, you're going to get a much better

product out of it and people are going to engage at a much higher rate.

Absolutely. That's good.

I actually think it would be worth it for you. I don't know, in some form written or video or something

to explain some of those video practices for pastors or churches in small contexts.

So our, uh, our main volunteer was, you know, doing a bunch of research to figure out,

hey, what's the best way to film? How do we, you know, what's the angles that we want to be at?

How do we even want to control the camera for the best effect? Because you can have a really nice

camera, but if you control it poorly, then you just don't get your money's worth. So that would be totally worth

worth a discussion, um, or some kind of a tutorial because yeah, being up close just makes a big

difference. I get tired of seeing my own face on our churches stuff, but people want to see a face.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so we just keep doing it, uh, try to include other faces as possible as well, but, um, people

want to see a face and if it's super far back, then they can't visualize themselves go into that

church. They don't have any clue who the pastor is, what it looks like.

And that would be the luxury of pre-recording this because that camera can get much closer.

I don't have to worry about audience in the room. Audio gets much clearer, uh, because you're

probably just utilizing a microphone that's on me straight to the computer pack instead of going

through front of house instead of a bunch of other RF that could conflict. And if there is issues,

I can just stop and start back over instead of kind of struggling with any issues that pop up in

the live venue. Um, I have, I pitched this to a pastor once and he's like, well, it feels inauthentic.

And I'm like, oh, really? Like the average person's going to really pick up on that.

I know sometimes it's difficult to preach to a lens. Uh, I've, I've been down that road and

I know that pain point, but I think you get a much richer quality kind of running out of this.

So anyway, Ray, what do you got?

Well, I was going to say, Joe, uh, do you interact with the camera, um, at all as you're talking to

your online audience? No, not right now. Not at all.

Man, that's something that I would encourage big time, addressing the people looking straight

into the camera and addressing them as well, because it, it lets them know. And believe me,

for those of us who are watching on the back end of the screen, it feels like you're staring us right

in the eyes and that you're talking right to us. And so like Jeff said, moving the camera

up will help. But then as soon as that camera is moved up and you're addressing the camera directly,

man, now it feels like you're talking to me almost like we're having a cup of coffee.

And so that changes the engagement way up in terms of, ah, Joe is talking directly to me.

And this message is for me. I'm telling you that that that'll be a game changer in terms of

your online preaching. It'll be huge.

What I normally advise, if you do keep the camera in the, when the worship center,

I know a lot of teachers, they'll pick up five or six spots or people in the room and they just

dance back and forth. The lead communicators will dance back and forth between those five or six,

just looking because that's their pre-programmed spots.

Make one of, make one of the spots you stop on the camera.

And so even if you're, even if you get 10% eye contact where you're drilling in on that camera,

that's a huge win to that, that audience. Cause they're feeling like you're connecting with them

live. Um, and if you're doing the prerecorded stuff, man, just drill into the camera. There's

even teleprompters that, that you can get setups and, and iPads and, and software for that. Then

telepromp plus is one that we've used in the past. Um, I'm not sure what Christ fellowships use in these

days, but basically like it's the teleprompter just smack in front of the lens. And, um, I'm,

I'm literally reading from the teleprompter at the same time that I'm looking at the lens and people

can't even realize that I'm, you know, faking this. Like it's so, and it's so easy today compared to,

you know, 10, 20 years ago when you had to pay all this equipment and it's really, it's,

it's a, it's an iPad, it's an iPhone, it's stuff that you already have.

So, right. The other thing that it does, Joe, is that it definitely adds credibility to the

people who are listening in the room to encourage other people to watch online. That's kind of like

the weird spinoff that it does is it helps create a relationship between that online and offline

audience of folks who are engaging because people are in the room are like, oh, wait a minute. Joe's

talking to them too. That's serious. Maybe I do need to share this with somebody else. And then for,

and then for those who are watching online, they're like, oh, he, he does see and care about me.

And he does know that I'm listening and watching it.

I'm, I'm, I'm curious with this. What percentage of people do you think are front door versus side

door right now with, with your broadcast? Well, there's no question. It's yeah, you're 90% front

door. The reason, the reason is, so the reason is, and I'm going to kind of put some numbers and some

of this stuff in context. So we're a small church growing from like a handful of people. But we're also

dealing with some of the things that small churches deal with relational issues. What are the leadership

structures need to look like? You know, like what is excellence to look like when volunteer bases load?

We do with those kinds of things. But our, our last service has been viewed 240 times, which I don't love

Facebook stats because I sometimes I don't know what's how many seconds they're counting. But if I look at it,

it's saying 240 people have watched our last service. And we have, but we had 55 people there. So there's no question

that the people that are watching our service right now don't come on a give. Most of them don't come on a given

Sunday. So if we have an average attend, like if we, if everybody came in the same week and we're at like,

we have probably 80 to 90, you know, something like that. But if we're in and on a given week,

normally having 150 to 250 people watching our service, either live or during the week,

then that tells me most of our views are front door views.

Yeah. The reason I asked is, is because, and there was a Kerry Newhoff article that popped up on my

Twitter feed, uh, today, um, where he's, he's quoting a Rich Birch article, uh, talking about how

church online is a distraction to the majority of churches that are out there. And, um, I've,

I've just, this is an older article. I think it's been around a year or so. And, and, and historically,

I've gone from, I'm furious to, I agree with him to like, he's not even understanding the concept

of what church online could be, or refuses to acknowledge it. Um, but, but the, the point that

he's, he's trying to do with what we're just trying to show with church online being a distraction is

that there's no purpose in church online with the majority of churches that are doing it. They're

broadcasting their services merely because they can. Um, the thing that I like about you, Joe,

and, and, and what you're describing is you're describing intentionality towards utilizing church

online to be the front door to drive people to attend your service. I, I, what you're talking about

is more intentionality than, uh, than I think I see from a lot of even some of the smaller churches,

but also some of the bigger churches that, that are out there. And I'm just curious, like,

do you feel that tension of, of what that intentionality looks like? Or how did you, as a,

as a church plant pastor, as a, you know, rejuvenating a campus, how did you come to this conclusion that

we have to have church online to be the front door, as opposed to it's a, it's, it's going to keep people

out of the building, which is probably what the average church your size would, would respond to.

Yeah. So, uh, the biggest thing is

coming into this situation, really, it was really while I was finishing school down in Louisville.

Um, my wife and I were just like, we just, we want to find a place to go make a circle on the map and

say, we're going to reach these people right here. We can't worry about anybody outside of that. We're

going to reach the people that are right here. We're going to make sure that the people in that circle

get the chance to hear and experience the gospel through our lives and through the church.

And so just having this intentionality of this, these are the people that we're responsible for.

This is what we're going to reach these people. Um, that might mean a small church. It might mean a

large church. We don't know what that looks like, except we're just going to draw a circle on the map.

This is our responsibility. And we're going to take that responsibility seriously. And so then we come

into the situation and I, I never thought, uh, video was going to be my deal. Um, kind of, as an aside,

part of that failed church plan also had business. I mean, I was working in business and personal

training and I worked in sales and marketing in the middle of all that and ended up realizing so much

is happening online, business-wise, marketing-wise, attention-wise, that we cannot ignore that and

just hope that people will walk in the door of our church. And so we just kind of came into and said,

what tools do we need to use to reach the people that we're responsible for? And we can,

we could have a Wednesday night prayer meeting, or I could spend some time and make a 10, 15 minute

video with a devotion and people that I know from the chamber of commerce that don't attend our church

are going to watch every video that I make. You know, they're going to, my, my neighbors have,

on my street have never attended a service. None of them have, but several of them said,

oh, we follow exactly what your church is doing and we know exactly what you're doing.

And so I just, I realized I don't want to rely online as a cop-out, but more as a magnifier

of the ministry that we can do. You know, I want to preach a good sermon on a Sunday,

but the point is not to preach a good sermon on a Sunday. It's actually to preach and disciple in

such a way that people make a difference in the lives of the people in our community the rest of the

the week. So digital stuff is, is a tool for that. And when I look at like large churches or larger

churches with lots of resources and they like, aren't using it and not saying, hey, we can use

this to reach all of the people in our community in a way that we never could have before. It makes me

want to pull my hair out. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like you guys have the potential to reach so

many of the people that are in and around your congregation. And you know, I just think that it's,

it's worth it for those kids in our community that will never hear about love. If we don't tell them

about God's love, um, the people dealing with shame and guilt will never get to know the remedy to the

shame and guilt that they carry if we don't tell them. And so we'll use all of the tools that we can

do and to do that faithfully. That's a great perspective from, from a, from a smaller church.

Like I, I just, I've not, I don't hear a lot of that. It's more of what's, what's in front of me,

as opposed to the, the larger kingdom aspect. The thing that I think has impressed me most,

and we didn't even really drill into it, is this idea of, of trying to get people on their blocks.

Like you want to get someone to get out there and disciple the, the, what was the term you used for

it? The, the, a family on every block almost approach, right? Like where did that idea come from?

So man, I kicked and screamed about the vision process. I was like, every church has the same

vision, love God, love others, reach the world, connect with God, connect with others. Every

church has the same one. And I hope I'm not stepping on you guys' toes by quoting your visions. And I was

like, this is a stupid process. And kind of my, you know, the, my superior, the guy from our district

office, who's kind of helping me with the church planting, held my feet to the fire and said, no,

you need to really work on this. So we worked for two years to really understand the cultural context

that we're in, understand really what is, what kind of congregate, what kind of people is God

creating for this, this location? And what does it look like for the mission of God, that love God,

love others? What is the mission of God that doesn't change? How does that collide with our cultural

context? What does it look like for the mission of God to happen here? And so out of that, I took two

years. And when we finally like hit on it, honestly, when we finally hit on it, it was like people would

jump across the table, say, I'm going to be a part of this. This makes sense. This is it. And so we,

I don't usually share this. The vision behind the vision is to engage in, I'm sorry, to equip and

engage 10% of our communities for mission with Jesus. Really the idea that if we can reach and

engage 10% of the people here in this community, and 10% of the people in the next community, those 10%

can reach the other 90%. That's kind of that mission's context. And we have little towns all around

here with no gospel witness people. One man said he never heard that anybody loved him until he was

50 years old. And that's when he heard about the love of God. And I'm like, yeah, and we're going to

try and make sure that doesn't happen again, that no other kid. And so we are looking at this area and

saying it might take three churches, might take five churches, might take 10 churches to reach a specific

town. But our goal is to reach the 90. And the people that God gives us, that's actually the seed of

that. They're not all going to come to Christ. We know that. But we can make sure that they get

the chance to hear and experience the gospel. So anyway, so we were kind of really saying,

we think that's what it looks like for the gospel, for the mission of God to be lived out here in our

context. And in the middle of that, just somebody said, every block, every community, every people,

which is really a concrete way of saying, if we have a family, loving the people, and actually,

let me tell you the story that that phrase comes from. A man in our community said,

how big should your church be? People are kind of skeptical. I mean, I know I'm a young guy,

rural churches don't usually have young guys come in and stay. I know that they're skeptical of that.

A guy comes up to me and said, how big should your church be? And I said, I think I know what you're

getting after. And I hadn't really thought about the answer deeply. So that kind of came from my soul

when I said, I think I know what you're getting after. But if we actually believe that Jesus loves

every person, living on every block, in every street in our community, then we need to care

more about loving, having somebody living on every block, loving the people that Jesus loves.

Then we care about how many people can we fit in our building on a given Sunday.

So we're actually on mission with Jesus in this community. And so that's where that every block

idea came from, where we just said, you know what, our Sunday attendance will be just fine.

If we have a family praying for their block, if we have a teenager in every classroom,

praying for that classroom and joining Jesus on mission in that classroom,

if we have every team of every workplace has a person intentionally saying, Jesus,

where are you at work? I want to join you here. If we have that, Sunday attendance will take care

of itself. We won't have to worry about that. We need to be more concerned about equipping and

engaging people in the mission of Jesus than we do about giving people a place to come to on a

given Sunday. And so then we began to say every community, you know what, it's not enough for

us to reach this community. Every one of the 450,000 people around us needs a church nearby to reach

them in that same way. And so we're going to join with other churches and begin praying and working

to see churches like ours that are loving and living out the gospel to reach those communities.

And then ultimately we said, our vision can't be smaller than Jesus' vision. And if he says,

go into all the world, then we need to go into all the world with every people around the world. So

that's where we say every block, every community, every people. And when I share that, the graphic

designers in our church jump across the table because they say, I can help use my gifts, make sure that

everybody in this community gets the chance to, in a relevant way, hear the gospel. We can make

sure that, you know, I bought in my volunteer and my life and my this. And so people begin to begin to

concretely go, you know what, there's a lot of things I can't do, but I sure can make a note of

everybody in my neighborhood. And I can pray for them by name. And I can reach out to the, you know,

family that's hurting. And I know mom and dad are about to go through a divorce. I can reach into their

lives with hope and with love and with compassion. And so it really gives a concrete idea to people in

our church that, oh, this is what it means for us to live out the gospel here. And then online stuff

becomes a tool because we're so clear about what God's called us to do. Our Sunday service becomes a tool

to disciple people who go during the week to reach the neighborhood.

I love that. And once that vision is realized and once your people buy into it,

you will be, I believe God will do something big within your cities and you're not going to be the

guy that's sub 200. Um, cause not that it's about numbers and I hate that even brought up the numbers,

but God does something, um, when his people understand that they are disciple makers and that

when the hero of the story is not the pastor saying, come into the building, but it's when the people who

are going out and are understanding that it's their, their role, it's their personal mission, uh, to,

to, to, to share, to disciple, to create other disciples in, in the areas where they are like,

that's, that's an exciting vision for your little area in, uh, in Wisconsin, man. I love that, that

you're, you're starting this off. Yeah. This last Sunday, a guy, uh, I looked out and I was like,

I've never seen that guy before. And, um, I met him afterward and he's an intern in a workplace here.

And one of the guys in our church, that's been excited about what God is doing

had regularly been inviting this young man to come to church with him. And the guy said,

I haven't been to church in a really long time. And I was afraid if I come in late,

what's going to happen and all. And I was like, that guy trusted me to share the gospel with his

friend and trusted our church enough to say, Hey, this, I want you to hear the hope that I have

come to church with me. And so I, you know, wrote him a note this week to say, I am so grateful

that you trusted me in our church enough to invite him into what God is doing here.

Um, and as people begin to say, Hey, you know what? Everything else isn't my concern,

but boy, my block, my team at work. And that has, as that begins to pick up some momentum,

I see some of that. And I'm just so excited and so grateful, um, to be a part of that.

Well, man, I'm looking forward to, to hearing more, uh, from, from you, Joe, I know, uh,

one of the things that we're looking, we'll talk about this and, uh, in later podcasts,

but we're, we're expanding the church digital. Um, Ray has been an awesome asset and will,

will continue to be, uh, but I'm looking forward to, to bringing on, uh, some other, um, writers and,

and people. And so we've asked Joe to come on and, and, and help write from a small church

perspective. Um, dude called me out and said that I wasn't thinking small church and he was right.

And so what better way to, to, to solve that problem and to bring a small church guy to come

on and actually be the voice. So, um, man, I'm, I'm looking forward in 2020 is going to be a great

year, just as collectively we work through what church online, what, what discipleship online,

uh, looks like it can be. So, and Joe, thanks for the podcast and, and doing that. Um, guys,

as, as, as we're landing the plane, uh, any, any closing thoughts, um, Tom, you got anything?

I've got nothing. No, just kidding. I just sit and learning. Um, no, I, I think that a lot of what

Joe is doing is fantastic. And I, I think I, it gets me really encouraged. And again, I, I think all

about the, the personal connection. I love how he said early on about, um, you know, just having people

share about stuff online. And I like to use the phrase digital missionary, people say different,

different things. I, but if we all have the opportunity to be missionaries and whether you're

at a big church or a small church, if you mobilize your team and mobilize your, your churchgoers,

they can all share about what's happening. And they, and people, the more people in your community,

they can see what's happening. Like, oh my gosh, look at my church or look at this church in the

community. Look what they're doing and see the different things, the different opportunities

that they're providing, I think goes a long way. And then it also goes on to the lead to some

conversations. And, you know, again, it's those one-on-one conversations, whether they're online

or in person that really go a long way to helping someone discover God. So I, I think what Joe's doing

is fantastic. And I, I, I just get so encouraged every time I hear from him about what's going on.

And I mean, there's some great stuff and he's really utilizing those digital tools

to help more people hear about Jesus. So I love it.

Yeah. I'm really encouraged by the fact that you're leveraging volunteers to help create resources

for your people and that you're not using size as an excuse to put your stuff out there online.

A lot of folks might look and say, well, you know, you guys are still young in the life of your

church, but you're leveraging this and saying, no, this is, this is the primary way that people are

going to find out about us. And this is going to be a great tool for us. And I think other churches

that are listening may want to stop and consider about how they can leverage digital tools at any

size. It doesn't mean you have to leverage all the same things that big churches are using, but you

might want to stop and take a look at how you can repackage some of the same content that you're

spending about 40 hours a week creating in terms of your messages to leverage them so that they last

longer and reach more people and go further, farther and faster for cheaper.

Awesome. Man, Joe, any thoughts on your end?

No, I just, I love the things that you guys do. And it's helped me reach people in this community

that haven't been reached that won't be reached otherwise. So I just kind of to return to that

story I told the beginning from Seth Godin, if small churches faithful to the gospel took the

principles and some of the stuff that you guys are talking about. And each one of them grew by five

or 10 people like that has a major effect across the country because there's so many of them. And

these tools help people do that, like Ray said, farther and faster. And so I just, I love this,

this kind of stuff because it gets the good news that we have to more people.

That's a big, that's a big challenge, right? Man, if we could get, um, every small church in America

to grow 10%, all the problems that would be solved by that. So, um, man, I'm looking forward to it.

I, and even moving forward and a different mindset of not just big, big's great, but wider, smaller as

well. Um, church online is, is not a distraction. Big churches, small churches, regardless of the size,

as long as there's strategy and vision towards that. And I, and Joe, I think what we see here is,

is, is you have developed a great strategy and a purpose, you know, who your audience is,

your front door, your side door. Um, you're not interested in, in the digital and in the,

in the broader audience, the digital door, the only door people. Um, and, and as a result of that,

you've been able to fine tune what you're doing. Now you're still making strides and, and trying to figure

out what, how, what a service looks like without worship and, and what a broadcast looks like

without worship. And so these are great questions that, you know, you'll be kicking the tires on and

experimenting and trying different things until you get that balance. And then once you get the balance,

you'll come back and tell us all about how it's the best thing ever. And, and we'll get other churches

to start to catch that vision as well and try to do something. So it's all, it's all going to play out

in the end. So, Hey, uh, Tom, Ray, Joe, man, thanks for, thanks for jumping on the podcast. Uh,

for all of these guys, uh, I'm Jeff with the church digital. Thanks for being with us here this time.

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