EP035: Brandon Catoe & Pop-Up Church

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So episode 35 here of The Church Digital podcast, you ever have one of those conversations where

you're like, I don't think anyone else in the country is doing this. Or even a step further

and say, you know what? I think we're the only people in the world who are doing something like

this. In 2019, where there's quite literally nothing new under the sun, thank you very much,

Ecclesiastes 1. It's hard to realize, it's hard to imagine that there's something new,

that there's a new concept that nobody's ever done before. Ironically, we stumbled into something

like that here at The Church Digital in a side conversation about pop-up church. So I picked

up the phone, called a friend of a friend, and eventually got connected with Brandon Tato,

who is the, get this, he is the pop-up pastor for Christ Fellowship Church in West Palm Beach.

So let me pause, and I want to work through a couple things here. First off, this is Christ

Fellowship West Palm Beach, which is completely separate from the Christ Fellowship Miami that I

was formerly on staff at. And Ray DeArmis, who is a guest host here, is currently the online pastor.

So this is a completely separate organization, which yes, they're about 90 miles apart, and they

always get confused on a regular basis. So plenty of side stories that we both can share about that.

But this idea of pop-up church has almost been something that's been a whisper. It's been an

echo. Well, what if we did pop-up? What does even pop-up mean? And so like, I went into this

conversation, and we talked about it off air with Brandon. I didn't know what to expect. All I knew

was someone told me, hey, they're doing some incredible stuff with pop-up. And to be honest,

I really didn't even know what pop-up was. And so I get on the Zoom with Brandon, who's this pop-up

pastor. And basically, I start off the question with, dude, tell me about pop-up. And what followed

was an incredible conversation centering around innovation, a church that's willing to do incredible

things for an incredible growth opportunity to impact people with the gospel. So I love this

conversation. I'm sure you will too. I'm going to present to you in this conversation, Brandon Coteau,

who is the pop-up church pastor for Christ Fellowship West Palm Beach, and myself, Jeff,

with the Church Digital in a conversation surrounding pop-up church. Here you go.

So we started off a year ago, kind of just dreaming up with this. How does this look? What are we going

to do? What is it? How do we even build a team for this? And so really, that's what June looked like

of last year. And then we finally got team put together and figured out a process, somewhere to

start. And then we're like, well, what are some of the things that have been successful in the

locations? Because typically, the way we launch campuses here at Christ Fellowship is we would just

take a team of probably, let's say, four to six people. We would plant them at most likely a high

school and just leave them there until church built. And so we thought, what if we, our number

10 location was Jupiter, Florida, which is just not too far, probably like 15 miles away from here.

The school was, they weren't as friendly when it came to storing our gear and keeping our stuff

there, the things we needed to keep on site to do church. So they made us put it in containers and

trucks and all of this different portable stuff. And so we're like, well, what if we took, we do so many

things as a church in the community. We thought, what if we took this stuff and put it in a truck

and made it portable and we just popped up somewhere and did church. And so that's kind of where it

started. June of last year, we thought, well, let's get into some communities. And, you know, we ask

people to, we have people that drive sometimes three hours to get to one of our locations.

And so we said, well, why don't we just start pick a few communities and just go in their backyard in a

park or something, pop up, do a big barbecue, have a family fun day, invite people out, tell them what

we're thinking about, what we're going to try and if they'd be interested. And so that was really what

we started with. The other thing here at this Christ Fellowship, we take June and July kind of, kind of

our slower months of the year. We kind of vacation a little bit. We, our senior leadership is usually

traveling, speaking. And so during those months, it was a lot of, let's get plans together. Let's

start dreaming about what we could do when they get back and hit the ground running August 1st, we will

come up with all of the plans and get the budgets approved and let's roll with it. So that's what

happened. We kind of dreamed out a whole season. I did have my whole team for June and July. We just

weren't, we didn't tell anybody. We were kind of meeting in secret rooms. And then, uh, so August

1st, leadership gets back and we lay out all of our big ideas and plans and they're like, okay, go for

it, try it. So, so in September we did these huge, uh, what we called them backyard barbecues. And we

went to the, went to the communities and we did these big barbecues and we had, um, we had about

350 people come out to the first one. We had about 400 people come out to the second one. And we were

like, man, we could, we could build church. So, um, the thought was if we could, if we could get this

thing rolling and we could take this gear, make it roadworthy, uh, portable, we could go to a

different city each week. And so in a year's time we would build, we would plant and get a church to

where hopefully, um, it would start to be able to self-sustain. And then, then by the end of year

two, contribute back to the mission and all the things we're doing as a church. Well, what if we, what if we

did that through pop-up, but we were doing four at the same time we could do one. And so that's kind of

where it all birthed out of and what we've been doing. And so, um, so we didn't have our first, first

church service until January of this year. So August of last year, we laid out all of our plans. September, we did

the backyard barbecues. October, we did, um, we did something called relationship one-on-one, which,

uh, really we learned, but we wouldn't do it again. And then, um, and then November, we did something

called, uh, serve days. We, there's a lot of churches here. We're part of church united. And so we, um, we

partnered with them to do something called love South Florida. And so we, we did a bunch of serve projects

in November in both of these cities. And then, uh, December, we invited them, we messaged, we went to

the mall in one location and did like a, uh, we did like a Christmas concert in the mall and, uh,

did the same thing for Halloween. We went to the mall up there. They call it malloween. And so we

did a, how to, they gave us a, that's horrible. Yeah. I'm sorry. Malloween. Malloween. Yeah.

What mall is that? What mall does that? Let's just call them out publicly. That's, that's the

worst thing I've ever heard. That's Vero beach. Uh, that's the Vero beach mall. Yeah. Vero beach

mall. I expect more out of you. You've got this, you got Disney vacation club right there within your

city. You got to come up with something better than malloween. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to

interrupt. Please go ahead. No, that's good. We, I'll tell you what though. It wasn't, we were so

under, uh, prepared for that. We had, we had over 5,000 people come through our booth at that.

At, at malloween. At malloween. It blew us away. We took 500, we took 500 little, um, like our Christ

fellowship, we call them CF kids. So we took 500 CF kids, little giveaways, just, Hey, connect with us.

Here we are. We're going to come build church here. We gave those in the first 15 minutes, we were out

of those and it was 45 minutes before the event even started. So we were in trouble. Wow. So we

were, we were, we were calling in resources and getting supplies delivered to us. And it was, uh,

it was a crazy night. Um, so let's, let's back up a little bit. Cause Christ fellowship, you guys

are, uh, Christ Phillips, West Palm beach. I used, I too used to be on Christ fellowship at the Miami.

It's two completely separate churches. I want to make sure we're very clear on saying that. Cause

otherwise like people get confused. Side note, every Easter Christ fellowship, Miami gets a bill

from vendors that rent you guys AV gear. Uh, and it's happened for over a decade. Like I can go that

far back and tell you, they always send the bill down South that we're always like, Nope, wrong Christ

fellowship, send it up. Uh, so, but, but let, let's, let's unpack this. You guys are eight campuses,

right? Now we are, um, 11. Just kidding. You're 11 campuses. Uh, so that's within, um, what an hour,

hour and a half from, from the, from the main campus, kind of that surrounding, uh, our, our original

campus is Palm beach gardens. And so from Palm beach gardens, um, we have campuses in our West,

which is our Okeechobee location. We have, uh, Boynton South, which is about 35 minutes South.

And then we have Port St. Lucie North, which is about 50 minutes North. And then right now we are

working at Boca Raton, Vero beach, West Lake, our Western communities and Riviera beach downtown.

Okay. And those are not including any of the pop-up locations. So those are, those locations are solid

fully existing campuses right now. Yeah. So 10, 10 physical locations and 11 is our online campus.

Is online. Yeah. And so now, in addition to that, you're doing, you said you're rolling like four

pop-up locations at the same time, just kind of like utilizing this pop-up model to kind of nurture,

create community, get DNA in the area. Like that's, that's the goal of what you're trying to do.

Build church. Yeah. So we, we're now nine months in, we're in a position we could,

we could launch four campuses in 2020, um, with what we've done with pop-up in just nine months.

So what just walk, cause nine months is a really interesting number. You're going from

completely cold to, Hey, we're ready to launch a campus. Like that, that's a, that's a,

I mean, that's relatively quick turnaround, especially if it's really a cold, uh, experience.

Like what, what's that timeline look like? How many services are you doing? Like what's,

what's that flow? Well, and if I'm honest, we would, we would, uh, we're proposing right now

to move the timeline up even quicker to try to do this in six months. Um, some things we've learned

along the way, uh, we launched two, the very first two, we launched them at the same time,

which was, uh, which we wouldn't do again, because what happened is those two competed

against each other all along the way. So through social media and different avenues that we're

using to connect and drive attendance and connect with people, um, they're also watching one kind

of outpace the other one a little bit, which isn't fair because they're in two completely,

they're a hundred and, uh, 150 miles apart. So completely different areas, completely different

opportunities. Um, but so to back up, we spent a lot of time in 2018 building this ramp up. We spent

almost, uh, seven months building this ramp up to get to launch services in January. In January,

we launched in our first two locations, um, which was Boca and Vero. And we, we've had a lot of success.

What we saw though, is because we were only going once a month and we were doing on Sunday night.

So not a prime time and only giving them one service a month. So everything we did up until

January were different connect events, um, barbecues, things like that engagement events

in January, we gave them full on church services. So what you would experience at one of our locations

with a little extra connect time. So we, we provided like 45 minutes hang time afterwards. Hey,

meet, meet, meet me, meet our team. We want to get to know you. We want to find out more about, um,

the area and what, what you guys love here and how we can be a part of it and all that kind of stuff.

So really what we did is we put those two first two campuses kind of on, on a, uh, uh, on a

competition with each other, which wasn't fair. So one of the things moving forward is we'll stagger

them. Like we'll do one, let it get rolling and then do another one, let it get rolling and kind of,

kind of use that as a, as a model to see if it's a place, uh, the first four locations. So

these were a little bit unique because we kind of knew, we kind of knew we already had people there

from online church. We knew that people were watching. We knew that we had people engaged with

Christ fellowship in these four locations. One of them, which is our third one was actually a home run

from the get go. We intentionally didn't go there first or second because it would have really messed

us up, um, with any other location because it was a home run right at the gate. These Western

communities are perfectly located between our two largest locations. We have a church there. We know

that that will be a location, but let's let it, let's let it start to organically grow, let people hear

about it, let people get excited, but then kind of almost demand, Hey, we want bring pop up here. We

want pop up. So, um, in our first night out there, we had 700 people. So we knew, we knew that,

but that's kind of what we expected. We were kind of thinking that was going to happen.

Yeah. Like walk me through six months, nine months. What's, what's the, what's the timeline? How many,

how many trips are you going out to these areas? How are people connecting? Are there things other

than just the pop-up church experience that you're using to create community? Like what, what, what,

walk me through a six to nine month time period from a campus is going to nothing to, Hey, we're ready

to call this the XYZ campus. So, um, the, so in the second half of 2018, those were connect events that

were starting to get the things in the water saying we're coming. Once we launched church in January,

we only went once a month to the first two locations. And then we added the third location

in there along the way in, in between there, we have something, uh, we call the journey. So that's an

opportunity for people to find out more about the church. It's a four week class, one hour. So we

started doing hosting journeys in those locations. So people had another touch point with us. Um,

we, after each service, we created a, like a 45, 50 minute connect window. So, so each month we'd have,

uh, the service worship, everything we did, we dismissed. And then we dismissed to basically an

after party that after party was building and pointing people towards the next time we were coming back.

Also an opportunity for us to connect with them. Our team was all out there, highly engaged. We had all of

our, uh, ministries that we were offering in that location. So like our groups were groups based church.

So we had all of our groups teams out there saying, Hey, we're, we have groups already being built. So we

were, um, getting people in groups right from day one, trying to build groups down in those two communities

right off the bat. And then also starting up students and young adults and all of those things that we

offer. We don't offer every single ministry that like, for instance, a garden, the Royal Palm, because we just

can't. We, number one, we don't have a building. We don't have a location. We can't be there seven days a

week. So we had to pick and choose the best things to offer to build community in those locations. And that

seemed to be journey. So they could find out who we even are. Like, is this a church I even want to be a part of?

So journey was a huge resource. Groups were probably our biggest resource to be able to get people

connected and start to match people up and say, Hey man, there's a whole bunch of young adults here.

Hang out. These are your people. They've got a couple of groups going, go check it out. We're not

making you sign up for anything. We just want you to see what's available. And if you want to be a part

of it. So kind of, um, driving those from the beginning, then we added. So after, um, we didn't really

have a timeline. We were like, let's figure this thing out. We don't know what it's going to look like or how

fast it's going to build. We knew about the fourth month that we, they were getting anxious already. People

want it faster, quicker. Now we want a church. Now we've, we've seen the website we've been on. We've seen

everything that you guys offer. We want it. You like give it to us. So that kind of changed our conversations

around what do we do next? Where do we take them? So we said, let's go twice a month. So we have a couple

expressions and all out of all of our locations. We have two evening expressions. One's called a city

nights and one's called an oaky nights. And these are kind of more creative, a little more worship,

live teaching. And so that was kind of what we modeled pop-up after for the first six months.

Then we were, then we had to reevaluate. So what do we do? So in that six months, we're like, okay,

they want more. Let's give them two services a month and let's go ahead and bring in video teaching

that we use on the weekend and see how that, how that worked. Our northern most, the furthest North

Vero location went crazy. People just, they loved it. They were all in. So we said, let's identify the

campus pastor. Let's start, look for a building. We found a building fairly quickly. And so we, we told

them, we said, Hey, here's your campus pastor. This is your location. This is a building. And that place

just took off. People are engaged. They're hungry. They're excited. And then we, as a church,

we started something brand new called, um, freedom. And it's a freedom study that our pastors wrote.

And right now as a church, we're taking almost 14,000 people through freedom. And so we offered

freedom in Vero and the people went crazy. They were overflowed with freedom on Wednesday nights. So now

in Vero, they have a campus pastor, they have a building, they have freedom every single week that

they're part of, which is, which are study groups that we will launch into groups. We have about

probably 200 people in groups. And so that's been our, that'll be our first launch. That one's

already in launch sequence right now. We're launching that in the beginning of 2020, as soon as we can get

the building done. And, uh, that's kind of how that one ramped up. You said you were utilizing church

online. It's kind of give you a heat map of some areas to go and, and, and some are stronger than

others. You mentioned the West seems to be working better for you, uh, just because

of proximity of cities. But like, do you guys, when you go into the area, like, are you just looking at that

heat map or are you digging in and investigating leadership or is leadership kind of arising out of it?

What, what's your process to really get to the core team? Who's going to be in any given area?

That's a little bit different. Those two conversations really aren't connected. The first

conversation was as a leadership team, which is a, which is a group of like five to seven of our senior

leadership start praying about looking at heat maps. There's interest in there. So we're, we're looking

at, okay, we've got people watching online. Let's pray about it. Is this scenario that we feel like

we're supposed to go into? And then as God starts to open doors and stir the waters up, we're like,

okay, we're going now. We've been working with something for multiple years called leadership

college here at Christ fellowship. We have people in the pipeline that have been part of leadership

college or on team and other roles, but they've been identified and we've been watching them to

say, okay, this person could go here. This person could go there. They seem like a better fit for

one location versus the other. So we start having those conversations with them, just kind of getting

in the water to see how they're feeling. And then our senior pastor did something really cool a few

months ago. And, uh, they took a staff meeting. So every Wednesday, our entire staff comes together

for a staff meeting. And, uh, pastor Julie said, Hey, God, just kind of put it on my heart. And I

want to throw it out there. If you, if you are feeling stirred for one of these regions or one of

these locations, or maybe you're at one and you feel like God saying, Hey, I want you to be a part of

this one. I just want you to raise your hand and let's start the conversation. And so we just threw

it out there to see who was, who was interested, who was praying about what, what was God stirring people's

heart. And how could we, how could we help them, you know, realize that sweet spot. And, uh, it was

pretty cool. We had, we had multiple people raise their hand and say, Hey, I'm really, really feeling

stirred to be a part of this location, really feel stirred to be a part of that location. Um, and then

the position that's probably the hardest to fill as a campus pastor, because there's so much

weight, there's so much trust, there's so much culture, all the things that we really just,

we, we, we pray about so hard and we look for, um, we look for these different opportunities and

different leaders and to see if, man, do they look like a campus pastor? Are they starting to do

things? Are they pastoring people without having the title? All of these different things that we

look for as leadership. And so we have a secret list, I guess you can say of 15 to 20 people that

are on this list that we're like, man, this is, they could be campus pastors. And so there's a

myself, I sit on the multi-site team. So we start to look at it first and say, Hey,

yeah, we're all in agreement. These could be, these, these would be great candidates for campus

pastor. Let's pray about it. So, and then we, we toss it out there to our directional leadership

team, which is our senior pastors and executive pastors and say, Hey, this is who we're praying

about. Tell us what, what do you see? What don't you see? What do you like? What don't you

like? Is there hangups? Is there things that we need to process? And

look into. And then it takes a little while. So for instance, the Vero campus pastor,

he was, he was on the list for probably a year and a half. And it took probably about seven months

of stacking hands, praying, really just everyone flipping over every leaf rock that we could to

make sure. And ultimately we all stacked hands and said, yeah, that's the, and what's cool is when

we got to that point, God had already stirred their hearts. And even though they never raised their

hand and said, Hey, we want to be a part of Vero. As soon as we, as soon as we asked, they were like,

we're in. And so since then, we've just seen God already moved that before we ever even launched

church there. They're building church like crazy. And it's, it's really cool to watch.

Hmm. Very cool. So at this point, how many pop-up church services are you running a week? You're

juggling the four locations. Yep. Like it's the, I'm just doing math in my head and like

your, your road kits probably hitting like, it's more than one road kit, right?

Well, so what we've, what we had to do with two of them is kind of do a look. So one of them

is a, is a location where we're doing, we're hosting freedom right now. So freedom is being hosted

there midweek. We're not doing a weekend experience there. Okay.

In another location, we're doing, um, off night expressions of service there. So we can have

Sunday nights specifically for Boca and Vero. So right now, um, the first and the third week

are, we're in Vero and the second and the fourth week we're in Boca. And we communicated ahead

of time to the other two, like, Hey, once we put these in launch sequence, we're going to

have to pull back, but don't, don't worry. We're not going anywhere. We're coming back stronger

than ever before. As soon as we launched one of them, you're up next for a two, two week

rotation until we can get you launched. And really we, we did that ourselves by launching

them at the same time. It put us in a different, it put us in a weird spot. So we just have to

get through this, these first couple of launches and then we'll be, we'll be okay.

Can you guys sustain like this, this amount of four campuses a year? Like this, does your

multi-site process allow for launching four? Well, I would say, you don't ask that question.

I would, no, no, we, we've asked it. We've, we've had tireless meetings about this. Um,

we are going to have to pause at some point because we are, we've never launched two in one year before.

The most we've done is like, we had, we had to go within nine months of each other

in two separate years. Um, but we've never, we've never launched two in one year. We've

certainly never launched three in one year. And, um, we're in position we could launch four in 2020

if we, if we wanted to. So, uh, all, everybody has been put on, cause I think a lot of people

were like, is this even going to work? Like, should we really get riled up about this? Or should we

really get put on notice and start building teams and people before we even know if this is a real

deal? So I think after the first quarter of 2019, people were like, okay, we need to have some

meetings. So we've been meeting with all of our core directors and just saying, Hey, who, who,

who do you have up next? And as a leadership team, we've said, okay, we probably need a pause on

something so we can start to fill our benches back up because right now we're depleting, we're

depleting all of our, all of our roster spots. Um, so we're okay right now and prayerfully

leadership college and some of the other things we're doing, we'll backfill these spots quicker

than, um, but we feel, we feel like this is what God's put us on this. He's continuing to open doors

that just blow our minds. So we're like, we can't say, we can't say no, we have to, we have to go if

he's opening doors and providing this and he, we're just trusting him that he's going to have the right

people step up at the right time. And, um, but we, we are very cautious about what we're doing to our

teams, that the amount of pressure this is, but like our worship and live production teams are

stretched to the max right now. Um, but they're, they've got some plans in place. They just shared

them with us this morning as, Hey, this is what we're doing. This is where we're headed. This is how

we're trying to, um, fill all the gaps so that we can, we can be ready to cover. And, uh, it's pretty

cool. Yeah. Here, and let me just put it in the context, uh, cause obviously podcast audience may

not be familiar with Christ Fellowship West Palm. Um, the production values at the Christ Fellowship

West Palm campuses arguably are some of the highest in South Florida. You know, I mean, I can, I can

probably rattle off three or four that are in the same sentence and you guys forgive me for even like

uttering the sentence. You guys just, you put on a great show. There's lots of, of product, and I'm a

production guy, so I don't mean that insulting. It's just, there's a lot of effort and energy that goes

into, uh, creating that worship experience. Um, now does that, does that port to like all these other

places? Like you're talking about putting together this road pack and traveling it around. Like, are

you doing movers? Are you doing, you know, jump backs, cameras, like all the, the high energy stuff. So

like the, uh, the, the pop-up churches are getting that same experience or is it like, what, what does it

feel like? Yeah. Um, so if you went to our location that have like all the roving cameras,

roving, rovering cameras and all of that stuff like that at our gardens location and, um, one of those,

we're not doing the camera portion of it, but they still get all the movers. They get an LED wall. I

mean, it's top, top notch. Um, our team, I was just bragging on our team this morning because man,

the production team has blown us away. All of our gear is road worthy. They have built a system that

is absolutely incredible. Um, everything stays in road cases in the platform is so clean. It would,

it's amazing. I wish I had some pictures I could share with you of, of what it looks like. Um,

I'll get some this weekend in case you want me to send them to you, but, um, they, they have a full,

you know, we'll have four frontline vocals. We have a full band. We have everything on platform that

you would see at any of our other locations. The lights are incredible. Um, we have a massive LED wall

that assembles in like an hour. It's crazy how it all goes together. Um, we have six trucks on the road

that hold all the gear. So six, six. Oh my goodness. Yeah. This is a big deal. Six trucks. So, um,

two of the locations we go to and potentially the third location we go to, they don't have the power.

So first we have to take a massive generator with us, um, that, that powers the whole deal. We have

two 26 foot trucks that are just production gear. So the LED wall, all of our, our PA, everything that

we need lights. Um, fortunately we're not putting up a platform anywhere. We, we, we've got venues

that allow us to have a platform. So we don't have to set up a stage or anything. Um, all the worship

gear, keys, drums, you name it. It's all in road cases rolls out. And then we have a third 26 foot

truck is all of our kids gear. So if you came to, um, Palmage gardens or any of our permanent locations,

you would see pop-up walls. You would see full setups with kids environments, all of the awesome

stuff on the walls and all the pictures and all of the environments that are appropriate for those age

groups. And we have made pop-up walls that have all that same stuff on there. So these pop-up walls come

in cases and we, we pop them up. They're 10 foot by 10 foot. And those wall off all of the kids' rooms.

And so there's, there's five environments of those. And then we have our last truck is, um, full of like

all of our environment, common areas, like our next steps area, journey tables, groups tables,

all the ministries, students, young adults that we set up areas for them to connect. And then our

environmental pieces. So, um, high tops and stuff in the foyer lights and banners and all of our core

values and leadership principles and things we put up all over the place. So you guys have invested a lot

into this model. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And that's, and that's, that's generating your results of, of like

up to potentially four campuses a year, assuming they, they mature and grow as planned. Yep. We could,

we, we don't see any reason why, um, why we couldn't launch four campuses a year. And honestly,

you nailed it. It's the people. We just have to be careful that we don't burn our people out

and that we, we are caring for our people and our teams first, cause we can only go so far.

They're only, we're only gonna be able to go as far as they, they allow us to go. So, um, those are

some of the things that we're working on right now, because we could, we could literally build another

rig and be doing four more locations. Um, now that we built it and we know what, we know what it is.

Um, so yeah, we've, we've, uh, worked really hard to make things super portable and easy to get

in and out, up and down. So we set, we set a whole campus up in about two to two and a half hours.

Everything from live productions, kids rooms, environments, everything.

You guys process six trucks in two, two and a half hours.

Yes.

Wow. Like that, that, that's impressive. That's, yeah. I'm just going back to like my other experience

in live production and I just can tell you how much I respect that because that, that's, that's a lot of

work in a, in a really short amount of time. Uh, and so having the, uh, having the manpower to pull

that off is, is really impressive.

And honestly, it's mostly volunteers. So we'll have, we'll have probably, uh, so last night we popped up,

we had, um, 28 volunteers and probably, probably about 18 staff.

Okay.

To do that.

How do you, like when you pick location five or, or, or one of these that you already have,

like you just pull up to the corner, unload and say, you know, here we are, or are you guys doing

marketing or promotions in, in the area?

If I was picking number five right now, I've already picked it. Um, it was, it actually came

to us another God story. We had a, we had a coach reach out to us. Um, we try to get into the

community first. So what we can, what can we do to serve the community? How can we serve the schools?

How can we serve what's already going on there? What can we, is there another church doing something

that we can just come support and be a part of it? Um, because we know, um, in South Florida,

in our region, there's 1.5 million people who don't know who Jesus is, never met him,

never heard about him. Don't, don't care to because they don't know. Um, and so we know there can,

there, there's not enough churches. We can, we can put them up on all over the place, pop up all

over and have two, 300 person churches and never reach the 1.5 million. Um, so we look for

opportunities to, to serve a school, to serve a ministry, to serve something, the community

government, get with the mayor. The one that number five right now, if this is what ends up

being number five was a, was a coach that reached out, had a need for, um, it's a low income area

and the school didn't have enough food to, to feed the football team for their games. And so we got

word that, Hey, you could, you guys could serve and, uh, help feed the football team. And so we're

like, let's, let's go. What do we got to do? Um, which just opened up to another conversation and

found out the principles of believer, the coaches of believer. And they're like, we don't have,

we don't have no church that wants to support us. We don't have a church that, uh, that loves on us.

We don't have a church that sits in our school. Take it. And we're like, okay, well, here we go.

So, um, the, the third location was kind of the same way. There was a smaller church meeting there

and just hadn't, hadn't found their, their rhythm. And they just threw conversation with them. They're

like, man, we would love for you guys to, um, to just come in this community and blow it up. Like,

tell us what we got to do to help. And the, met with the assistant principal, turns out he's a

believer. And he's like, man, whatever I got to do to open the doors to get you guys in here and let

us know. So honestly, those have been the opportunities we've had right out of the gate.

We'll probably get a little more strategic as we get further away. Um, you know, we're praying

about going to Orlando. Should we, should we take the pop-up trucks to Orlando and go to Orlando?

We're, we're praying. We, uh, we originally were praying about our little region and we felt like

God was like, why are you, why are you just worried about that little spot? Like I have so much more.

And so we're like, okay, if it's inside Florida now, we feel like let's go. So we don't know what

God's going to do. We don't, we don't know what doors he's going to continue to open. But right now

he's been, he's been amazing supplying us with opportunities and people have been so nice to us.

We've had mayors reaching out some of the disaster relief that we've been able to be a part of too.

We saw open doors. So like hurricane door and just came through Bahamas and getting local government

people involved in that and really supporting the Bahamas has opened up even more doors. So

the fourth location, um, that we're working on right now, which will be a campus for sure. Um,

was a lot of the, the mayor and the vice mayor just coming to us saying, Hey, can, uh, can you guys

come help? And we're like, absolutely. How can, what can we do? You tell us what to do. We're doing it.

And so, um, it was so cool. Another God thing. They just said, we need, we need water in preparation

for when the storm passes, because we know we'll be the last ones to get water. And so within five

minutes, someone called and said, I have a semi truckload of water. I got nowhere to take it.

Where can you, where can we take it? And we're like, take it here, take it to the city. And so we,

they rolled up with a semi truck full of water and the mayor was like, whatever you guys need.

Um, so it's just cool. God keeps just giving us those awesome opportunities and we're excited,

um, just to be, to be able to be a part of it. That's, that is so awesome. Who over, over the,

I mean, you just, you're new on this road, right? You started, you were saying 2018 earlier,

who, who's been your, your inspiration? Who have you looked at and said, Hey, like we want to maybe

borrow a little bit from this or, or what other churches have been looking at that have been doing

something similar? Um, actually, uh, no, we, this was really the heart of our, um, lead pastors,

Todd and Julie. They just, they are so burdened for the loss, the broken, the hopeless. And they're

like, what, what do we got to do? How can we get to more? We, when we looked at what we had done as

a church and we launched. So when I stepped on in, in, uh, 2013 and we had, we were getting ready to

launch our number eight, we launched eight, nine, 10 campuses. And when I was stepping in the number

was 1.3 million in our region who didn't know Jesus was. And after those three campuses, which

have been amazing success stories, they're, they're just so much life is happening there. God has done

so much at those three locations. The number goes to 1.5 million. So we're not gaining any ground. So

how do we gain some ground? And so really the heart behind it was our pastors was let's build

something we can give away. What if we could build this? What if we could give it away to all of the

other churches that are ready to go after this? And, and if, I don't know if you've been to our

conferences or, or any of that, but they really opened the cupboards at our conference and say,

take what you need, here's your resources. If you can help, if he can help you build church,

we want you to have it. And so that was really the heart behind pop up is let's build it.

Let's, let's be okay to fail or let's be okay to spend a few extra dollars to figure out how to do

it right so that we can give it away. And then what if, what if 15 churches across the state of

Florida said, let's go pop up. And then we had, you know, all of these churches and then the whole

3.3 million in our state that don't know who Jesus is would be have an opportunity to hear about it.

So we don't know anybody that's doing it. We've heard some, some opportunities where people are

doing their version of it. It doesn't look like what we're doing. They're, they're doing it more.

There's some of them that are doing it more of like an event style. And we've all, we've helped some

of them there. There's three or four churches across the country that have tried it and they've launched

locations, um, or in the process of launching locations out of it, which is really cool, um,

that we were able to just lock arm and say, Hey, let's, we'll share what we got, use it if it don't

work. But yeah, I know of a couple, maybe not at the, at the size of what you're doing, smaller to

medium sized churches that'll like do several, you know, like an Easter, a couple Easter services or

Christmas service kind of in that seasonal time and try to use it as a, as a public forward facing,

easy to access church and then funnel them into a physical campus or funnel them into a, like an

online digital discipleship pathway to get them connected to the online campus or something like

that. But I've, I've to, to the level and the success that you guys have had of, of launching

campuses or, or, um, incubating is the word that I've been trying to come up with for the past hour,

incubating these, these communities to the point where they can grow to become a campus.

Yeah. Like I don't know anybody that's had the, uh, the success that it sounds like you

guys have had. And so, man, what, what an incredible idea. Well done.

Yeah. And I, and I'll be honest, we're there are our furthest South region. It's not, it's

not at the level of the other ones, but we, we feel like that's kind of our fault because

we took too long to one of the things we've seen in the, let's just society today. People want it

faster, quicker, sooner. They don't want to wait. So we've taken a little bit too long on the Southern,

um, location. So we're actually having some meetings all this week of what, where do we go

next with, like, we have to move that campus forward or that location forward. If it's going to

be a campus, the Northern one was just an opportunity where God opened so many doors so fast. We were

like, we have to go, like, we have to take these chances, which, which again, this is where those

two are competing with each other. And it, it's kind of, uh, it's kind of put the Southern campus

off. Like they're like, you know what, we're watching all of this excitement up there. And we're

trying to explain, man, we haven't had those kinds of doors open here. We're like, we're,

we're, it's a harder ground. We're fighting harder. Like we're not giving up. Like we're,

we're going after it with everything we got, but it's just not, it hasn't been. And then, um,

um, it's close enough to another location where we, we know that people are going to that other

location. So we're just trying to figure that out in the Southern one, but we, we fully believe

we have over 500 people connected there. So we fully believe it's a, it's a campus that's going to

grow and could be a huge one down the road. Um, but it's just been some delays that have been

unfortunate, but we're going to figure it out and we won't launch two at the same time again.

Lessons learned. Hey, so we normally talk a lot about church online in the podcast. This has been

an exception, but I do know like, this has been from an innovative idea. Like I'm, I was really

looking forward to this, this conversation and it went phenomenal, but let me ask this. What's the role?

How do you guys at Christ Fellowship West Palm Beach, what's the role of church online in this?

I know you're looking at it up front for the, for the heat map, uh, for potential areas for what's

next. What other role does, uh, church online, online campus play at Christ Fellowship?

So it actually plays a huge role. And so what we use in our earlier, the first,

like the very first time we pop up, we don't, we don't have anything really to connect them to

except church online, which is a huge tool, huge resource and a huge way for us to, um, just to

continue that connection. So we, we start messaging church online right out of the gate day one, just

like, Hey, the three weeks we're not here. We want you to go online. Go Christ Fellowship.com

log on, check us out. We got services every single week. We've got pastors on there. And then we, we do

something called made for Monday. So, um, every single Monday we go in church online and we do a live

prayer. Um, just this opportunity to, where they see my face or one of the pastors that they might

recognize. We do a live 10 may the longest would be 15 minutes, but we pray over people that are from

the different areas. So we're like, Hey, sending your prayer requests live. And it just gives us

another opportunity to connect. So if we didn't have that, we didn't have church online and we

didn't have that opportunity, it would have made pop up a whole lot harder because we wouldn't have

that extra opportunity to connect. And now we're doing some, we got groups online. We've got the

online chat hosts that are in there having conversations with them where I can't have all

these conversations. My team can't have all these conversations, but we've got this massive

resource of church online where they can get on there and say, man, I'm in, you know, I'm from

Boca and I'm just, I'm really going through something with my family right now. I could use

some prayer and, and they're getting prayed for it. They're getting loved on, they're getting

connected. They're having that opportunity. And then we tell them, Hey, get together. Um, one of

the things we learned from Elevation is how they do, they launch church through, um, uh, like

watch parties where they just have people come over to a house, three or four couples get

together. Maybe they're having coffee or whatever. And they, they turn church online on and they watch

and they have a, uh, you know, house party and, um, watch party. And so we started messaging that

we're like, Hey, some of our churches that are friends are doing this. We want to encourage you

guys that three weeks we're not here, get some of the friends that you brought tonight, have them

over for coffee and bagels, put church online, have church together. And you know what? We might just

show up. So me and my wife and some of our team, we would just find out and we'd go pop in their

house and watch church online and, uh, just having a lot of fun with it and letting it build church,

but not forcing anything, but really, um, online church has been, you know, priceless as far as a

tool goes for us to be able to keep people connected. And then using our pastors, we've got a dozen

pastors that pop on and do made for Mondays. And, and we try to shout out anybody or, um, if I know

somebody's going through something, I'll just, I'll use their first name only and pray for them and say,

Hey, I know John's down in Boca and he's, he's had a rough week. He's trying to find a job. So John,

I just want you to know, I'm praying for you. I'm believing God's got something for you. I can't

wait to see you in a couple of weeks back down there. Um, our team's praying for you, be blessed,

you know, maybe share scripture, some kind of scriptural thought that he could just take. And

then I'll, and then I'll tell him, I was like, man, did you see me? I was praying for you online.

And, uh, so it's, it's a huge resource and our pastor is amazing helping have those conversations

and sending me feedback. Let me know, Hey, I just talked to this person. You might want to reach out

to them. So very cool. Yeah. It's, it's such a, it's such a powerful tool to help, um, connect the

DNA of, of who you are, even when you, when you're not there doing the long distance and, and a lot

of that. And, uh, we actually had Danny on, uh, uh, from Elevation a while back. We did a podcast

talking about the, uh, the watch parties and a lot of that. So if you didn't hear that episode,

listen to the audience, go back in and catch that. It's, it's a really, really good episode. And one of

the things that I loved about Danny in that conversation, she had the entire time she said,

yeah, we're doing that now. We'll probably change it in two months. We're just experimenting. We don't

know what we're doing. And so, you know, what, what a, what a great challenge for all of us out there

that, you know, may be, uh, afraid to experiment or, or may be overly cautious, but getting out there

trying and, and seeing what God can do with it, which, which gets me to this and we can, uh, we can

wrap on this. Okay. So there's a church out there that's interested in doing this. Yeah. Um, what's

the first thing? So obviously it's a very rich idea getting from idea creation all the way to where

you are. What's kind of the first thing that you would advise somebody, a church and organization

interesting in doing this, what do they need to do? Well, um, first I would just get with leadership

and make sure that there are stacked hands on what it's going to cost in the kind of, uh, effort it's

going to take and know that your leadership's behind you 100% because, um, it's a, it's a front loaded

experience. There's a lot of expense on the front end. There's a lot of effort, labor, um, man hours,

equipment, all that stuff that comes out front. If you're going to try, if you're going to do it the

way we're doing it now, I would also say if you want to try some of the things like Elevation

Church and some of those where you're doing watch parties and things like that, very, very, very

inexpensive and also really cool to be a part of because you get to go and just be right from the

ground up. So I would just start with a conversation and say, Hey, we're, what model do you really want

to go after? Because there's a, there's a few different ways you can, you can approach it. And I'm not

saying that we're going to do this one every single time. We may go in and do some watch parties

in some areas. Like if we decide to go to Orlando, I could see us surrounding the city with watch

parties and let's see what happens and go up there and really go elevations in there right

now. Then we've been watching closely and having close conversation with them. Like, Hey, how's

Orlando going? What's it looking like? Um, because we know there, there cannot be enough churches

in Orlando. Like you can put all you want there and there's plenty. Um, so that's the first

thing I would just pray about it and really figure out what, which way God's leading you and what

you guys really want to go after. Because, um, some of the people we've talked to and just shared some

of the expenses and what it's been like, they're like, Oh, I had no idea. Like we had no idea. It took

that much effort in like our pop-up days are 15 to 17 hour Sundays. Um, well, that's, that's six

trailers worth of gear though. Right. And so that, that's like the, the one thing that I've always

loved about, about you guys is you're, you're, you're over the top. Like, you don't, you're,

you go whole hog and everything that, that you do, um, which, which coming from a live production

guy, I totally respect. Uh, but to your point, there are certainly ways to, to throttle, to adjust

there. And there's different ways to, you know, get, get to the finish line.

I would also just say, be okay to fail. Like this is, you got to be okay to fail. Like you can't,

you can't look at this and go into it and say, everything's going to be a home run. Everything's

going to be a win. Cause it, you're going to be solely disappointed when you, when you have one

that's struggling or you have one, you got to figure out, but that the cool thing about that

is lean on friends. I emailed a friend today who, um, who's launched a lot more campuses than I have.

And I just said, Hey, I kind of hit a little bit of a roadblock in this one city. What do you

recommend? How do we, how do we, how do we get it over the hump where it's at? And so, um, waiting

for them to respond back now and just give me some ideas, maybe something I haven't seen,

but I have some tunnel vision that I'm not, that I'm not seeing something that I should see.

So, um, I would just, I would just say, be, be okay, um, to fail, know the cost, know what it's

going to take. And then, uh, man, I love having conversations with people and just tell them what

we learned where our, what we learned our on-ramp was way too long. We took way too long to get to

church. And then we've, we've given them church, um, not fast enough for too long. So we've, we've had,

uh, we've, we have the on-ramp that, uh, you know, I'm requesting six weeks, six months,

launch that that's what I'm proposing as we move forward. So six weeks to get in there and do a

backyard barbecue, do a serve project, um, get in the community, give them a service. And six months

later, we have to decide if we're going to launch or if we're going to move on to a new location. So,

um, and see what model works for you. We, we live in a super, um, populated, fast paced area. So

there's a lot of opportunity where we are. Um, we've, we've helped some churches out West that,

um, they can only concentrate on one location at a time. And that's cool. Do that, like do what,

and it was, it was just cool to watch God open doors for them and then report back and say, man,

you won't believe what happened. I'm like, no, I'm going to believe it. Tell me. So I would say

that's, that's probably the two biggest things. Just make sure leadership is all on board and know,

know exactly what they're in for, what they're up against and, and then, uh, be okay to not have a

home run everywhere you go. Awesome. Well, Brandon, man, listen, I do appreciate the time. Thanks for

jumping on. I know, uh, life at Christ Fellowship West Palm Beach is, is hectic and, uh, I do

appreciate this, uh, this time and this, this conversation. Any, uh, any last thoughts while we're

landing the plane? Um, I would just say, go after it, man. If anybody has any questions, they can reach

out to me. I can, I can, you have my information. You can share it if they want to get with you. And,

uh, I'd love to have a conversation. If anybody's interested in doing it, we're still learning. We do

not have this thing figured out. We are, we're growing, we're learning, we're building, we're

working hard. Um, but we hope to, we really hope to give something, uh, be able to put something in

church's hands and say, Hey, this is what we've learned. This is where we're at. Here's a playbook.

Use it if you can and run with it. Because I mean, our goal is to go, go after it. Great commission.

Love this. It's church. It's, it's rare when you come up with an idea that's like,

I don't know anybody else that's not doing like a, a flavor, uh, even, even something similar. And this

is a completely, uh, innovative idea where I don't think anybody is doing it at this level. And so

Brandon, man, thanks for, for being brave. I don't know if that's the right word. Thanks for taking

initiative and running with this and thank your leadership who, who backed and ran with it. And,

uh, we will be watching, uh, from afar and seeing how God's, uh, God's blessing the ministry

up there for me down there for pretty much else. Well, and I'd also, I'd also invite anybody who

wants to know more about it to come to conference 2020, because we are, we're going to be having a

ton of breakouts where you can have one-on-one conversations with me, with our multi-site, uh,

director, people that have been hands-on the whole way through this and ask different questions from

everything from finance to logistics, to team, to staffing, to structure, all of that, uh, worship

gear, worship, you know, we can show you the gear list of what we bought, but we're going to be

offering all that at breakouts at conferences. So I would highly encourage you come there. A lot of

fun. People ask questions in the room that open up great conversations. And, um, I can't wait for

conference to be here to share more of what, what we've learned.

Yeah. So I did that conference 2018, I believe. And, uh, phenomenal, really, really good stuff. I,

I thoroughly enjoyed it. And, um, you know, a lot in, a lot in the church online and production,

which were the two circles I was involved in at the time. So, uh, but definitely we'll, um,

over the next week, I'll try to find some, uh, link or something for the show notes, or if you've

got something, uh, for the conference, we'll, we'll link to it, uh, and get it. So at least you can

mark it down in your calendars, uh, but it's, it's well worth it. Well, Brandon, man, thanks for the

time listening audience. Uh, man, thanks for, thanks for being here and listening. And once again,

uh, hope it was worthwhile for you. We'll see you next time here on the church digital podcast.

Y'all have a good day.