EP030: Andy Mage & The TikTok Revolution

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Episode 30 of The Church Digital podcast. Okay, well, let's pause here for a second. I just want to tell

you, I can't believe we've done 30 of these things, and I want to thank you listening audience for your

reception and the comments and a lot of the shares that we've been getting here on The Church Digital

podcast. I hope this has been rewarding for you, as together we wrestle with what this idea of church

online and digital church, what this essentially is, because I don't know that we all have the answers,

but together I think we can get to the answer. So here's where we are with episode 30. I was doing

an online Bible study with some online pastors a week or so ago and just was asking the question,

hey, tell me something great that happened this week. And one of the pastors, Andy Mage from Bayhope,

raised his hand. That's weird, an online environment. But he started telling us a story about all the

success that he's had through his church or his church has had in context of TikTok. Well, and that brought

me pause because, you know, I don't hear a lot of church success stories in context of TikTok. And I'm always

interested to talk to a church that's doing something different. So I reached out to Andy afterwards and

said, hey, let's get on a podcast and just dig deeper into this. So here's where we are. We're bringing in a

conversation on TikTok, throwing in some YouTube and just a lot of, call it unconventional video

strategies in context of church and church online. So we're bringing in Andy Mage, who, like I said,

is the online pastor over at Bayhope Church in Tampa, as well as Jessica Spivy, who is the social media

director there for the church. Coupled with Ray DeArmis from Christ Fellowship Miami, once again,

co-hosting the show myself, Jeff with The Church Digital, in a conversation that I'm calling the

TikTok revolution. Hey, everybody. Here you go. So I started the TikTok roughly about a month ago.

Actually, on Friday is our one month anniversary. Hey, happy anniversary. So back in the summer,

my daughter, who was seven, went to a cheerleading camp and she came home talking about TikTok. I was

like, what in the world is she talking about? She's like, we really got to watch the videos and make

the videos. So I was like, okay, I'm going to make an account so that I can monitor. Obviously, she's seven.

I'm going to monitor what she's looking at. So there are certain people that we follow that she can

watch only the following page, not the For You page and that kind of thing. So we did that. And as I was

scrolling through, these Christians started to pop up in my feed and they were, hey, here's the verse

of the day or, hey, let's pray together today. Really cool, positive things. And I was like, wait a

second. There's a spot for a church here. And so I came into work and I said, hey, I want to do this

thing. I want to start this TikTok. And our communications director was like, okay, but don't

like waste a lot of time on it in case it flops. Okay. Not exactly what he said, but pretty much.

And so here we are a month later, we've been repurposing content that we already had existing

quotes from messages, bits of our Bay Hope worship team, various different bits that we've been

repurposing for TikTok to not spend too much time on it. And we have 3,500 followers as of this morning.

Which is crazy. Amazing. We have one video in particular of our, of the Harbor pastor, him giving,

it's a bit of his sermon that he gave a month or two ago. And that video has seen over 40,000 views.

So that's incredible. This is, this is one of the benefits I think of not being maybe first to

market, but maybe one of the first as far as a lot of that's concerned. So tell us, I know you said

you're taking some quotes from messages. What else are you guys leveraging for content and how often

are you posting content? So I'm trying to post roughly once a day and I'm experimenting with does

morning do better? Does afternoon do better? A lot of people are on their phones at night,

TikTok rum. So we're seeing if I'm posting in that three to four o'clock afternoon range

that we see more views through there. Unfortunately, with the analytics not being what they should be for

brands yet, I know that we will, it's difficult for me to see, you know, does the time of day matter?

Do the hashtags that I use matter? Do, so it's, it's a very labor intensive process to see why did

this one do better than this one to go back to the day of time, you know, the time of day that I posted

because that's not something that TikTok holds. They do hold what day you post, but not what time you

post. So it's, there's some tracking that you have to do manually currently that I think they'll get

better at as they, they branch out into these, you know, brands and companies using TikTok.

I'm a bit of a nerd on TikTok. Like I, I see something funny and I'm like, I want to do that.

Like I want to have, you know, a song and like, it's the thing from the Guardians of the Galaxy and

people are jumping into pools and like, I want to be one, you know, I want to be one of the Avengers

type thing. But, but she has kind of tempered that and she has, she has been able to show that like,

hey, if we post, you know, simple standups of me or some of our younger people saying, hey, it's like,

we just posted one on Monday and it was me standing in our coffee house saying, hey, it's Andy,

the online campus pastor. And I just want to, you know, it's Monday. You know, it's going to be a

long week. How can we pray for you? That type of thing. And people filling up the comments and liking

the thing. And, you know, it's not as much as we'd like, like this video of our, the Harbor Passer,

Chris, 40,000 views. It's got, I don't know, 4,000 hearts or likes on it. I mean, something it's

ridiculous numbers and the engagement, the, the, the surface level engagement, the comments, and she's

pulling it up right now so we can actually get it. So it's 11. Oh my gosh. 11.1 thousand likes

and 114 comments on it with 47,000 views on just one video from less than a month ago. Um, and people

are commenting and like, amen. And Hey, I needed to hear this. And you know, that type of thing. Uh,

we, you can see in snap in the development of Snapchat to started as like this thing for 18 to 25

year olds, maybe 16 to 25 year olds. Then the brands caught up to it and it expanded. And now everybody

else is on board. So old people like us are on board. Um, so young people, brands, everybody.

And that's kind of what's happening with TikTok right now. It's, it, it went from being this,

you know, her daughters wanted to download it. My daughter, she's 12. Well, she's 13 now when she was

12, she came home and said, I want to download this app called musically, which musically ended up

turning into a form of TikTok. Right. And my wife and I said, Nope, absolutely not. Like we,

cause I was scrolling through and it's like, well, there's girls in bikinis and there's dudes

without their shirts on and they're singing Will Smith songs. And then there's like chingy and all

sorts of stuff. Like, no, we're, we're not going to have that. Right. But, but we're watching

TikTok evolve from just this lip sync thing. Like, Hey, we're going to have fun into almost this other

social media platform. And I'm interested in, I know she has the social media coordinator. I know

she's interested to see how we can actually start to draw not just analytics, but engagement out of that

more than just a one way conversation, me talking to you. How can we enter into a conversation that

isn't, is more than just a heart on a, on a, on a screen.

That's good. Are you guys engaging people with next steps through TikTok? Like, Hey, you know,

catch this clip, watch it on YouTube or how does that work?

So yes, there's a couple of ways that we're doing that when they, uh, our faithful worship team

recently released a new song. So yes, I, I directed them to YouTube. However, TikTok wants you to stay

in TikTok. Yeah. You can't link outside. Right. Basically, basically you're telling people to go

search for something on YouTube. Now you can connect your Instagram page and your YouTube page in your

profile. Um, so those, you can say, go to the, you know, go to our YouTube channel, our profile. So

those, those two things are nice, um, to have, but you can't direct them to a specific video. It's not

like Instagram where you can say link in bio or, or that, you know, it's not a direct link. So it is

several steps, which I, as a marketer don't love because the, the fewer number of steps means that,

you know, they're like, they're actually going to get where you want them to get. Um, so you were

trying to, especially on like Saturday, I post a video clip or a music clip and I'll say, join us

someday, you know, the next day, hoping that people see it overnight at nine 30 or 11. And I include

our website, um, in text over the video, um, of where to go see, because they can't click it anywhere

that I post it. They're not going to click it. So, um, that I hope that that changes, but I understand

TikTok wanting everybody to stay in TikTok.

And she's the real genius behind all this. Like Jessica has been, she spearheaded it. She's

been the one kind of talking about all this and she's coming up with all these bright ideas and

I'm going, yeah, man, like this is your, you're the genius in all of this. I'm just along for the

ride. It's great. It's awesome to watch.

That's great. And I'm glad that you guys are working together as a team on this, Jessica. Let

me ask how, how much, uh, I don't want to call it like overproduced, but like really produced

content are you guys doing? Are you just taking, you know, moments of the sermon or are you

literally holding up your device and recording on the spot for a lot of this content?

No. So I'm downloading our, and I, and I do this for our social medias as well. So basically

it's kind of a repurpose of the content. Um, I download our service from the stream, from

stream monkey and I chop it up and I pull, you know, quotes from this past weekend. Like

I have a quote that's that I've pulled that I'm getting somebody to add text to, cause I

don't know how to do that yet. Um, I, I do, but they don't trust me yet. I guess it's

the short version. Um, it's better off to hand that off anyways. You're good. I don't

have time for that. Um, so, uh, but, so I pull the clips and then I'm using them that

way. I'm also posting them on our Facebook and our Instagram as video clips with a, you

know, provoking question or whatever to say, you know, what was the key point from the weekend

that you caught? So I'm using it in multiple different ways. I'm assuming on TikTok that they

probably don't go to our church. So I'm not going to ask that, that question of how did you

reflect on the weekend? I'm saying, here's a clip from our weekend message. Go watch the

full version at bayhope.com. That's how I'm using it on TikTok.

That's great because not all of us, and this is even speaking, you know, at a large mega

church with a lot of sites, not all of us have that kind of swag that we're getting the swipe

up feature on Instagram, like seriously. And so this provides to me, just based off of this

conversation, this provides another method to help draw young viewers and to push them to

some of those next steps. Now, out of curiosity, the clip that's got all this crazy amount of

views, what was the subject matter?

The subject matter, he starts off this quote and he says, get along with God. You know, we

spend more time on SportsCenter than we do in the Word. And he carries it on a little bit

further from there, but basically he's challenging, you know, this notion that, you know, all these

other things are important. You know, we'll wake up earlier, we'll stay up late for a game

or whatever, but we won't wake up 30 minutes early to read our Bible.

That's, that was the challenge. And so I think because it was more of a challenge than it was

just a passive quote, I think that's part of what it, what it did. I also, in that particular post

used a, um, whenever you post a video, it shows you the top three hashtags. So I, one of those

hashtags and it was make it awesome. Not exactly related to our content, but, um, so every time that

I post one, I try to use one of those top three, making sure it makes sense with our content so

that that engagement is a little higher, figuring out what the rhyme or reason behind the algorithms

and TikTok is, is, um, a little bit of a mystery right now.

Cool, Zarin.

Yeah.

So tell me about that because this right here is, is an interesting conversation to me because

hashtags can either be very insider focused or you can leverage them to help reach, uh, folks

within content that they're driving towards. And so tell me a little bit more about how you've been doing

that.

And I agree. And actually your question challenges some of the hashtags that I've been using. Um,

you know, if the goal on TikTok, we're assuming that this audience is younger, probably doesn't

attend our church. That's the direction that we're the audience that we're speaking to. If I'm using

hashtags like faith and Jesus, the people that are probably searching those probably already know

Jesus. And so it may be, you know, uh, using whatever that the popular ones are, but even thinking through

having a rough day, you know, I mean, thinking through those other hashtags that could be used,

um, to really reach that audience, um, is a good one. I always use hashtag Tampa, um, because that's

physically where we are, but that doesn't mean that obviously we can't connect with somebody outside

of that. That's great. Have you guys seen an increase? So like the sermon you, you posted the

clip for 40,000, 47,000 views, uh, reference YouTube, uh, to, to watch the full sermon. Have

you guys seen an increase in traffic on like YouTube on some of the others? Are they following

through? So YouTube's a different thing for us right now, because we have two different YouTube

pages. We have one for the main church and then we have one for our worship team. Um,

and the worship team, and we can talk about that in a second. We've seen an enormous increase in the

worship team, but I don't, that's not from TikTok. That's from some advertising and some other things

that we've been doing. We've had some marketing dollars to push behind that. And she's been,

uh, spearheading that. And I've just been able to be like, Hey, I'm going to look at these

conversations because these are great. Um, but in terms of actually looking at the stream monkey,

the video on demand views, they've upticked slightly. I mean, maybe I'm talking to the

tune of maybe 10 to 20 a week. Um, I can't tell if that's because we're also growing the online

campus community around it. I can't tell if that's directly related to TikTok. There's no one-to-one

that I can look at inside stream monkey. Well, because there, because there's no way to link

in TikTok, we can't throw up a live.bayhope.com slash TikTok to track any of that traffic to see

where are they actually coming from? Yeah. That right there is interesting because TikTok right now,

it's actually young in demographic. I saw somebody tweet this out yesterday. You know, yesterday,

Ellen DeGeneres posted her thing about, Hey, how we can get along with diverse perspectives.

Somebody tweeted this out. They said the people on Facebook are mad at George Bush for hanging out

with Ellen. The people on Twitter are mad at Ellen for hanging out with George Bush. And the people on

TikTok have no idea who either of those people. And it's funny. I read that same thing and I laughed,

like I laughed so hard because it was like, Hey, you're absolutely right. B, if you look at the

demographic of TikTok and the interesting thing to me is that the video that has that we're referencing

here, Chris is a, you know, he's a good looking dude. He's a young guy. He's what? 28, 29, 30,

right around there. Charismatic, all that other stuff. He's 35. Okay. So he's just a little,

whatever. Uh, I look weathered cause I'm bald. Um, he, uh, he, you know, like I said, a decent

looking dude, the demographic of TikTok is what? 16 to 22 year old girls. I mean, for the most part,

that's what you see when you're scrolling through the, or these quote unquote thirsty guys that are

trying to, uh, yeah. Like trying to hook up with these girls. It's like, man, you are on the wrong

platform for this, my friend. Like you, uh, talking about how good you look with your shirt off. It's

like, um, no, I'm silly. Like get out of here. Um, but so that, that's the interesting thing. But

the flip side as a pastor for me is, and this is the thing that has gotten me fired up. And I think

got her fired up too. I'm, I've just, I'm going back through James Emery White's, uh, Meet Gen Z,

a brilliant book. Um, if you've never read it, James Emery White, it's like, it's a, I want to high

five that dude and give him a bear hug all at the same time because he's touching on this back in

2017. He's touching on something that I don't think churches for the most part are recognizing

and realizing. Uh, and she referenced it just a second ago. We're not worried about the people

that are already saved. The hashtag faith people that are Googling and searching hashtag faith

are for the most part died in the wall or, you know, they're maybe newer believers and stuff like

that. That's fine. I'm not worried about them. TikTok, we're not worried about them. We're worried

about the people that we can, we can feasibly take and start having a conversation about

God because what the, and James Emery White talks about this, the Gen Z generation, so the

generation just behind, uh, she and I is, uh, is open to spiritual conversations. They're

not like millennials where it was just this antagonistic, atheistic or atheistic stroke agnostic,

uh, view. They're open to spiritual conversations. And that I had this like brainwave a couple of weeks

ago. Um, Apple released a new iPhone. I don't know if you guys knew that, but I it's, it's iPhone

season. This is my favorite time of the year. Um, I've had every iPhone since the first one. I missed

one. It was the three GS. I missed it, but every single one I've had because I'm a nerd and I was in

the AT&T store trying to figure some stuff out. And I was talking with a 25, 26 year old sales rep

right after I finished this meet Gen Z book. And he was, we were just sitting there rapping a little

bit and he said, what do you do? And I said, well, I'm a, I'm a pastor and at a church just up the road.

And he, his eyes like lit up and he, he turned to me and he said, Oh, you are, huh? And I said,

yeah, like, you know, if you want to talk something spiritual, then I was just kind of throwing it out

there joking. Um, cause I've got tattoos and stuff. And I was like, yeah, if you want to talk about

spiritual and he looked at me dead in the eyes and we had a 45 minute conversation in the Apple store

or in the, uh, AT&T store, excuse me, about his faith journey, about the fact that he had tried

Catholicism and he was a, he grew up Baptist, but then he turned Catholic and then he was Hindu.

And then he, he looked at Buddhism and then he gave me the whole, you know, I think, uh, every

religion is looking at different parts of the same God, you know, that, that apologetic. And I'm sitting

here going, wait a minute. These are the people that we can reach on Tik TOK. If we can just figure it

out, this, this guy right here, um, and his generation are being represented on this app that

you can get are in 15 second sound bites. How do we do something with that? That's good. And so you

guys aren't necessarily pushing the people inside your church to follow you on Tik TOK. You guys are

leveraging this for more missional work. Like, Hey, we're just, we're throwing out a big promotion on our

social medias or anything else about, we even have one. The only discussion that, that we've

had is internal, um, with a few of the youth to go, are you on it? Are you just to ask? Because

half of the time, you know, I'm, I'm 34. So, you know, my teenager, I have a 20 year old

stepdaughter. She doesn't even have Tik TOK. So it's this weird, some of them are on it. Some

of it see it as cringy. Um, it, it's kind of a mixed bag, but that's that right there is

already a shift in thinking, uh, because you know, most of the time, whenever we launch something and

maybe I'm looking a little too internal in my space, we think, Oh, well, we're going to promote

this internally as well. You know, you guys aren't really saying a word. You guys are allowing this

to just continue to spread virally, literally like, uh, through different channels, through this channel

channel and allow it to just kind of organically take on its own, its own life.

And, and that might be, it's funny. I had a, I had a one-on-one with our, um, her boss,

our communications director yesterday, and we were talking about a number of different facets of

online and, you know, Tik TOK and social media and all this other stuff. And, um, just kind of

talking about where we could line that up within the online campus realm. But what I drew from that is,

I think one of the reasons we're not promoting is that we're a little scared of it. We're a little

scared of the behemoth it could become or the flop that it could be. And, you know, I think the,

the innovator, you know, uh, who, who was it? The light bulb was invented 99 times before it was the,

the hundredth time was the correct one. Like we, we don't want to be, but we're results oriented

people. We're, we're a results oriented society. And we want to be able to hold this thing up to

everybody and say, look, look how awesome it's doing. We don't necessarily want to fail, but I think on

the flip side too, she more than anybody else is taking a huge risk. I mean, like I said, she's the,

she's the brain, the brains behind this entire operation. She's taking a huge risk in this by

even bringing it to her boss and say, Hey, I want to try this. Um, the cool part about the church

culture we're in is that there's a lot of spaghetti being thrown at walls and seeing what sticks.

And so we're allowed, we're, we have the opportunity and the resource and the time and the,

um, managerial capacity over us to say, yeah, go ahead and try it. Just make sure that, you know,

you're staying on track as well. Sure. Uh, one of the things that, you know, as Jeff and I have

talked to different folks, uh, we see this in so many different spaces. And so that's where,

you know, I want to encourage you guys. And I think it's wonderful that you're trying that out is,

you know, a lot of us are trying to just throw the spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks.

Uh, we have, we're riding a wave. We don't know where it's going to take us, you know? And I think

it's wonderful that you're doing that. Um, as you ride this wave, um, in thinking, I mean, I know that

it's difficult because you guys are looking at this in purely evangelistic form. Um, has there been

somebody who's like, Hey, how can I take a next step with your church? Has that happened yet where

somebody's turned a corner on this? It's not yet. Um, we've had several that have commented that,

you know, um, I went back through last night and saw several of my grandmother passed away.

Um, I'm interviewing for a scholarship and I'd love prayers for that. Several different comments

of that nature. The first one popped up today, or was it last night? If I remember, um, the first one

popped up recently that was, Hey, I'm in Trinity and I love seeing this in my, in my for you page,

which was really cool. Trinity Tampa is literally like 15 minutes away from where we are. So, um,

super excited. Now, of course, um, I had, I did open our messaging option. Um, cause I was a little

hesitant to do that. I didn't know what would, what would come through. Um, and I did message her and

just say, Hey, do you have a church home? You know, if you do, you know, she hadn't responded yet,

but if you do great, awesome. Don't, you know, we're not calling you to leave there. Um, but if you

don't, we'd love you for you to be part of our, they hope family. Um, so I think, um, kind of

there's, there's twofold, um, listening to those comments and then responding to them if possible,

um, is going to be very, very interval because to receive a comment or a, um, somebody asked for

prayer. Um, and so, and I haven't done this yet, but I think the next step in this prayer journey

right now, I've just been commenting, we're praying for you right now. Please follow up with us or,

you know, we'd love to hear how this situation turns out. Um, but it's to send them a message

with a prayer, like literally what I'm praying written out for them. I think that would be

incredible, incredibly powerful. Um, so I think that's kind of the next step in this engaging

these folks in this sphere. I've, I've had a lot of conversation and it's funny, she brings that up.

I was having this conversation with, uh, somebody I was meeting with yesterday and they're distrusting

of the, um, Carrie Newhoff just released a podcast and they were, they were bringing it up of how

the guest that was on Newhoff's podcast was saying that, um, you know, he's come full circle on online

church and how it can't actually be a, an online thing because you know, how can you, when it comes

down to it, how can you really buy somebody a cup of coffee online, that type of thing. Um, which I

think is a completely spurious, I understand what he's saying and I understand the full circle he's

come on, but at the same time, uh, and I, I grew up as an online gamer and some very good friends of

mine that I still talk to, uh, live across the country. And that's just from playing, you know,

world of Warcraft when I was, I was younger. Um, so all that to say what we were talking about with,

with this idea about the prayers and stuff. Um, we were actually talking about it in the church

online platform that we use, um, provided by life church and all that. We, we stream into that and

there's a live prayer button and that's become more and more active over the last couple of months as

we've started to put a little bit more engagement into our chat room and say, Hey, all you gotta do is

click that live prayer button and people honestly feel like they're being prayed for because as I'm

sitting there typing out prayers or as even when she was handling it up, she's sitting there praying

this prayer that she's typing out and people are more apt in today's day and age to receive that as,

Hey, there's an actual person there that's caring for me and loving on me than I think they would have

maybe five years ago. And so the idea of an 18 year old or whoever this was in Trinity, I'm saying 18

because that's just the kind of demographic I have in my head. This person in Trinity, if she can, if,

if Jessica can open a conversation and open a dialogue and, and, or with these prayer requests

and actually pray for those people, how much more are they going to feel the spirit of God upon them

even just through a text chat than they had five years ago? I think we're in an interesting

environment right now and I'm interested to see where it goes.

So do you guys remember, I think it was a, um, Stephen Curtis Chapman song was let us pray.

I grew up in a Baptist church. I song was like on repeat for us. Um, so, but I think in this day

and age, um, people say, especially in the church, great, I'll be praying for you. Do they really?

Are they really? Yeah. And then, you know, follow that through with, uh, you know, I'm sending you

positive vibes and like there's a whole culture of, yes, I'm, I'm sending you positive things, but until

we actually do it, doesn't mean anything to them. We may be going back to pray for them, but if they

don't know it, the value is not there for them. And I, and I think that it was really uncomfortable

the first time I did online campus and somebody clicked in the prayer was like, I don't even know

what to do. Um, cause I am not pastoral background. That's not where, not, it's just not what I'm,

what I'm good at. Um, but so typing out a prayer was strange. Um, it was weird for me. I don't know

on the receiving end how that feels or what that feels like, but it was weird for me, but doing it,

it caused me to stop and pause to, to think about, okay, am I praying what, am I praying what they

would want prayed for them? You know, am I, am I really directing my prayers in the, in the, the way

that, you know, am I really representing their request accurately? Yeah. It's, it's not surprising

that a guy in going back to the Newhoff podcast, um, a man who is very popular in context and very

knowledgeable in church growth is not going to identify with church online. Yeah. Cause church

online is a, I think it's a new model of church. It's, it's a whole other thing. And, and the thing

that, that really struggles for church growth is, or for church online is that we're trying to get

these organizations that are used to, and church growth first to identify with this completely

separate model. You just prayed with somebody online by typing into a text box in a web browser.

And the person who's watching, utilizing the chop church online platform is engaging with that and

receiving that you're, you are connecting on a spiritual level and making a difference in that

person's life. And none of that is reconcilable by an organization that's counting butts and seats as

the, uh, model for success. You know, a lot of the, a lot of the tensions that you're even like trying to

figure out in context of, uh, uh, tick tock, like tick tock for a church growth organization. Um, it's not

gonna, you can't reconcile that. It's kind of like your, your communications director saying, Hey, just,

you know, don't waste a lot of time on it. Okay. Because at the end of the day, the metrics to try

to figure out, okay, was this a success? Did it get butts in seats? Did it get people into the next

steps like that? It's hard to reconcile that because the platform is so, um, young, new, right?

Right. And the numbers do help and they give you the context for it. But really, I think it's going

to come when we find that those people that maybe they're physically here, maybe they're not, but they

start connecting with our online campus. They join in and say, Hey, I found you on tick tock. Or we, you

know, what the conversations, the messages, even within tick tock, when those start to show results of life

change, I think that's going to be our, our, um, it's not a number and that's what's different. Uh, but

that's going to be our, our proof in the pudding, if you will, that's going to be the, okay, this is

working. We're really reaching people and people are really seeing, uh, Jesus, you know, in what we're

posting.

The thing that I love about all of this is that it's a great way to, to one, we've got to ask

ourselves, what is the real mission? And two, how are we efficiently accomplishing that? Because you

guys are repurposing content. What's more efficient than that? Like, it's not like you are spending

money. I went through my phone, um, and I uploaded, you can upload videos as a draft.

So I went, I found all of the videos that we had done in the last six, eight months,

and I just uploaded them as a draft. So they're all sitting there in this bucket. All I have to do is

make a, you know, create a caption for them to push out. That's it. Like it, if a church is looking to

move in this direction, even if it's just as an experiment, um, you know, there's a lot of really

cool features. The drafts is really cool because you can even in the draft, you can already put in

the caption. I didn't happen to do that. You can set up the, the hashtags and all of that in the

caption. You can set the, what are called a cover photo. So the photo that people will see when

they're scrolling through. Um, so you can set all of that, have it in there. You do have to manually

push it. Obviously there's no scheduler for Tik TOK yet. Um, but I mean, I kind of hope there will

be one day. Maybe Hootsuite has integration later. That'd be great. All right. So Hootsuite,

if you're listening, you know, make a note. And we get a cut, we get a cut too.

And Instagram stories. We're TMing. Oh yeah. And stories too. We're TMing all of this right now.

We're going to mail this podcast to ourselves. Please do.

Awesome. So, and this has been a, been a lot of Tik TOK, which is awesome. Where, where are you guys,

how are you utilizing YouTube? Like what, what are some takeaways from that? What successes have you

seen in that area? Well, okay. So we have two lanes of YouTube right now, three technically,

but one of them is, is my own personal one. So the first, the two church ones, we have our regular

Bay Hope church YouTube page, and it doesn't have a whole lot of followers, maybe 300, maybe less than

that, maybe 400, not a whole lot for a church our size. So that is, you know, through Stream Monkey,

we, we stream services to CHOP, Church Online Platform, to Facebook, and to YouTube. And it's just a way

to kind of catch all. And then on Mondays, either she, or it's usually you, right? Go in and chop up the

sermon and just make sure it's there with a hashtag live or something. Hey, this is our live service.

Go look at it. And that provides long form content. It also is a land, the main church page is also a

landing place for a lot of our short form stuff. So we're doing Bible stories with our, our curriculum

developer, who's this amazing lady named Lynn. We're using it for what, stories of care and things

like that. Yeah. Anytime that there's a story that's shown on our weekend, in our weekend message,

I generally like to share that on our social medias, YouTube included. So that's a two to three

minute video that tells a story of somebody here at our church. So we just recently did a, a care week

basically is what we called it. And we had five different stories for five different days, exactly

what it sounds like. And every single day I posted a new care story. It was how they, they were reached

via the care ministry or how serving on the, on a care team has impacted their lives. So those stories are

there. We've got some of our kids ministry stuff there as well. It kind of lived there before I

came on board. Um, and that's the, the milestones. So the things that they, um, Bible presentation,

baptism, those kinds of steps that kids take through the kids ministry process. Um, those are all live

there and I had different playlists for them. Um, but yeah, I mean, every Monday I come in and I

change the title because it's just a big live stream or whatever stream monkey pushes through. I change

it to the title of the message, title of the message. Um, you know, who, who spoke it? And I always put

hashtag live because that's how our, um, executive director of creative, he pulls all those reports

for, um, the actual live, um, audience views. Okay. And so there, there's that lane. So that's the, the main

church visibility lane. And then we have a separate, uh, YouTube page for our worship team and Bay Hope

worship is becoming a thing. And it's been a thing for a little bit, uh, for a couple of years, they've

been recording music and recording albums and all this. Uh, but recently, so what, back in March,

back in March, they did a gigantic worship night. And it was the kind of the first real genesis of

this type of thing. And this is, you know, every church in the last 15 years, I've every big church

in the last 15 years has done an album and all this. There's been special for our, for our church,

though, and special for our, our congregation, special for particularly my family, because my brother

and sister are, uh, kind of leads in the worship area. So for us, it's been great, but for the

church, it's been even more edifying because now they're able to chop all these songs up. We're

releasing them one by one every two weeks or so it goes up on Spotify, it goes up through, uh, YouTube

and then it goes into where into Apple music as well, I believe. Um, and then through YouTube,

we're just cutting these, uh, videos and, uh, we've got an amazing kind of videography team and,

uh, you know, everything's getting mixed down and it looks real professional and we push that out

and there's big promotion and who rod and festivals and all that behind each, each single that goes

out. But we're also, and this is, and she can speak more to this. We're putting money behind that

worship page specifically because worship music is huge. Obviously, uh, it's one of the most searched

Christian things on YouTube, uh, Christian sites, you know, have the rise of Bethel and Jesus

culture could be intimately tied to the rise of YouTube as well. I can sit here and make a case

for that. I'm not going to. Um, but that there is that case. And so I don't know how much money

we've been throwing at it, but enough. I don't know. I did not create the ads. Um, our video guy

really kind of wanted to lean into the YouTube, all of that. And I'm like, this is not my area of

expertise. Um, I don't mind learning, but if you want to give it a try. And so he's really, um,

been leaning into it, he's promoting specific videos, um, as the suggested video after you

watch something. So, and I don't, I don't, I've never seen the backside. So I don't know if

there's criteria that you give it and you know, I'm sure there, I'm sure there is, um, criteria

that you give it to then, you know, it's going to follow something of a light content. It's not

going to follow something that's super inappropriate. I don't know. Maybe it should. Um,

the most recent video that got released, what two Fridays ago has upwards of 50 or 60,000 views on

it already. Um, and it's jumped, it's jumped hundreds of subscribers. Uh, we're over a thousand,

well over a thousand, I think. So you're doing it on a separate page organizationally. Why not do it

on, on the church pages as well? So that's an interesting, interesting question. And I,

I raised that as, as well. Um, because that was created before I was here, that split. Uh,

and I was actually probably before you were here. This, the split was there before me. And so

I have operated in this space of like, our students have an account of their own.

Do they really need one of their own? I don't know. Um, so our, but when I came on board,

there were multiple accounts, all these things. So we've really tried to curtail that down because

if you're, if you're throwing this, you know, if you're pushing out content on 10 different places

with these little teeny tiny audiences, the, your reach is obviously less, but if you've got

one place. And so I would say we're doing that because it is before we arrived. I think ideally

it would be a conglomeration. If a church is looking to do something like this, that it would

be one channel, all of that, that you'd have a playlist that would be your music stuff. Now I do have, um,

a playlist on our main page that reflects the videos that they posted as well. So we're kind of

literally, um, pointing that.

That's good.

If I'm putting on the online campus, um, the church online hat, if I'm putting on the church

online hat, now I'm thinking, okay, well, if I can use these paid music ads to get them to subscribe

to the main campus, uh, to the main feed, and then from there funnel them into next steps or something

like that. So, um, yeah, that, that would be ideal. And, and, you know, of course, everything's a work in

progress, right? When you come on, um, you know, and Andy, you've been there four months, even,

even Jessica at two years. Like, I know that that's, um, it's a slow process sometimes to,

to work through fun stories involving myself where, um, I came on, I was working for another church and

I'd been there like six months. And the executive pastor called me in and said, Hey, Jeff, you're

doing a great job, uh, changing culture around here. And we never really thought that you'd be able to

change it as fast as you are. So thanks for, for doing a great job. And if you make another woman

cry, um, over something, you know, if I hear about that, you're fired. Oh, nice. Yeah. So, uh,

sometimes, you know, valuing people in the process and, and going slowly is better than just cramming

change down there. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but that's completely separate podcast. And I actually loved

working there. Um, so it was a, it was a great church. What are your next steps? So you're,

you're doing the thing with, with YouTube and pushing in that direction. You're doing the thing

with TikTok three months from now, six months from now, like, where do you see yourself going with

these platforms? Oh boy. The interesting thing is that, and this is a quick little inside baseball

story. When Jessica made the TikTok page, we actually had a conference like three days after

that. Uh, and I was helping lead worship at a conference and helping do kind of set up and

tear down. It was about an hour or so away from here. And she came up and she's like, Hey, I'm doing

this TikTok thing. I, and I was like, Oh my God, let's like, I'll help you whatever you need.

Like, let me know. I love, this is fantastic. And I made some short little crappy little video and it

was fine. But, um, the, so it's been, it's been kind of this seat of our pants type stuff until

really the last two weeks or so. Uh, when we, she and I met probably last Monday in my office and said,

okay, let's codify this a little bit. Hey, I need you to do this. I'll take care of this, et cetera,

et cetera. I think once we figure out the follow-up aspect to TikTok, once we start deriving a little

bit more conversational tools out of it, um, like she said, she just opened up the conversation stuff

what last week, maybe? Yeah. I just opened all of that up in order to sign up for the pro account

and have the messaging that you have to be able to connect it to an actual phone number, um, that has

to, that has text messaging. So we have a Google number. That was how I was able to open all those

things up, um, for us, but otherwise you can't message people. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the,

if, if we can continue to work the conversational tools and then work them depending on where they

are. Um, but I'm a bit biased and I have a, a ministry that would love to reach people all over

the country and all over the world. And it is doing so. Uh, I think our best bet is to start to funnel

them to the online campus. Um, simply because of the time investment that is not needed for somebody

to log into a website and join us in a service or join us in on a Facebook page, you know, or in a

Facebook group, that type of thing. Um, I think that could be the largest next step that we take. Um,

I think to get there though, we need to open those conversations in whatever avenue possible.

Um, and so that's going to take, she says she doesn't have a pastoral heart, but she definitely

has a pastoral leading, uh, which is a pastoral heart. And so that takes a pastoral heart to really

reach out and say, Hey, I am praying for you. I do care for you. Once people can feel that,

I think the ball starts rolling a little bit more downhill.

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say in the next couple of months, one of the things that I'd

like to explore, once you hit a thousand followers on Tik TOK, you, it opens up the door for live,

kind of like the swipe up on Instagram. Now this feature is unlocked for us, which is a really cool

thing. Um, so does that mean that we live stream one of our services? The difficult technical thing

is, okay, great. We're going to put it somewhere, but how do we comment back with people? And like the,

the logistics of that are going to be interesting, but it may be something to explore this, you know,

what is a live service look like on Tik TOK? Now there are two other gentlemen that are doing what

they call Tik TOK church, literally Tik TOK church. They do music, they'd have a word and then they pray

for people. Um, there's a guy that does it at seven o'clock, I think central time. Um, and, uh,

he does it every single week. So it's happening. Um, kind of, I do think that we're on the forefront of

it. There are other churches. Cause that was one of the questions that our communication director

asked me, he said, what are other churches doing? What other kinds of content are they doing?

Um, and some of them, and I, I found one church in particular that is posting videos,

but they have the comments turned off. And I was like, what, why? That's death.

Let's look for, um, why are you here? Um, sorry, that's, you can cut that part out.

Um, but I mean, if, if the goal is not to engage with people, what are you doing? You're wasting

your time. Um, or you're wasting somebody's time that's posting a video. So, um, there are other

pastors out there that are on there. Um, Stephen Furtick, but he does the same thing we're doing.

He's repurposing videos from their message series on Tik TOK. So, um, I would say some, uh, curated

content. So some content that's specifically for Tik TOK, whether we're using the fun, new sounds,

putting a spiritual twist on it. Um, that, that would be fun. The hard part is that those sounds

are popular for about 37 seconds. By the time that we see they're popular, we come up with an idea.

We're working with the videographer to get it shot. It's probably not popular anymore. So that's,

you know, we're, um, not compromising quality, but it may be something that we look at,

you know, let's create a couple of, um, original content videos that may be shot just with our

phone and they're not shot with the big fancy cameras so that we can experiment to see if they're,

if they're valuable. Um, I do think the live option is something that we should look into. Um,

you know, we've never, we've not done a live on there yet. Unfortunately, the videos disappear.

Once you're done with them, they don't live anywhere. Um, so being able to go back and pull

and conversate with those people, I'm not sure how that would look. Um, but I think those are two

things that we need to look towards. Finally enough, I'm doing, I'm teaching a class tonight

on campus here and I'm doing just setting my computer up Facebook live and then setting my phone

up and doing Instagram live or just my own personal one for the teaching. So I almost wonder if we can't

try something like that just to do an hour and a half class, just to see what happens. I mean,

it might not be the best entry point, especially for TikTok. Nobody wants to sit there and listen

to me talk about Gideon for an hour and a half, but who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love the idea

of, of experimenting with some of this stuff. You just setting up a, a camera with a tripod. Part of

me is even trying to figure out, okay, how can I gain like computer access to the phone so I can be

typing on my laptop screen? Like I know there's like software SDK stuff. I think that can do some of

that. And, uh, forgive me for putting on my technical hat, but I've already been down that

road. There's a, uh, there's a, an Android emulator that I'm almost wondering, like, how can we

bust that open and start using some of these tools? Yeah. So that we can live stream the service

and, but then also be interacting. Absolutely. I think that those tech items are, are extremely

important to talk about. Yeah. I started to be a smart eye. I can be like Android, what's that? But

Apple and I are having a small feud right now. It's okay. Yeah. Let's say it's a later conversation.

So, um, Hey, but this has been, this has been really good. I love, I love how you're experimenting.

I love how you're, um, being on the edge of a lot of this stuff. And, and you're right. Sometimes

when we try to do something professional and try to get to that perfection level, a lot of times,

especially in online environment, like the fads already passed, the messaging opportunities gone.

And so had a guy on a podcast, uh, a couple, Seth Muse a couple of weeks ago, and he was quoting,

uh, Gary Vee, you know, version one is better than version none. Yeah. And so whatever you can get,

you know, get it, um, throw it out, throw it out there and let it be used. Mark Vinci quoted a guy

last week that said, if you're not embarrassed by your first version, you've waited too long,

just get out there, um, and, and do something with it. So church out there, while we're trying to

figure out, you know, the full completion of how, uh, TikTok can fit into your overall strategy,

you're missing the opportunity to connect and engage with people, get out there, uh,

do something with it and, and figure out how it fits later.

The beauty of the digital world is yes, people can screenshot things and so forth, but

worst case, if it's really bad, you just delete it. Like, even if it, if it implodes and comments

go crazy and because you can't delete comments on TikTok, if it just goes down this rabbit hole,

that's not good. You just delete it. Yeah.

You know, and it's even, man, I would, there's a whole other conversation about

if bad comments or good comments, how, how to handle that. A lot of times I've seen that, like,

the crowd will defend the bad comments. Like they will circle around, uh, the wagon and protect you.

You don't even need to protect yourself. So, um, you know, church, get out there and do some things.

Well, Jessica, Andy, this has been a, a great podcast and I really appreciate the time. Any,

any thoughts as, as we're landing the plane here?

Yeah. I think you said it best. Get out there and do stuff. The, the, the, the fact that as a church,

sometimes we get so stuck in, well, our outreach looks like we're going to have somebody say yes

to Jesus. And then we're going to do this. And then we're going to have them walk through this

class and do that. I think the time has, that's still there. And there is still a necessity for

that. But I think also the time has come upon us where we need to be quicker, more agile,

and we need to be less of a cruise ship and more of a speedboat as we're turning things around.

Well, cool. Hey, thank you, Jess, uh, Jessica, Andy, thank you for being on. Um,

love what I'm hearing, uh, from, from Bay Hope and, and looking forward to hearing more in the

coming, uh, days, weeks and months. And I'll be, uh, um, I will have to, how, how do I find you on

TikTok? Do I search for Bay Hope and you just pop up?

It's at Bay Hope Church. It's like, like the other social platforms.

All right. So I'm going to download my account. I'll get my phone set up. I I've, I've got the

account at dearfedge, Jeffrey backwards, but I will, I will take the time to reinstitute it on my phone

and keep an eye on what's happening at Bay Hope Church on TikTok. It's not going to be the old man

on TikTok. It's fine. I will be the old man on TikTok, the quiet old man over in the corner

on, on, on, on TikTok. There's an older gentleman that he's been doing like dance moves from the

seventies and eighties. And he's, I mean, he's not old, but he's older and he's getting a huge,

I mean, it's, so there's a place for, that's what I think I'm learning is that there's a place for

everybody. I have no response to that. Okay. Hey, so it's been a great podcast for, uh, for,

for Jessica, for Andy, for Ray. Uh, I'm Jeff with the church digital. Thanks for jumping on.

And, uh, we'll, we'll see you next week. Have a good day.