EP029: Mark Venti & Churchome's Digital Culture

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Let's not get hung up on a facility. That's a direct quote from Mark Venti here on episode 29

of The Church Digital Podcast. We had a great episode, a great interview, great conversation,

and I got to tell you, it went a little long, but it is so rich with concepts for church online,

for digital church, for mobile app church, that I don't want to add a bunch of stuff here

in the beginning. I just want you to listen to the interview because right from the get-go,

it is solid, solid stuff. Here's who I'm bringing to the table today. Mark Venti, executive pastor

of Church Home there on the West Coast. I'm bringing in Ray DeArmes, online pastor from

Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, of course, Jeff Reed from The Church Digital in a conversation

that I'm calling Creating Church Culture Digitally. Hey, everybody. Here you go.

Our church started in 1992, and I came over. I started attending church home. It was then

called The City Church. It was launched called The City Church in Seattle, Washington. I joined

the church in 2000. I kind of dabbled in it a little bit before that, but I came to do our

Bible College, and the church saw a lot of growth early on, and I came on staff in 2001, cleaning

toilets and washing windows, and then during that time, myself, I did a lot of youth ministry,

and during that time, our church also transitioned to doing multi-site. We launched our first location

in 2004, and so I was a part of that on the youth ministry side, how to start and grow our youth

ministry in multiple locations, and a really fun time. Our pastor right now is Judah Smith, so his

parents started the church, and he was the youth pastor, though, and I worked with him back in youth

ministry, and had a really fun time building youth ministry in a multi-site environment, and what that

meant was we did four youth services a week in person, so that was a lot, and I did the high school and the

music, and then I slowly morphed into becoming the college and young adults pastor and campus pastor

two of our locations, one that's on the University of Washington, so it's pretty much all college

students. A lot of fun. It would triple the third week of September when all the students came back,

and then like the second week of December, it was like the rapture happened, and then I campus

pastored at our main location, and the church has just been through, you know, a bunch. What happened

in 2006, sorry, 2005, right after we started this new location, we were looking into getting a new

building, and at that point, we needed to get insurance on our lead pastor to get leverage at the bank and

discovered that he had multiple myeloma, and so the mission of our church became the healing of our

pastor, and so our church was growing at an exponential rate, you know, in those first 10 years, and then all

of a sudden, our mission became that he would get better, so throughout all of that, we stayed about the

same size of the community. Judah took over the church in 2009, and a year later, his dad passed away, so it was, you know,

then we went through quite a bit of a season of transition because Judah was transitioning to church and

mourning his dad's life at the same time. This is when I was out the UD, so I was kind of in a little bit of a bubble,

because I'm with a bunch of young college students that have no connection to our past, and so, you know,

I wasn't in the middle of all that pain as much as a lot of our community was here, and then I came

over and helped lead our main location for four years and the transition into a leadership team role,

which is where I sit now, and helping resource all of our locations, and I'm primarily involved with

expansion and growth for our church. There is so much really good there, especially, you know, I heard

succession plans, health longevity of being on staff, and really, like, and that's, that's like the first

question I would ask, and that's not even what I wanted to dig into, so you started, I mean, I'm not

saying you were in the mailroom, but you were basically, like, cleaning toilets. Is that a literal thing?

My second year as a college student, I started, I became a janitor at the church. I was a waiter in a

restaurant, and so I started, yeah, cleaning, literally cleaning toilets. I was also leading

worship as a volunteer, so I was doing all the music for our youth ministry, and I, there was a few

Sundays where I was literally on the clock emptying garbages, but this is back in the day where you wore

suits to church every Sunday, and so I bought my suit at, we also had a little, like, thrift shop

in our lobby, so I bought my suit for $20 that I wore almost every week, and what, there were a few

Sundays where I was cleaning toilets with the suit on in between services, and I'd get on the stage and

I'd lead worship, and our auditorium seats about 2,500, so I'd be leading worship in front of 2,000

people, and then during service break, I'd be emptying garbages, so yeah, that was real.

That's an interesting stage of life, definitely. So we've talked about this on the podcast, and I'm

just going to be completely transparent right here. I haven't had a ministry position longer than four

years. You're looking at something where, I'm doing bad math in my head, but 15, 16, 17 years, I think,

right? 19 years. 19, like I said, bad math, 19 years. How? How did you manage to stay in a position

for 19 years? Like, what does that look like for you? Probably because our church changes so much,

so it doesn't feel like I'm in one position. I mean, my role, I've probably only been in one,

the similar role for more than three years at a time. We're a pretty younger staff. It hasn't always

been like that, being our pastor now is 40 years old, and he took over the church at 31, and so that's

probably a lot of it. I'm also, I love the vision of the church. I love, I have a long-term relationship

with Jude and Chelsea. I mean, I was 17, and I went on a ministry trip with him when they were engaged to

be married, and when they were on this trip, it's me, a 17-year-old with an engaged couple

on a 10-hour drive into Canada, and there were times where Judah would go off to study, and I'd sit in a

coffee shop with this fiance. It was bizarre. I'm just saying, we go way back, and so I just think

there's something there, and we also complement each other. Judah is an artist. He is a gifted

communicator. I'm the first person in my family to be in ministry. My dad is a mechanical engineer,

so even the way my brain is wired, like I connect with Judah. I've preached a lot. I did all of that,

but I'm also a little bit more of a tactical, mathematical-minded individual, so we just have

a long history, so we connect really well, but I'm also very different than him. Wow. That's exciting

how you found somebody that's like complementary, and you connect with each other, and completing

that package. So you were with the city, and so now you're in the midst of a rebrand or something

heading into church home, and I know you first came on my radar, honestly. I found you on Fox News.

I think I ran an article about this guy named Judah Smith who's trying to pastor people

digitally on his phone, and it's just like, what's going on? So I started digging and doing

some research, and honestly, just right now, the number one blog on my website is what I wrote about

you guys, so I don't know if like people are still hitting on Google or what. Honestly, I didn't

really dig into the analytics lately, but there still is a hot topic where people are trying to

figure out what church home is, so kind of help us here and really help us define what is church home?

What are you guys trying to do? So here's part of the story that's funny is, so we changed the name

of our church three years ago, and it, our church, we didn't have a digital app at that point.

We weren't, we didn't change the name of our church so that we could become a, you know, a massive

digital expression. I mean, the name of our church is not very innovative. In fact, we pushed back with Judah

quite a bit, like, hey, we can get like some professionals in here, like rebranding experts, and he's like,

no, I feel like God's calling our church to be church like a home, and this is three years ago,

and possibly to have church in your home, and, and, but church should feel like a home setting. It should

feel like a refuge. It should feel like a space where you breathe, and I, I feel like it's supposed

to change. So it was, it was a bit of an identity emphasizeser when we made that transition. Little

did we know how important technology would be to complete that mission. I mean, we're still learning

how that all is, but we, there's people that have come up to me and been like, okay, so I know City

Church, which is our old name, but there's a million city churches now. When we started in 1992, it was

like this super innovative name, but we were City Church, and when we changed, people thought like,

okay, so is City Church like your building church, and Church Home is like your digital church? It's just,

it just happens to be that within a year of us changing our name, that this opportunity came

for us around using digital technology to help us create communities, hopefully all over the world.

The, the goal of, of, of Church Home is to create churches in homes, and part one is to create a

church environment, maybe in a physical building that feels like home, but then there's a second part

that's creating churches in homes. Unpack, I mean, both if you want, but really that second piece of

what does it look like to create a church in a home? Yeah, I mean, first thing I'll say is, I think,

I think it's important we don't get hung up on a facility, because it's not about a building,

it's not about a home, it's, it's way more about church. We all know this, it's no question for any

church leader that a building is not a church, and that's the same thing, you know, I think that's

probably why in your blog in the past, and maybe when we launched our app, people, there were some

people that had a little bit of a hard time, because they're like, an app is not church, and we're like,

we're not saying it is, but we do believe just like a building facilitates church, we believe that an

app facilitates church, and, and I will also say this, that the first 300 years of the church,

there weren't buildings, like, the buildings were, didn't get created until Constantine built them,

and so, like, when we, when we look at churches, I mean, and throughout the New Testament, Paul is

saying, hey, greet those people, and if you, if you look at it, says the ones who meet at the church in

your home, like, people just found whatever means possible they could to build the community of

church, and I, I think culturally, um, that we, we put limitations around the church that don't need to

be there, um, and, and I think that's kind of the heart, I mean, if, if you take the digital mentality

that's way broader, not talking church, but, you know, we have Amazon in our backyard, um, Silicon

Valley's just down the road, and Seattle is becoming a new Silicon Valley, I mean, literally, our real

estate has doubled in the last three years, because a lot of companies from San Francisco are moving up

here, uh, Apple's moving their headquarters to Seattle, um, Microsoft is literally a stone's throw

from where I'm sitting right now, and the list goes on, so we're in a very, we're in a very tech-based

area, the way, the way the tech world thinks is they, they literally are, are constantly adapting,

constantly changing, and they're constantly thinking one thing, let's use whatever means humanly possible

to sell what we have, to give what we have, and so my opinion, like, why shouldn't the church think

that much, that, that way, even more so, like, let's use any means we possibly can, I mean, Amazon

started in Seattle last year, they built a whole department, invested millions of dollars into

downtown, this thing called Amazon Go, it's a grocery store that you walk in with your phone in your

pocket, grab your stuff, and walk out without checking out, your phone just does it for you, everybody's

like, this is going to be the next idea, well, they closed it two months ago, they're like, didn't

work, and by the way, all of your staff that did this, you don't have a job anymore, like, and, but at

the same time, they just started a new store in Seattle, because they're testing it, um, called the

four-star, and what, what that is, is the top 100 four-star rated products on Amazon, they're selling

in person, and they're, I mean, they're totally random, but they're all the top sellers, and

Amazon's just going, it's not about an app, it's not about online, it's not about a building, it's, let's

find any way possible to sell, and so, if a building helps us, let's do it, let's find it out, and so, so much

more, I think, why, why doesn't the church think the same way? Yeah, there, there's that bit of

experimenting that, you know, the church has, and we talked about this recently, we had Seth Muse on, who's a

communications director at a church, and, and we've just talked so much about this idea of the church

doesn't experiment, it's, it's afraid to, it's, it gets locked in this model of, of the, of the brick and

the mortar building of, oh, well, we've been doing church services for years, we shouldn't have to do

another thing, because the, the church service worked 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago,

way back in Constantine, I mean, that's, that's a great illustration right there of, we've been stuck

in, in a model, and are maybe trying to, to break free of, of that model, churches like yours with, with

church home, you know, wrestling with what it looks like to do something different, and honestly, like,

as I was doing some digging, I'll never forget this tweet, and I, we may, I've discussed it, I think,

previously, but literally, somebody said in a, in a tweet, and Twitter's Twitter, I get it, I don't know what

the F-bomb you think this is, but don't call it church, that was the church, that was someone involved

in the church's response to church home experimenting with doing something different, like, and there's a whole

bunch of issues with that, but how much of that have you guys felt? Seattle's sheltered, I'll say that, like,

we're, we're, we're probably disconnected from the, and it's probably a good thing, there's probably some

bad things to it, but we're disconnected from a lot of different areas with, like, the, sometimes the

competition and the critics in the church world, and I mean, honestly, what we're passionate about, we're

based in Seattle, we have a location in Los Angeles, and, and we're believing to really reach people and

engage with them at a high level, much broader than that, clearly, but I think we've been sheltered

from a lot of it, I mean, I would say this, like, we, a lot of our staff, for example, I mean, they

probably are, it's not like we regulate their social media, but we don't talk about our press this way

or that way that much, it, you know, there were some in the beginning that were kind of, that were kind

of fun to hear, just like, it was like, wow, people really have an opinion about this, I'm kind of

shocked, but there, so there might still be a lot going on, I literally would tell you, I don't even

know, I, I think we just have our head down, we're trying to learn, we're trying to experiment,

we're trying to listen to, to users, not to critics, or another way, that's a, those are kind of digital

terms, but, you know, we're trying to listen to people that are, that are engaging with our community

and what their experience is and how we can make that better, that, that's what I have my focused

attention on, but that's what our team has their focused attention on. Yeah, what, what is a, so what

does, what does church look like in church home? Obviously, physical buildings, I think people can

put it together, but, you know, maybe since let's not listen to the critics, but let's focus on

what is this? What, what's, what's the end game? What's the actual church going through? Here's what I

think people get hung up on. I mean, to answer your question, we have, we have five locations that are

buildings. We have staff, pastors, we have gatherings on Sundays and Wednesday night, but, and we also

have this, this digital tool that is what we're passionate about is that we call it a digital tool,

by the way, that it's a, it's a tool that helps engagement. I'm going to use a term that's nothing

rocket science, but I think this is what get people get hung up with on maybe this critic who said,

this is not church and is, is this, well, people need to meet in person. And I mean, that's a good

question. I don't know if anybody can conclude on that, but I will tell you our goal,

is that people would meet in person. So what we are hoping to do with mobile technology

is help people, whether they meet in our buildings or they meet in another way that we can create a

space where people can, can build relationships and meet face to face. So, and whatever means

possible for that to facilitate, there is massive benefits to digital engagement and technology.

I believe majority of that and get majority of that is, is really benefit on the front end.

I asked the guys at Life.Church when we were first exploring this, you know, because from what,

the little bit that I know, they're some of the people that really started this. And I talked to their

online pastor and he's like, man, people are actually engaged more on online than they do in

person. You know, I'll walk past somebody in our lobby and they won't say hi to me and they'll get

on their phone and they'll text me or vice versa. People will be extremely vulnerable. And let's just

be honest. It's because there's anonymity. You know, you can, you can talk about, I had a terrible day

today. This, this, and this, and this, and just open up very quickly with complete strangers.

That's actually something that we can really use for our benefit. Like we can use that vulnerability

to create connections that hopefully lead to people meeting together in person.

So what church home looks like is, I say all that to say, church home is very passionate about

being church like a home. And what I mean by that again, is that, is that you have a safe place,

a small church that happens to have a lot of people. So we want to have a small church environment

and it just, our prayer is that we reach as many people as possible. So, uh, it happens to have a

lot of people, but it might meet in small environments. Or if you're in an environment, it's a large,

we want to feel very small. We want to feel very authentic. We want to feel very genuine.

We want everybody to know somebody and somebody to know you at the end of the day. Is it about a

group's program? Is it about this? I think, I think programs are overrated programs help us

facilitate a cultural value. Our cultural value would be that when you're going through a hard time,

do you actually know somebody that you can call or text or connect with? And that person doesn't

need to have the answers. They seem to be able to be there and be like, Hey, I'm sorry. I'll pray with

you. I'm for you. And we all know that the people we want to go to in those moments, it's not somebody

that's got a solution, but it's somebody that's going to empathize with us. It's going to be

somebody that's going to be there for us. And so we're trying to find any way possible to help

facilitate easy connection. Um, even like I said, for people that come in our buildings, we, I think one

of the negative aspects of the mega church world in which we live in, of which we are one, by the way,

um, is it so easy to slip in and slip out. It's so easy to come to a gathering and think a gathering

is church. And, and as we know, church is so much more than that. And, and so we're, we're kind of,

we're, we're trying to think of a community that engages daily rather than Sunday. Um, and let's use

Sunday or a gathering as a tool to help people engage daily. Um, so that's what, that's, that's what we're

passionate about church home. So often we hear with church online or technology that, that it, that it

conflicts, that it competes with the physical building. Like I've literally had conversation

where pastors are debating about shutting down church online because they're seeing church online

numbers skyrocket and they're seeing physical numbers shrink. So rather than working with the

thing that's being successful, they want to shut down the successful thing in hopes that since they're

not able to access the content, the services, the messages online, they'll go back to the physical

buildings, the brick and mortar and see it there. What you've done with church home is you've managed to

develop a strategy or maybe unpack what this looks like, where your church home app, your digital

strategy, um, compliments what's happening in the physical, as well as coexisting outside for,

for an online audience. He kind of unpack a little bit about how the mobile works alongside and doesn't

compete with the physical.

Well, let me use a few words that you just used to kind of give context. First off, let me actually

say it does compete. And I think it's important for, for any leader to go, if I leave it to itself,

they do contrast and they do compete. But if we lead it, they cannot, and I actually don't even want to

use the word compliment that they can do their part in their own space to help make the whole experience

better. Let me give you an example. When Nordstrom first started their digital and Nordstrom's also

local community here, uh, company here. And, um, when they first started their digital online presence

for selling stuff, what ended up happening without them trying to was their stores and their digital

ended up competing against each other. And so their leadership got together and said,

this isn't going to work. The option that I think what churches and what church leaders have thought

is, um, you can have three options, keep them competing. And that's a pain. Um, or shut one of

them down. We should shut buildings down. No, we should shut online down. But when you think in business

terms, how, how terrible would that be for Nordstrom to make that conclusion? Of course, the answer is

one of the two, you let them keep competing, which I don't think is a good solution, or let's find out

a way that these can work together. Not, and, and, and I agree. There's a complimentary aspect to it,

but there's also an idea of going, let's let digital make physical better and let's make physical,

make digital better. So what I mean by this is this, and this is what we're endeavoring to do. And I will

say that, um, we are trying and we are growing and we are learning. And I think we've got some great

ideas. And I think what we're doing right now is also awesome. But I think some of the new things

we're going to be trying in the future are going to even make this even better that you have, you have

the exact same experience, whether your first interaction with church home is digital and online,

or if it's in person. And I'm actually beginning to see that the most ideal scenario is your first

impression to be digitally, which leads to in person. So I'm going to use in person on purpose

rather than, than buildings. Because again, I don't want us to be limited to buildings being physical,

physical that I think we see in the Bible is people meeting with people. Um, and obviously there's the

whole government structure church. Of course we believe in all that, but I'm just saying it's face

to face engagement. So, um, what we have had, and this actually did happen for us is that we, when we

launched our app, um, we, we realized quickly that we had to start creating workflows. How is this all

going to work? And so we started creating all these workflows and all of a sudden we kind of had two

churches. We had workflows for all of our buildings and our mega church. And then we had workflows for

all of our digital. And I mean, we had staff literally just to tell you the conflict to be

vulnerable with you. We had staff being like, I kind of feel like we're going back to the book Exodus

and you're asking us to build more brick with less straw and mud. Like, I feel like you just gave me

a second job. I can't keep up with both of these. Cause, cause we were like, we're going to,

we're going to seamlessly bring these together. All of us are going to be involved. You're,

Everybody's going to have a job on the app.

Everybody's going to have a job in person.

And that's still, you know, part of being a team is you just jump in and do it.

What we're working on right now is trying to go, let's think of one workflow that seamlessly

has digital, physical, physical, digital, physical, rather than digital, digital, digital,

digital, digital, digital, or physical, physical, physical, physical, physical.

Let's have one workflow that doesn't cause these things to compete because they naturally

do, but they actually seamlessly work together.

And there's a term that is funny in industry right now that's called digital.

Like I said, you can tell so many jokes around it.

But this term is exactly that.

It's the seamless cohesion of physical and digital workflows working together in cohesion

to build the best product we possibly can.

So church is not a business.

It's not a product.

You hear my heart.

But that's what we're endeavoring to do.

And it's a constant journey.

It's a constant adaptation.

And it's a constant learning from users on how we can do that better.

Mark, you made a comment earlier about how programs and processes need to work together.

I thought that was great because so often, you know, I find that we get so caught up in

terms of what the true purpose of the program is.

And so can you give me some, some like more specific examples as to how that works out with

church home in terms of, Hey, here's the concept that we want to see happen.

How are we going to do this in the digital space?

And we're open to whatever ideas come with it as far as how that's going to work.

Sure.

I'll tell you some we are doing right now.

I'll also tell you some of the problems we have with those, which is why we're trying to

explore other ways.

But they're, they're good problems.

So it's, it's, there's probably always going to be some problems with everything we do,

which is what keeps us having a job.

But what we're doing right, right now, which has been a big aspect of, of what we're trying

to leverage content to, to, to, to be a hook for people to engage with.

And our, our goal is that those people would, would consider starting groups, leading groups.

So obviously groups is a, is a very big aspect.

We want to make it super easy for people to lead groups.

One thing has been very specific as we have, we've, we've tried to really streamline our

technology rather than having like 15 different on-ramps.

As narrowing as it is, we've said, this is our on-ramp.

So we don't, we're not like communicating to our church and say, Hey, go use this technology,

go use that, go use this.

And I think there's benefits to that.

But I think what I would recommend to anybody is curate those different technologies that other

people created like Facebook groups or any of those try to curate them to work as one seamless

thing, customized for, for your community.

So for us, we, we went all in with this mobile app.

Are we going to have, use some of that in a, in a, an online web-based experience?

Sure.

We'd like to build that out more, but we went first with a mobile app because that's way

more where people are at.

I mean, who even remembers amazon.com?

Like when I'm not saying people don't use it, but that's where Amazon started.

But what made Amazon, Amazon is that app because we all know we spend way too much money because

we think of something and then we buy it right then on our phone.

So mobile technology is very different than online technology and mobile technology is primarily

about the immediate and it's also primarily about engagement because you can engage right

then or right there.

I mean, think about how different social media would be if we didn't have mobile phones.

It'd be extremely different.

And so I think streamlining what you're going to choose, that's what we chose.

That's why we went that direction.

Um, I also believe that, that businesses that are using mobile technology appropriately are

the ones that are really thriving.

And I don't think, um, in my opinion, I don't think churches have really used mobile technology

for what it is.

It's become like an app version of a website.

Um, it's, it's not really interactive.

It's not very engaging.

It's not something that is, um, addicting and let's be honest, these things are addicting.

So why not use that addiction to do it for something awesome like Jesus and church?

So that's, that's what, that's what we're on for sure.

Some of the other things we're working on right now is we do still presently have separate

workflows.

Um, and what we are working on a new, new thing that will allow us to do this, that your first

step, uh, for example, I think probably somewhere in the nineties, uh, or maybe even as early

as the eighties, um, we can thank Bill Hybels and lots of other great, you know, entrepreneurial

creative thinking pastors that were like, Hey, let's make, let's make Sundays the, for the

front door of church.

Like we're going to make it open for, for non-Christians and make it a space where people

feel safe.

And Sundays became that what we're wanting is we're wanting, um, this phone, this, this

digital app, or maybe the online experience to become the front door church that it's way

less intimidating.

Let's just be flat out honest to say, Hey, uh, would you consider checking out this cool

content?

This is an app that, um, a community, the community I'm a part of is, is leading.

And, um, rather than going like, Hey, do you want to darken the doors of a church building

this Sunday for people that don't go to church?

There's so many preconceived ideas about that, but there's so little preconceived ideas about

church on an app.

So most people I'll tell you our experience, most people are like a hundred percent.

Y'all check it out.

That's cool.

Wow.

This is awesome.

Like, and you can show it to them real quick, the hairdresser.

Hey, check this out.

Oh, that's kind of cool.

So, um, we're thinking digital really is a great first step.

So I'll give you an example right now on Sundays.

If you come to one of our buildings, if you raise your hand or respond in some way,

to say, I want to follow Jesus, you know, we have our, our assimilation steps, workflows,

and it's usually as simple.

Ours are very low compared to most churches, but it's usually as simple as, uh, Hey, we've

got people at our next steps bar in the lobby.

We have prayer on tap in the lobby.

Go check it out.

And, and, um, you know, we'd love to connect with you.

We got a couple of different things people can do.

Um, what we would like to do is build our technology out appropriately so that whether you're

in your barber shop or you are at church, the first step is exactly the same.

Download the app and, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself.

So we're going to build out kind of a space where, um, the onboarding process is, uh, is

us getting to know the user.

And then that space will really allow us the ability to engage with them customized and

kind of help them find their next step in engagement.

So regardless of whether you're in a building or you're engaging from a barber shop three

states away, the goal is that once you download this app and you go through kind of an opening

process, it'll immediately connect you into a space, a smaller space where you can engage

with other users around your location so you can start to get to know people.

And then hopefully eventually you naturally get to know them online.

You'll be like, Hey, you want to meet up at a coffee shop?

I'd love to get to know you more.

So, uh, but we hope that's actually going to revolutionize the people who come to our

buildings.

Also that the same thing will happen.

They'll be put in a small space with a group of people that live, you know, in the Redmond

area around them.

Maybe they all work at Microsoft and be like, Hey, let's grab lunch.

During our lunch break today, I, you know, I've met you on this digitally.

Let's meet in person now.

So the, the app drives, it connects people who are geographically, um, similar and, and

connects them together to, in hopes of creating some sort of a biblical community.

Yeah.

What, I mean, in using church language here, but what else, um, like with, with the app at

all, I know a lot of times in physical brick and mortars, like there's next step classes,

101, 201, 301, 401, you know, connect to God, other serving, um, mission, you know, just

different strategies that are out there.

Do you guys implement any of those strategies on your app?

Are those strategies on, in the physical church?

Like what, what are those processes kind of look like for you?

Well, let me preface this with that, with this first two, the guy who launched it, one

of the top investors for Airbnb and the guy who launched PayPal said, if you're not embarrassed

by the first expression of your technology, you launched too late.

So, um, there are aspects of our app that I so wish were already better and were better

from the beginning, but we took that as a premise to go, let's go, let's get out there

and we'll make it better as we go.

It is getting more systematized and strategic, uh, upfront.

We've just put all that content on there and we've, and we've, we've allowed, uh, on-demand

version of chat in all of, in all of those spaces.

So, I mean, just if we really just boil it down and simple.

So we have our grow classes on there.

We have content about how to get baptized and the basics of what we believe about biblical

baptism.

And we encourage people to do it.

And here's, here's what we see biblically is the, is the base that you need.

Go do it and let us know.

Like we're also here, come to our church, come to our building if you want.

But we also believe that the Bible gives preference for this over here, if you do it in this way.

So we have that content on there.

Um, yes, with kind of some of this new stuff that I was just describing that we're trying

to get better at is we're trying to use the technology to help kind of lead somebody through

those steps.

Um, so, you know, if, if you're, if you're engaging and you, and you, and you're, you want

to step into leadership, it's a very clear what to do.

And all of that is at your fingertips.

And we want it to be in an engaging space where you're, you're, you're simultaneously engaging

with humans, uh, not just digital content and, and going through checking off boxes, because

as we all know, the devil can do that and he can be leading in our church.

So, um, but, but at the same time, there's just a massive level of, of trust also.

Um, so, you know, we, we also, we also really believe in, in, in, uh, you know, doing everything

we can with all those different processes, but, um, but also leading a space for people

to step, step in and, and give it a go.

So other things like volunteering, uh, a lot of it is around, is around chat and communication.

Like we haven't integrated at this point, like functional stuff that typical church things

do.

But I will say this, if you don't think about church via how to make Sunday happen, but

you make church more around like engagement and community, volunteering looks totally different.

It's not about getting volunteers at a door on Sunday.

It's about people serving their neighbors and it's about people doing different.

So we, we are, we are high on that.

We have these things called uplift projects and we do global uplift projects.

And, um, so like when the wildfires hit California, we did a response event last fall

where we literally did a live event, Q and R for 30 minutes.

And we just tried to raise money for, for, we, we picked an organization.

It was the firefighters.

And, um, you know, a lot of this is around, around finances, but, um, we, we literally brought

three people on live that their houses burned down.

We interviewed them, we talked to them about what the experience is like, and it was, it's

on our app right now.

So you have all that on demand.

Um, so there's lots of opportunities like that, but then we also encourage people to start

just like a group.

We encourage them to start what we call uplift groups, which are basically like service oriented,

volunteer oriented, um, uh, things.

So getting out and, and, and impacting your city, impacting your world.

So it's, it's really more around resourcing and empowering people to go do than it is around

like trying to collect people and having organization systems that help make Sunday happen.

Mark, that's fantastic.

Kind of begs the question a little bit.

And I know you guys got a physical location in Los Angeles as well.

Um, or do you have online digital communities, uh, that, that end up resulting in physical

locations or not, not locations in the sense of a physical campus, but outside of Seattle

and outside of LA, like in terms of these connections, is that happening with church home?

Yeah, we're, it, it, it organically has happened.

Yeah.

Uh, and we're, we're in, we're in beta, beta mode of that, meaning we're, we're exploring

that ourselves.

So yeah, we, we have a, um, we have, we have a handful.

Um, we probably have more than that that we know of too, but some that we're engaging

with, um, we, we have one in Seattle, uh, there's an area in Seattle called Bainbridge

Island.

So it's literally an Island that's that you have to take a boat to get to Seattle and it's

an Island life.

Like people don't want to leave the Island.

Um, and it's, it's a couple that's just hardcore that, that did commute to our church

hour and a half.

Um, but when this happened, they're like, awesome.

We can just invite people to our home.

So they just didn't, we didn't tell them to.

And, and we're like, awesome.

You know, what's kind of crazy about this?

Same thing about digital being a first impression.

I went, so I've, I've been to their, uh, they're on our app.

Um, we're calling them like a group at this point, but they do join our live gathering.

They meet in their home.

They worship together.

They, they always cook food.

He's a professional musician.

So he like has a studio at his house and they live out of their house.

Literally a really artistic couple.

And, um, all of the people, I can almost promise you this.

All the people that have come to their group wouldn't in no way ever get on a ferry and

ever come to one of our buildings.

They are not church people.

They're kind of spiritual.

Um, so when their friend said, Hey, we're doing this thing at our house, it's about Jesus

come over.

They're like, yeah, we'll come support you.

They're, I mean, people are open, but coming to a church building, especially it's an hour

and a half drive.

Like that's for the committed.

And this is a small community where just to be honest, like most church planters aren't

going like, let's go there.

Like it's, it's so, so we have a community like that there.

We have one, um, in Dallas that started, which I know we're all like, there's tons of churches

in Dallas, but, um, but it organically happened.

So we got around it.

It was this couple that literally they listened to our podcast.

Uh, liked our pastor liked our culture and they literally prayed.

They showed us this in their journal.

They're a younger couple.

And they said, Hey, um, we, we were praying for that.

We're going to find a church within a year.

And we're praying that we'll find a church just like church home.

Um, the next week we announced our app and they were like, Oh my word, let's start a group

within two weeks.

Because of the app, they had over 40 people come to their group that they'd never met.

They started in a cafe because they didn't want a bunch of strangers showing up their house.

Um, and they, they literally meet every week.

Now they, they, they've had baptisms and they've had people, they have people give their lives

to Jesus weekly, like raise their hand the same time that people are in our physical buildings.

Um, we are, we're presently constantly talking to them because we want to learn from them

more than we're asking them to learn from us.

Um, primarily more about what's the experience like, what are the pain points you're having?

Uh, we're also clearly at the same time, just completely giving them culture and DNA, uh,

every chance we have.

But yeah, we're, we're an exploration process in that.

So when people are starting them, we're, we're, we're, we're wanting to more hear from them

and see what's happening.

And, uh, and we're, we're kind of seeing where that goes.

I know we had, um, Danny from, uh, Elevation Church on, and she's the watch party pastor.

And she talked a lot about kind of what you're, you're describing at least Elevation spin on

that and they're constantly evolving and experimenting, uh, with that model over there.

Like Dallas, what does that service look like?

How, how are you training these people quality control?

Like that's, that's two time zones away from you on the West coast.

What, what is the practicalness of that worship experience look like?

So what I say right now could be completely different in six months.

So we're, we're, we're literally, we're literally in a place where we're just starting to lean in

to go, okay, let's collect a handful of these and let's learn from them.

Let's go to them.

Let's experience it with them.

It's just so different than I, it's funny.

I'm talking about using a digital tool.

And right now we're, you know, communicating over a computer.

Um, but it takes from a pastor.

It's so different when you meet in person.

That's why we want our digital tool to lead to in person.

So we want to go to them.

We want to learn from them.

Uh, but what's happening right now is this.

We have weekly communication with them because they want it.

They, they are communicating with us via text.

We have a Google hangout with all of our, what we call our global group leaders.

So we have, we, we do have groups.

All of them are engaging at different levels.

Um, but we have groups that are meeting in, uh, I think 80 different cities worldwide.

Um, and we actually do a Google hangout with all of those leaders.

And it's like a leaders meeting.

We talk, we talk culture.

We talk, we ask, we have a Q and a time with them.

They ask us questions.

Obviously some of them are engaging with us more than others.

Um, and so that's what kind of the support structure looks like, but we really hope to

build that out quite a bit moving forward.

Um, second, uh, how the services look like they get together.

There's usually some food when they're hanging out.

And then we have service that's scheduled at 6 PM Pacific time.

So for them, that's 8 PM.

So when it comes on, they just airplay it to their TV.

We're working on, we're working on, uh, we, we would like to, it just comes down to priorities,

uh, build a Roku and Apple TV app.

So they can just, it's, it's embedded in there.

Uh, but in the meantime, Chromecast is on there.

And so we're, you know, working on casting abilities, but they just cast it on their TV

and they literally watch the same experience.

At this point, we might do a different customized version for in-home.

Um, but right now it's the exact same experience.

If you were just taking it on the phone and on the phone, we have a highly moderated chat

area.

And it's fascinating.

The very beginning we have, what's our called our digital lobby.

It literally looks like our services.

So our services are unique.

Like, not like most churches, we worship at the end.

We sing at the end.

We preach at the beginning.

So, yes, I know it's very different.

Um, but when we start, it happened unplanned.

When we started our LA community, which we never planned doing, it started in a home, which

is funny.

Literally Judah was down there with a friend of his that's in the industry.

And he said, Hey, you're in town for a preach speaking engagement.

Will you, um, will you do Bible study at my house?

And they invited people that would not normally go to church.

And Judah has a gift definitely for communication, especially with unchurched people.

And, and that night there was like probably like 12 or 15 people and like two thirds of

the room responded to give their lives to Jesus.

And it was one of those moments like, wow, that was God.

And of course there was no music.

Of course there was nothing.

It was in a house and he got up and talked.

And so quickly, these are very unchurched people.

So if we started with like a song at the beginning, they would have been like, where are

we?

So that, that whole community in LA for a year, and it grew to like 300.

It was literally Judah hopping on a plane every Wednesday preaching and leaving.

And we would meet in a hotel ballroom with a microphone.

That was it.

And it grew to several hundred people.

And then we started introducing music at the end because it just felt right.

To be honest with all the people in the room, none of them had any experience in a church

setting like zero.

And, um, so we've used that to kind of reflect, you know, we think we, we can give some biblical

precedents.

We don't think it's like that level, but, uh, you know, we believe that worship is a

response to the gospel.

And so that's why we do it, but it's also, uh, disarming.

So literally, if you come to one of our services online or in person, uh, let's say it starts

at nine, nine Oh three, that preacher's up there.

Let's open our Bibles and, uh, and you're going, and then it leads to singing and then

like some closed comments and giving and stuff like that.

So we have a digital lobby.

It's like 10 minutes of chat and everybody's like, Hey, I'm here from Brazil.

I'm here for it's, it's pretty fun.

Cause you got people from all over the world, um, that are checking in.

And so there, there's a chat where we are super social.

We're like a family, we're church home.

So we're very social, um, half the time when the communicator gets up, he's like, okay,

we're starting like literally.

So people look around, it's like, Oh, I guess we should sit down now.

And, um, so people sit down and then we start the, then the communicator starts speaking and,

uh, it leads into music and it leads into a response time.

And all that time has got some chat in there.

You can turn the chat off.

If you turn your phone to landscape mode, or you can keep it on if you keep it up.

So whichever one you prefer, um, but it's, it's, it seems great.

So this is amazing.

And I know that in a lot of riots, it's innovative.

Um, are there any other churches or church movements that you guys are learning from right

now?

Yeah, we learned different things from different people.

Um, of course you're not gonna be surprised by the people I bring up, but in the church world,

uh, obviously elevation, what they're doing is unbelievable.

And I'm friends with a few of the people there.

Um, life church, uh, Craig is, is kind of like an uncle to pastor Judah, uh, to our pastor.

So he's constantly encouraging him in his innovation.

When we launched the app, you know, Craig was right there cheering him on.

Um, so, you know, I would say those two are some of the top.

I'm friends with a few other online pastors.

So like the pastoral engagement part, um, you know, uh, uh, uh, saddleback, um, I know they've

been doing online groups for a long time.

We've learned some from them.

Uh, but when it comes to the technology platform, to be honest, we're learning from people that

are not church people.

Um, the way this started was an entrepreneur that went to church twice a year was homesick

in November and he turned TV on and watch church on TV.

And he's a very successful, smart entrepreneur.

And he goes, the church hasn't updated their technology since 1970.

That was, he's like, they're still using broadcast TV.

Uh, they haven't even started using mobile technology.

And so he got this idea as an entrepreneur.

I want to build mobile technology like the church has never seen.

And so for him, it's a business, but, um, it's incredible guy.

And he, he, uh, is in LA and he actually reached out to us.

Um, and, and he started talking with us and they're the ones that have developed this, uh,

with us and for us.

It's an incredible partnership, but none of them.

And I mean, none of them are church people.

They've all become Jesus followers, but it's funny.

Well, they'll challenge our strategies all the time.

Like last week I was talking to him about a groups, kind of a, what a lot of, a lot of

us do new year, like a groups initiative.

And they're like, why do you do that?

And I explained it to him and they're, and then immediately when they asked the question,

I start getting in their frame of reference and I'm like, there's so many better ways we

could be doing this.

And so I will, I, to be honest, I would say we actually are learning a lot more from Silicon

Valley than we are learning from, from churches.

In many ways, uh, shouldn't that be the case?

Um, uh, and I, I think that's wonderful that you guys have the humility to admit that because,

you know, you kind of challenged this thought earlier.

We get stuck in our own perspective, in our own way.

Well, this is the way it's always been done.

Therefore, it's the, always, it's the way it always should be done.

And, uh, it seems like you guys are challenging that.

How are you guys creating content to engage folks in the midweek that's connected to the

weekend?

Cause I know that's a big part of what it is that you're doing.

And that's just gotta be, that's gotta create a tremendous amount of tension for you.

So tell me about that.

So right now we have what's called a daily spark.

So literally we have a, we have a, we have a daily one minute and a half.

Um, and it is curated.

It is intentional.

I wouldn't say it's always like echoing what's being said on Sunday.

Exactly.

But I will say this once again, this is just our community.

Uh, but we preach Jesus every Sunday.

So it almost doesn't matter what you're talking about.

It always ties in together.

Um, and so, so yeah, we do have a daily thing, uh, called daily spark.

That's also something that we are, you know, continuing to try to make better and more

engaging, more interactive and more.

When I say engaging, I'm not talking about engaging with other people.

I'm talking about engaging with Jesus.

And, um, there's a lot of content out there.

So we want something that really makes, that really helps you facilitate a moment with Jesus.

So we're, we, we are, there's actually some sneak peek stuff on there right now called guided

prayers.

Um, that's like about a four to five minute.

And it's literally that like helping people.

And I'll tell you what, I've been praying and read my Bible for 25 years daily, obviously

not every day, but you get what I'm saying.

And, um, and I found these personally, like so engaging in a world that is full of distractions.

I've found my prayer life is so easy.

Like I have to focus so much more and maybe people are more spiritual than me, but I've

had to fight for focus in my time in the Bible, in my time talking to God more just because

of the culture we live in now life is so fast paced.

And, um, um, I'll say these five to five to eight minute guided prayers have been really

helpful for me because it's, it's just somebody like, think about this right now, say this out

loud.

Think about how Jesus is embracing you right now.

You know, like it's, it's, it's pretty awesome.

So we, we, we hope that those are going to be a real tool to help people.

Once again, our church exists to point people to Jesus, not to our message.

Um, so the daily content is pointed towards that.

From a, from a practical standpoint, is that, is that Judah?

Is that lead pastor?

Who's, who's in your daily minute?

Like who are the people doing the content?

So the daily sparks, right?

The daily sparks all started out as Judah and Chelsea.

Um, we shot them all in two days, like a month, like literally just did two days straight

content, nailed it.

Um, and then we started doing like response with sparks, like where it'd be like a selfie

spark where he just pulls phone up and do it.

If something happened, uh, like a tragedy, we still do these like the day of he'll stop.

He'll say something about it, pray it and we'll post it.

So it did start out primarily as, as, as Judah and Chelsea.

Then we've started bringing in, um, a handful of our community and we've been intentional

about different voices, different ages, uh, you know, diversity, inclusive, inclusivity,

different, different perspectives.

Um, though guided prayers, uh, are, are once again, it's just another piece of content.

We'll see what happens, but they're doing those right now too.

And let me ask this, probably the biggest problem that would churches that are doing something

similar or trying to do something similar to what you're doing groups, creating physical

community, creating community online, utilizing a church online or a digital transmission, uh,

is this idea of church and isolation.

And you mentioned it earlier, you know, the goal of church home isn't to have a bunch of

people staring at their iPhones experiencing church.

The goal is to create community, how are, create new communities in, in different areas, an

island that you're not able to, to plant a church, Dallas, you know, wherever they may

be.

How are you able to get people away from isolation, staring at the phones?

Um, like, is this geographical thing you were talking about earlier, is that the only way

you're doing it?

Are there other methods that you're using to pull people out of isolation into a new community?

Yeah, I, it's a good question.

And I, I, I'll take a stab at it.

Um, it, it, it starts with the heart and the focus that that's the goal of this.

So when we're shaping and making content, when we're shaping and making strategy, we're focusing

on that.

Um, I don't know if number one, there's, we can't control people.

We can't force them, but, but we are definitely trying to, from the very inception, from the

launch of this app, we said, this is all the build tack, the word we use, which is funny,

tactile relationships.

Now we're kind of saying face-to-face engagement.

Um, engagement is not a new thing on app, but face-to-face engagement, you know, leading

to that is, is not the tool of a lot of, well, there are some dating apps around that.

But, um, so yeah, I will say this, the, this, this digital device, um, we didn't know in

the beginning, but it has led to a lot of isolation.

It, it just has, but I think God's redeemed a lot of things to use them to, for other purposes.

So we're saying rather than hiding from it, let's redeem it and use it to, to remove isolation.

So, yeah, I would say how we're doing that is probably in our messaging.

We're building, we're, we're, we're trying to constantly think of, of, of new strategies

to help facilitate that.

Um, what we're learning from people that are meeting in person, once we learn more from

them, we'll probably adjust the technology to support that better, to help facilitate

that better.

But, um, I, I know for myself in the past, I've got the car before the horse way too many

times.

I've got an idea.

I think it's great.

And then we put all this work into it and then, and then people really actually don't

care about it or want it.

But the way great organizations and, and, and businesses do it is they, they try things

and they listen, they take feedback and then they adjust and they adapt.

And as they do that, so our goal is not changing.

It's the goal that's been since the beginning of the church, point people to Jesus, let community

swell as a result, and then help people step up to lead that community.

And so we didn't create a vision.

It's already established in the Bible.

We're just trying to find tools to help facilitate it.

I saw, I heard Clay Scroggins once, once at a conference and he said that the, the digital,

digital disruption, the business world looks at the digital disruption as an opportunity.

The church looks at it as an obstacle to run away from.

And so you, you know, maybe learning some from the business side out on the West coast, but

also trying to take advantage of these tools to, to create a community, to create disciples,

to, to connect people to God.

Ray, did you have any, any questions as we're wrapping, how to land in the plane?

I love this.

Mark, I hope we can have you on again, just because I feel like I learned a lot and I hope

everybody listening learned a lot as well.

And just hearing your heart and your passion for innovation.

And you know, you've heard us say this before, once again, folks, um, try, just try, get

out there and try something.

And, uh, if you get mocked for it, if, if, you know, if folks don't like, if they don't

appreciate it, that's okay.

Uh, just keep trying and keep tweaking at it because it really is about reaching folks

for Christ.

Just like Mark is doing.

I'll, I'll, I'll land, I'll land the plane on a few scriptures cause that's very spiritual

and probably appropriate, but that's what the early church did.

They, they say it seems good to us and the Holy spirit to set you apart.

I think we got to do more things.

It's like, I think it, I think it's going to be good.

It seems like it's going to be good.

I think God's saying this to me, so let's give it a try.

And I love, I think it's the, I think it's the original living translation, uh, that it's

an Ecclesiastes scripture, but it says, if you, if you wait for perfect conditions, you'll

never get anything done.

And, uh, it's just never going to be cookie cutter.

This is never going to be a formula.

We're working with people.

We're building a community, not, uh, an organization and can't wait for perfect conditions.

We got to give it a try.

And I promise you this, uh, if we talk again someday, I will contradict myself.

Then we will have learned new things.

We will change things we're doing right now.

And I'll say, Oh yeah.

Remember when I said that I completely disagreed with myself.

And I think that's part of learning and growing.

And, and I want to be that type of Jesus follower that I'm humble enough to go.

I had that completely wrong.

And I think we need to apply that to our strategies as a church too.

Awesome.

I mean, I don't know anything better than I can say to land the plane.

So Mark, thank you for joining us today.

Ray, thanks for jumping on as well.

Uh, this is Jeff with the church digital.

Thanks for being here and, uh, we'll hear you or see you or whatever next time.

Y'all have a good day.