EP016: Anthony Coppedge & What Exactly is Online Church Membership?

Hey listeners, this is Jeff Reed with the Church Digital Podcast. I'm excited about

this episode coming up. This is going to be a really, really fun conversation. So on the

podcast today, we've got Anthony Coppedge. Now, this guy goes way back. I'm going to

be honest. This man was an influence to me back in the 90s and 2000s, an early voice

in church and back in a time where as a production director, as a guy who was involved in church,

doing church communications, even with the dawn of social media and a lot of that stuff,

there weren't a lot of influences back there back in the day. Anthony Coppedge has been and

continues to be one of those voices. And so I ran into Anthony, not in the physical realm,

but more in the virtual realm and in a Facebook group. There was a question that was asked recently

in an online digital and church leader Facebook group. By the way, we'll include a link to that

if you guys want to get involved in this group, if you're in the digital ministry and you're not

connected to this Facebook group. It's a great group to be in. But Andy Mage, who's a new online

pastor with Bay Hope Church, asked the question, how does you handle membership and church membership

in context of church online? And so a bunch of people started saying some things. I said some things.

Anthony Coppedge comes in and says some things. And all of a sudden, Anthony and I

throw Andy in the mix and some others really ended up getting into a deep conversation of what exactly

church membership is. And somewhere in this conversation, I realized, wait, we don't need

to just do this on Facebook. We need to have this conversation for real, get this recorded

and share this with others. And so that's what today's podcast is going to be, ladies and gentlemen.

We are literally going to be talking about what exactly is church membership and how can it work

online? We've got Anthony Coppedge on the show. We've got Ray DeArmis, of course, online pastor

at Christ Fellowship in Miami, diving into the conversation of church membership in context

of church online. Here you go. What if you said church membership to the average church rate? You answer

this question, Ray's in the online realm or in as online pastor, former campus pastor at Christ

Fellowship Miami. And don't make this about CFI. I mean, I won't, but like what, how is church

membership defined today in an average? Yeah. When I talk to different pastors about church membership

in their, in their mind and some of the things that come out as, Hey, I am responsible for this

individual spiritually. I'm responsible for their spiritual development and for their growth

directly. Like I'm identifying like the people that I am directly responsible for and that

we are entering into a covenant agreement that they're entering underneath my care and underneath

my stewardship. And, and their responsibility is, you know, in, in some cases, like in Southern

Baptist cases, uh, you know, they vote, they have a say in church, you know, matters, uh, that

can vary from church to church. Uh, that can even vary like in style of church and sense of

strategy, whether it's multi-site or whether it's, Hey, we have church online and, and some

of these folks can or can't have a say in terms of what happens here. And so that's where some

of that becomes problematic, but generally, generally it has to do with, Hey, so now you

get a say in the family and I'm now recognizing that you're an official member of the family.

You're not just somebody who comes in that you're kind of, you know, and for lack of a better

metaphor that we've adopted you into our care. And so that's, that's kind of what I've seen

when I've talked to different pastors and ministers, uh, of churches that have membership.

So like what's at Christ fellowship, let's drill into this, like just curious, what's the process

to go from like, uh, uh, a visitor to somebody that that's a membership. What is that? What,

what does that process look like for any, any given church? Absolutely. So for us, it's been,

Hey, so they take, you know, membership class, which we term CF one-on-one, right? Uh, churches

have different forms of this. Uh, this isn't that far from like, you know, we, we talked with Jay

Cranta on the podcast before, you know, Saddleback kind of directed the whole one-on-one, two-o-one,

three-o-one, four-o-one process for their membership. For us, we have one-on-one in which we explain

the lay of the land, which is similar in strategy in that we expect people to attend worship. We expect

them to connect to a small group. We expect them to join a ministry team, uh, joy serving team. And

then finally we expect them, you know, to tell others about Christ or to go on mission, whether it's

locally or globally. And so, you know, that's the strategy. And so what we expect them to do is to

enact all parts of the strategy. Of course, we're still good Southern Baptist church. And so they've

got to be baptized by immersion, you know, and, uh, or joined by letter from another church. See Anthony

laughing over there. I know, I know that strikes a chord with you, baby. And so this is, this is kind

of what it is to be a member, you know, and so they, they enter into a covenant by signing off on a

document. And now they're a member of our church. That's essentially what it is. They're enacting the

four parts of the strategy. Uh, we, as such, we keep up with them as members. And, you know,

when we go through our voting process, like basically around once a year, uh, they get

to take part in that, you know, which for us, and this is kind of the struggle, even then

ecclesiologically, it still happens like during a service hour in which, yes, some people who

aren't members also possibly raised their hand and vote. That's just, you know, with some transparency

there, that's something that happens. So there you go.

So with, with the, the, the wrestle, you know, and, and in context of, of Andy's question, when he was

wrestling with, when he was asking this is, Hey, I've got, I've got members that are, I said members,

it's funny. I've got people who are experiencing our services online. Uh, you know, if, if you have

a well-developed discipleship process involving small groups and, and, and a strong vision towards

online, you could have people who are engaged in your church, um, virtually, uh, maybe even at the

same level as someone is at the physical realm or, you know, or, and that, that's interesting. Um,

you know, I, I can think, and I'm just open up here. I can think of a personal story when, as I,

as an online pastor had someone who was, um, in another state who had, had someone who was, uh,

regularly giving, um, a very high amount, not that size matters, but was regularly giving and tithing

as would be appreciated and expected at a church, uh, was leading a small group, was serving as a

small group leader. Uh, you know, and if you're checking off your first base, second base, third base,

the boxes, thank you, uh, Rick Warren, if you're checking that off, this person's fully engaged,

you know, into creating this disciple of, of, of Christ, at least how the church had deemed it. Um,

but this person's in another state, in another time zone. And as a result of that, um, they're,

they're not able to be, at least in context of the church that I was at, they're not able to be

held to that same standard of membership, um, even though they are as dedicated, if not more

dedicated than, than, than someone else. And so that's, that's some of the standard issues that

we see in context of, of church online membership. Uh, and so, um, you know, Anthony, in, in your

experience, kind of, um, walking into this and, and what you've seen over, over your years of, of

membership, uh, of, of, uh, ministry, what does, yeah, it was good. Right. Um, I'll cut that out.

This will be great. In your context of, of years of, of ministry, like what, what does membership

look like or mean to you? How, when you look at the challenge of, of an online member that may be as

dedicated or more, you know, obviously you're feeling something like, okay, the online person

needs to be permitted to, to have, uh, own a piece of the vision, but, but what does that

look like in today's age? I disagree with that statement. Um, they don't need permission to do

anything because the, the way it works to become a member, basically it's, it's applied to being,

to choose to be under the governance of, of a group or a person, right? Typically Bible says elders,

right. So you're under authority. That's a willful choice. So the choice to join or not is not the

organization's choice. It's the person's choice. Right. So, so I would flip what you said. Um, it's

the church that gets to say, Hey, these are the things we would really like. How do you feel about

that? Because that's inclusive versus when you say, this is what it takes to play here. And if you want

to be a part of it, sign on this contract or covenant or whatever you want to call it. And then

they go, well, isn't that exclusive? Mm-hmm. But those are our rules. Now, no one has, I don't think,

no, I can't say no one. I know there are some factors I've met them that are this way, but, but I would

like to say most factors are not thinking that manipulatively. We're just trying to have some sort of

confusion around vision. Right. So I understand the thinking there, but what ends up happening is the

way we articulate and frame it becomes about you come be a part of our thing by our terms and we'll do

things that benefit you. Hmm. It's a good point. And that's been the struggle with that term, right? With

membership. It has been, because I can be a member of a gym or Costco or, uh, or church or a group. I,

but that's my choice. That's the person I get to choose to be a part of that. Now the group may

have rules. If you want to be a part of this group, you got to do these things. I get that. They can

choose to accept or reject that. But ultimately, if we're trying to have open arms and say, we just,

we love you, we're all about people or whatever your thing is, then you're going to say, will you

join us with, can we serve you? It's a, it's both ways, right? It's not, are you just wanting to come

to be a part of our thing? That's exclusive. It's how do we serve you? That's inclusive. And that's a

distinction that I think should be made. That is not. And it also leads to the discussion of, well,

then should an online church have the same vision as the main church that's sponsoring it or running,

or should that functionally because it's operating differently, have a different set of mission

statements, maybe aligned to a vision or should it operate exactly the same? Well, that's where

the quality of church becomes difficult at that point because now we're, we have gray areas that

don't know, we don't know how to address for the most part. I have ideas, but yeah. Let's, let's,

let's park on that because, and this is actually DJ, DJ Soto, uh, VR church was, was on a couple

episodes ago, uh, episode, I think it was 14 if you're keeping score at home. And, um, and so he

was talking about how, and it was, it was a new concept to me. He's, he's like physical church, uh,

has a different set of rules than what he defined as digital church, church online, which has, when his,

his term, cause he's doing in VR, he's like VR is a completely set of different roles than, than

digital. But what you're saying is that digital church online church may have a different scope,

a different set. Uh, Anthony, as, as you're wrestling with that, like, how do you see it being different?

Um, are you familiar with Andy Grove? Andy Grove was the, uh, CEO for Intel. One of the things he

talked about was leadership and management. And what he said was that just like tennis, you have to have

a good forehand and a good backhand, right? So you have to be able to lead and manage. So leadership is

inspiring people, uh, to go where they've never been, um, and to trust to some extent to, to, to buy into

that. Whereas management is the execution of this by them and in this way. And a really, really good

manager is someone who just gets junk out of the way and lets people get their stuff done, right? So if you

think about that model, then what we're saying is, can we inspire people to follow the same vision?

Maybe. Can we manage them the same to accomplish something the same as in physical versus virtual

or online versus true? No, probably not. You're probably going to have to do that differently.

Your forehand is going to have to be solid, but then your backhand is going to be solid. So one of

the things I've said is that, um, if you follow Andy's advice, then you must become comfortable with

specific encouragement and helpful criticism because you're taking on both roles. Uh, you've got to say,

it's got to be less like that. It should be more like this. And you've got to be the kind of person

who blocks that. So you take the advice of growth, growth for the leadership management,

which would apply at both levels, physical church, online, digital, whatever. But then you also change

the rules of the game because the game is physically different in the virtual or online space. So the same

rules are different. What is out of bounds in tennis on physical court is very different than what it is

when it's pixels. Right? So now I've got to figure out, can I, can I even have the rules be the same

or do I need to change the rules? Why are we limited to a two dimensional court or even a three

dimensional court? Why couldn't we have a court that's on all four dimensions of x and y axis?

Yeah. Like literally it's possible to think about it so differently that it doesn't even begin to

resemble your digital thing. Therefore it shouldn't or couldn't have the same vision because it's operating

fundamentally different. Right. I, I, I love this, but let's, let's put a little more practical angle

on it. Both you guys, either one, like practical execution of that. We're talking 2D, 3D, 4D. I

know those are analogies towards, towards things, but, but let's, let's, cause somebody out there is

thinking 4D, what do we have to like figure out how to make our church service smell? We're not talking

literal in that context. What is, uh, what are some practical examples of where a pixel church,

I like that is different than a physical church? Ray, you're an online pastor. You deal with this

all day long. Give me some examples. Well, so there's, there's some similarities in that, you know,

the funny thing about that is the similarities that I've seen are, you know, when I come to a physical

church service and when I come to a digital church service, uh, I'm basically receiving a lot of

content. I'm being, you know, sung at, I'm being preached at, and so I'm basically downloading a whole

lot of content at once. Uh, we've quoted this before from Ed Stetzer in terms of we construct

our churches, you know, where one person uses the, you know, the majority of time uses his gift and

everybody else just kind of sits around and watch, watches from that perspective. And in that way,

physical locations and digital locations are exactly the same. Now in a digital environment,

from what I've seen, uh, conversation can take place a lot more naturally within the service and

you don't get your hands slapped for talking during the message. Remember when you were a kid

and it's like, at least, you know, my parents bribed me with McDonald's. If I kept my mouth shut

during church, you know, I'll do just keep quiet and then happy meal afterwards. It's all cool.

You know, with digital church, this, you know, the carrots on the stick, the other way. No,

we want you to engage. We want you to talk. We want you to get rules for a different game.

Yeah. We want you to interact with what it is that we're talking about now. We want you to have

real time conversation, not even in small group. Does this take place? You know, as the small group

video is happening right in, in, in real time, we're telling everybody to be quiet. And then

afterwards we have the discussion in real time in a digital environment, the content is just going

and we're encouraging as much interaction between one another as possible. And so that's where to me,

where the digital environment is amazing because we're encouraging the conversation. We're not trying

to just slap the hand and keep it quiet. We're like, no, please talk during church,

talk during church. We want it and beyond that way. I think you're, that's spot on.

That's a good example of how the pixel is different from the physical, right? But here's another

difference. That's a continuous stream of consciousness live on Sunday. It's our weekend,

if I'm going to call it, but it doesn't have to be continuous stream of consciousness when you have

digital. Now, if you're facilitating a live stream, sure. But what if you're doing small group,

or what if the way you're presenting it is so different that you actually get pause and you have

discussion and then you get play and it's video on demand, right? Or content, right?

It doesn't have to be an uninterrupted stream where you talk over it like, oh, we're missing,

but you can hit pause and they will sit there and wait because that's, that's normal, right?

So again, the rules change. So you, you're flexing muscles that you don't even have in the other

space and you have to, so you don't have to change the rules to play that way. I think what we're getting

to those that you're asking, and it's a good question, Jeff, what are the differences? But

here, what's the same? There is one focus. There is one focus. That's right.

Or go and make disciples. It wasn't the great suggestion, right? So if that's the thing we're

doing is the common denominator, then what we have to figure out is why do the church pundits and church

leaders got to stop confusing style or format with focus. It's up on the technology or the medium or

the time shifting. We can't seem to get past the thing that says, but, but this is how we've always

done it. And yet the very people saying that are the ones who complained about the church that came

before them always saying, that's the way we go into that. They're like, you were relevant already.

Hey guys, check the mirror in 2019. You might be irrelevant too. You just have a hip version

of irrelevancy, right? So instead with the constructive discussion here should be intentionally

focusing away from programmatic attendance generator or styles of service to expend time, effort,

and resources on deliberately emphasizing a personal journey of serving and leading others. Period.

Yeah. How you, how you play that out has lots of options.

And, uh, and so, and, and I've talked about this and blogged about this. We'll put it in the show

notes is, is this idea of church online decentralizes your ministry. And to me, it's just because you're

Yeah, exactly. And, but it, and okay, so let's unpack this down. Cause that's a great point.

If I'm a, if I'm a one campus, I'm paying professionals to do ministry. Um, and so like,

No, you're not. You're paying professionals to facilitate the dominion ministry.

You hope.

That's right.

And so that's what you should be doing, right?

Yeah. Okay. You, you hope you are in reality, you may or may not be multi-site.

Yeah, if you started to broaden that. But at, at the end of the day, and so like, I'm, I'm confession. I may be a little jaded on this. Um, but when you look at, when you look at a physical campus, right? Um, you're going to see a lot more of the hero of the story. The hero of ministry is oftentimes that lead pastor on the stage. It's going to be the, the, the, the, the, the staff person.

And who's doing ministry out there to the tens or the hundreds or the thousands, depending upon the ministry side. When I look at church online, I actually see that as an opportunity for the, the, the, the lead pastor, the lead communicator on stage. Um, whoever it is like that doesn't, that power doesn't necessarily convey.

In another time zone in another state that the hero context, right? Yeah. Yeah. The hero of the story is the individual who you empower and say, Hey, you know what? You're in another time zone from this church. Um, we want to disciple you and empower you to create a biblical community where you are, right? You're in another time zone. Let's create a little, little piece of, of this church in your, in your state.

And all of a sudden, like the, if you're, if we're working this discipleship model, the church online, isn't the abandonment, which a lot of times people think it's not the abandonment of physical community.

It's the starting of new physical communities all over the places we're discipling and empowering people to develop these communities where they are. Christ Fellowship Miami. This is a great example.

Christ Fellowship Miami right now has a, a physical small group that meets in San Antonio, Texas.

It's led by a person that my mother, uh, who's 72 years old, discipled and grew to the place where she's now leading a physical small group in San Antonio. It's another time zone. It's a 20 hour drive away.

That culture too.

Oh yeah. Oh, a Bible belt versus, yeah, completely. But like that person in San Antonio standing on her own, creating this community with her coworkers and friends. That person's my hero.

Right. I would rather tell her story and the stories like that, that all day long, but because we've gone from, um, the staff and, and I used to, I used to term earlier professional Christians and I even like, I don't, I don't really mean that, but it's gone from a, Hey, I'm going to do the work to, I'm going to empower others to do the work.

And I'm not, I'm not looking for this because I'm trying to celebrate myself as much as now I want to empower others. And my joy comes from watching other ministry happen.

That's right. And we're actually getting ready to have another one in California, which is, which is awesome. You know, it's one of those things where, um, you know, exactly what you're talking about, Anthony, like our, our role as pastors and Ephesians, right. It says that we're supposed to, we're supposed to empower others to do the work of the ministry.

You know, like that's, that's what the shepherd is supposed to do. We're not supposed to be the doers of the ministry. We're supposed to be the empowers. We're supposed to set people, unleash, set them free, unleash them to do ministry.

The great thing about church online that you're getting at Jeff that I love is that it decentralizes in that it's not limited to time and space. Once upon a time we had to worry about spaces or about Sunday school spaces or certain times where content could be, get distributed like leadership training or, you know, even theological training or different stuff.

Now, because we can record something or we can live stream it or we can put it on demand. We don't have to worry as much about people showing up at a specific time. We can get it to them where they're at and they can go back and re-energize with that same content. They can, they can go back and share that content with others and we can encourage them and empower them to do so.

That's really like the, one of the big wins that I see in, in this pixel and this digital environment is content doesn't have to die because you weren't there. You missed it. No, no, no, no. Instead, here's the content you take in and run with it and you go reach other people for Christ with it because you got it in the palm of your hand.

There's a, there's a parallel, right? In the, in the business world, one of the things we're seeing is, is companies could do more remote work.

What they're saying, it's, it's better for a lot of our employees to not physically be here, even in the same time zones and we can distribute the work, not just outside of campus, but outside of time zone to another country.

Um, and it's very common to do that, but it just takes a difference of the skills.

And so what you have to go is from the synchronous communication to asynchronous communication from synchronous activity alignment to asynchronous results going into the line.

Right. So instead of saying, I need you to be in this meeting so that you can take the notes and we can get this PowerPoint felt or whatever, we're going to get these things delivered.

Now you have a group of people that you entrust and you delegate that information and the resources out your process to manage to get them from A to Z and you have check-ins along the way and you don't ever have to physically be with any of them.

I just wrote an article on medium.com. Um, that says, um, how did I, I can look it up, but basically it's that, that you as a remote manager, I value performance over presence.

Right. And so it's very, it's very results oriented. Well, if I think about the discipleship thing that we're just talking about, it's right in that same discussion, because what we're saying is that we're interested in seeing you get what you need to go and to, to do whatever you can, wherever you are with whatever you have.

We want to resource and facilitate that as it makes sense to you at your time and place, not as we have an offering on a weekend to deliver it to. That's a significant shift. And it's part for, I think the American church model, which is based around that pop up something on a weekend and build everything towards the weekend and then try to make it the same throughout the week.

And then the death repeats every seven days. That model doesn't even begin to apply in the, in the picture world, in the digital world. And I think we have to be able to say,

It's okay that it's okay that it's different and we need to empower and release this to be something that grows and does what it can with what it has and not be holden to the asynchronous work of a physical church.

It's asynchronous on purpose. And by the way, with greater value to that community, it doesn't have same value as it has to be synchronous. This is why I look at the, Hey, we stream at these times. Why?

Not that that's wrong, but couldn't you just say it's on demand and here are the times we facilitate group discussions and Tuesday nights and this time zone and Monday afternoons and that time zone.

If you're really trying to take this and grow it, I think you have to get past the weekend model as the support anchor for the whole thing.

So for example, when I talk to senior pastors, and I'm going to sit in a while to ask this question, but I'm sure the numbers are similar.

I would ask what percent of what you share is remembered on Tuesday morning by your congregation.

And the answer is usually between 20 and 30%, which I think is high.

Right? So instead of saying we've come in front load and put this massive amount of effort into creating this awesome thing, IE of weekend service.

That message then has to try to be applied during the week or what better way to do that than asynchronously.

So it's, it's, there's a genius to the end rather than the, than the competition.

Yeah, I agree with that completely.

Now I want to take some of that and kind of point it back to the membership and kind of just kind of ask the question, Anthony, in terms of, all right, so we've got this content, we've got people interacting with it.

Hey, that's cool.

You know, but they're not, they're not, you know, here in person.

How much of a say should they really have around here?

If that's the case, like how should they be able to like help elect the senior pastor?

Should they be able to help elect like some of the people that are making decisions around here?

Like, cause that's where I hear a lot of churches get confused.

church polity here's, here's the unpopular answer.

Does it matter?

Because ultimately if, if they're doing ministry in San Antonio and they're having great growth and people coming to Jesus, or they're learning together and they're serving the community in unique and meaningful ways.

And I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think the whole church polity is where it breaks down.

And it's also why, if you go back from Reformation, obviously that the schisms that have happened are the timeline of church history since then, because someone's always trying to figure out, yeah, but what about this?

And so they always want to, and so they always want to have their piece of the pie.

What if it just doesn't matter?

Well, I think that's where a lot of people are, not just the nuns or the young church, I think that's where a lot of the church people that just don't care as much about that.

I think my neighbor needs help or, you know, I lost my job.

You can really do some help.

I need, I need some training.

We need, we could really use a little bit of cash, whatever that looks like.

There are ways we can practically help.

It has nothing to do with church policy.

So if you take that discussion and, and, and I can say, remove it.

If you de-thrown it from the place of prominence that I think a lot of denominational have, and you just got back to how do you love people and make disciples and help people where they are.

Church pollen will have very, very, very, very, very, very, very little to say about it.

You know, Romans 13, no leadership's in place that God hasn't instituted.

And so, you know, some of that, I feel like we just try to over-orchestrate things that, that we really shouldn't be worrying about, to, to Anthony's point of, of just making disciples.

And what we've, we've done here, and I don't know that I intentionally mean it, meant to do it this way, but we kind of did.

Like, we're, we're setting this picture that, that church online has more of a discipleship structure or potential for discipleship structure by decentralizing away from leadership and empowering the people to be the heroes.

You know, even this, this idea of, well, in a pixel church, we, we can have, you know, a much more integration of, or, what's the word, chatting and talking and be able to engage people.

Engagement.

Actually, engagement was worth looking for.

Engaging people in, in a virtual environment, but we don't have it in the physical.

But then, I mean, honestly, like I said in a conference, you know, and I, and I hear, I hear that the speakers say, Clay Scroggins.

He's like, the, the church, the church business model that we operate on today needs to be destroyed.

And it wasn't his exact words.

I think he actually said blow up.

But the, the point of where we're operating in, in up to this point over the past 2000 years has worked, but culture is shifting away from the traditional business model where they're not engaging with this.

66% of the people are not wanting to come into your building, 80% of people will have a conversation about their faith with their friends, not coming in to see, to hear, you know, a lecture from the stage.

Right.

At what point do we look at the, at the, and this is a loaded question, like, and I don't know that we're going to solve this problem today, but at what point do we look at, at the physical church and say, okay, hey, there's some lessons we need to learn in general.

Because the things that we're doing may or may not be effective today.

Now, see, Ray, Jeff just took out his 11 foot pole there, right?

That's the pole that, that you use when you don't touch things with your 10 foot pole.

That's the big one.

You're poking the big thing now.

And you're right that that's a big thing.

Well, you know, the struggle that I have with that is, is, you know, the argument that it's always worked.

You know, we have to go back and we have to take a look at how we've adapted over time too, you know, and point out our inconsistencies in terms of strategy.

Like I remember in seminary, you know, we had, we had a great discussion over where and when Sunday night services became a thing and why some people still did them.

And what we started on earth was it was a, it was a structured way to reach farmers at one point.

And then it just became tradition as opposed to, oh, this is new Testament mandated or something along those lines.

And it made a lot of folks uncomfortable as far as how a lot of that went down.

You said something, Ray, that I just want to challenge.

You said, well, we do it because it works.

Let me just ask the big question.

If it works so well, why does 66% of people never show up and 80% won't have that discussion?

That's right.

That's not the, the stats would tell you it's not working.

Right.

The church means for most churches, it's working well enough to maintain the status quo and they're comfortable.

Now, whether they, they have a hard, hard about that or not, or they just are ignorant.

I don't know, I'm not judging.

I'm just saying that's the truth because the reason that happens, and I, I'm going to read something because I have it off to the side of it just for this moment.

The scorecard of the Western church typically based on what is easily understandable and obviously measurable.

Attendance, giving, volunteerism.

These are visible and quantifiable so they easily become the low hanging fruit of determining that success, right, it's working, of a ministry or organization.

But left unchecked, they also become the measure of pure success with church leaders, how big is your church?

When you see two pastors at any conference I've ever been to, they walk up, so what are you guys running?

What do you guys do?

It's always, always this like, 100%.

It just kills me.

The easy three metrics are often generally codified into some alliterated version of faith, family, and finances, right?

So how do you promote a volunteer?

Well, faith, family, and finance.

How do you validate those three?

We check their finances.

If they're given, they can, so really it's not faith, family, and finances, it's finances.

How about their faith and family?

Well, it's really hard to know that.

You're right, it is.

But they'll say faith, family, and finance.

So in the digital world, what makes someone a good member?

What makes someone a good member?

That's true.

What makes someone a good deacon or usher or parking lot breeder, right?

Do you see the warm body or do you actually want someone who's living something out?

And how do you validate that?

The only way is through relationship.

And people don't scale.

Systems and processes scale, but people don't scale.

So what you're talking about is having enough people with enough touch points, what I would call a span of care, that you have enough spans of cares that you are touching all the people.

And it does roll up, and you do have this ability into it, but you don't have control.

There's the big thing.

Because, oh, gosh, I can't do that because then I wouldn't be the one making the decisions here.

Well, here's the thing.

When pressed, you get to this place where you say you're only trying to capture on one factor.

So what makes a member?

Somebody gives?

It was one time, and I'm old enough to say this, that one of the churches in Dallas, Fort Worth, was listed as the largest church in America.

And I went there on a weekend, and there were nowhere near the largest church in America kind of numbers.

And what I found out was on their membership rolls, it was, what, 30,000 people way back in the day.

And it was like that was the number one church.

And I'm like, but that's not who's showing up, right?

Maybe they're all giving, that's your determination of size, but, man, we've really just got the metrics back.

We've got the lagging indicators wag the tail of the dog, right?

The tail of lagging indicators is wag the dog of the church.

And what we've got to get into, the leading indicators.

The leading indicators are a lot harder, right?

There's the things like, hey, what is the ratio of our volunteers to new members or new salvations?

What is the number of people who said they would sign up for something in person if they show up?

What is the number of new volunteers in our current pipeline that you've had that have been sitting there for more than 90 days and it's going up, but then because we haven't properly bedded them, right?

Those leading indicators tell you way more about the church stuff than they do about the growth of something.

And that to me is where we've got to stop looking at this as a numerical thing.

There is quantitative data, sure, but there's quantitative insights, and that's relational.

That's always going to be relational.

And you cannot ever tell me that you need to know that number.

Look, a thermometer will tell you what the temperature is outside.

And if you need to know that, that's useful.

How many people went to this thing?

96.

Awesome.

Okay, here's the better question.

How many people were supposed to go to that that said they were going to sign up that didn't show up?

474.

Well, that's a pretty poor ratio.

So what happened to the rest of them?

We don't know.

Do you follow up?

No.

Well, that would probably be more interesting and more viable for actual ministry than just doing another event and having a similar poor ratio.

Because that's just the privilege of people that, well, our open rates are low.

Our collective rates are low.

It's just what it is.

But we know it's reaching people.

No, it's not, actually.

So are you willing to go back and do retargeting?

Are you willing to go back and figure out where the missed need was, the opportunity?

Are you putting systems in place not to measure, but to understand?

Are you willing to move away from the thermometer and go to a barometer, which is how you predict the weather, not quick, right?

There is a number on a barometer.

It will tell you the air pressure, but what's important, the key is not the number.

It is where is that number in relation to where it was an hour ago?

What is the rate and direction of change?

That is more like this, less like that.

We need to be comfortable in that really gray area of we're looking for more like this and less like that.

And we look for that over time again and again and again in ways that aren't easy to measure because we actually want to make an impact and make sure discipleship is happening so that the effort we're spending and the money that people are entrusting us to pour into this is actually becoming a verifiable ROM, return on ministry.

All right.

Offensive buzz.

That's good.

Is that a thing, ROM?

I think that's the first time I've heard.

I like that.

Yeah, that was from like 1998 when I taught in the conference, so it's old.

Man, let's bring it back.

Like, I think I was like in college, so congratulations.

That's good stuff.

I may have been at that conference.

I'm not sure.

Here's the problem of where we are.

We've just spent a good chunk of time having a theoretical conversation that I think was good, but like the guy sitting at his church and he's like, okay, I'm trying to create this discipleship strategy.

I understand the power of online to do this, but leadership doesn't.

They don't see it.

They don't agree.

It's not – we really can't do two separate things.

It needs to be one.

I want to end on some sort of practical things, application, something that's like, okay, we just fired this guy up.

He realizes he needs to do all this stuff, and he's like four totem poles down from the top, and what can he do?

What are good baby steps for somebody that's at this level to try to move in the right direction?

Either you guys want to breathe on that?

I think Anthony did a great job of pointing out that you don't have to get so caught up in the tag of membership or in the tag of the polity side to begin discipling somebody right where they're at.

So if you've already got a discipleship strategy at your church that's working and you've got people that are meeting together digitally, start where you're at and start discipling them, and don't worry about getting caught up in the tag of whether or not they're a member.

Start where you're at right now, and don't allow that to be your focus or driver, just your role and responsibility, and I think we can all agree on this, it's not really to make members, it's to make disciples, right?

So as you do that, start where you're at, start discipling them, and start unleashing them to do the work of the ministry, and then as your leadership is asking questions, let them know, hey, listen, these folks are out here doing the work of the ministry, man.

Whether or not they have a say in our church or the polity side or whatever else, it's really inconsequential compared to the amount of ministry that they're doing.

Anthony, do you want to weigh in on that?

Practical.

So here's what I would say to that person who's feeling very conflicted, like, well, I don't have the authority to do everything with these guys we're talking about today.

Here's the thing.

The local church is at a crossroads and has the opportunity to either facilitate, organize, and empower life change, or settle for systemic integrity.

To settle is to be a part of the problem.

To accept the challenge of transformational change is the narrow path.

The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it's conformity.

Even a dead fish goes with the flock.

So if that scares you, then you probably are not at a place where it's ever going to change, or you're going to have to be the catalyst to change, then you have to have the wisdom and discernment to understand that.

Because I would not waste my life and my energies trying to go with the flow that's dead.

I would leave the stream and go do something on somewhere else if it really meant I either have to conform, because we're not willing to change, we're not willing to say, where do we add the most value to people online?

What's the difference between our pixel model and the physical model?

Right?

If we can't ask those questions, if we can't deconstruct that in a healthy way, and it is confrontational, it just doesn't have to be mean.

Confrontation is not bad, it's healthy.

It says why and why not, what if.

And here's a model, here's what we're understanding.

This would be far more valuable, have a far greater impact on the way we resource people, and be a much better return on ministry, investment, than anything else we're doing in the physical church.

We see this as imperative.

Do you see that, and can I help you get there?

And if the answer is no, you have to ask God if your time there is done.

Wow.

Even a dead fish goes with the flow.

I love that.

Yeah, I'm going to adopt that.

I'll totally give you credit, Anthony, whenever I say it.

But I have just a running joke of whether a quote's tattoo worthy or not, like would I tattoo that on my body?

That's on the list of tattoo worthy.

My wife's not going to let it happen, so it'll never happen.

I'll never tattoo your name on my body, Anthony.

I just want to let you know.

But I would actually consider it, because that's a really good thing.

There you go.

Wow.

Hey, church person out there, and we've talked about this in the past, but while you're creating disciples, while your disciples are creating disciples, celebrate that.

Share that story.

Share the story of how you're empowering people to do ministry.

Not that you did the ministry.

Don't claim the glory for yourself, but how you've been able to reproduce and share the gospel in a way that others have picked it up and run with it as well.

There's some scary things coming down the road, biblically, if we look at the Bible in context of what church online can be a solution for.

And the more that we move towards creating disciples, the more that we move away from this idea of having these mega buildings that cost a ton of money in context of tax, property tax, maintenance, things like that.

On the road that we're on, if we look at the Bible and what Revelation says, we're not going to be able to have these landmarks in place across our property.

And the more that we're able across our country, and the more that we're able to not depend on these things to impact lives and to create disciples and to make disciples and to make disciples and make disciples, we need to change our business model.

What we're doing is not going to work long term.

And so celebrate these stories, share these things, share how it's happening, encourage others, one person at a time, and help your leadership see that.

It's not a quick battle.

It's not something that's going to happen overnight, but it does happen.

And there are churches that are successful doing that.

So Pontius will often say, healthy things grow.

Here's the thing.

Yes.

Make sure your emphasis is on the right syllable, right?

Healthy things grow.

Cancer grows too.

So up into the right lagging indicator metrics are not a sufficient reason to claim success.

High attendance is not a reason to claim success.

Healthy growth requires discipleship because it's sustainable by everyone, not really with or on the platform.

Plus, it's the actual mandate, not really that, nice to have, but have you seen our numbers?

No, go and make disciples is a directive for growth, not growth as a success.

Ray, questions, thoughts?

Anthony, thank you for that.

Ray, anything as we're landing?

Yeah.

For those of you who are still struggling through whether or not your church should be membership and stuff and whether or not how the biblical stuff and all that work out about it, I encourage you to take a gander at what Anthony was talking about.

Are you really more concerned about polity?

Are you really concerned about, well, what are we unleashing on the world in terms of disciples?

Take a look at that.

Do some hardcore wrestling with it prayerfully, like with your pastoral team, and really have some hard, honest conversations around that because churches today are still struggling through that.

You're not alone in that struggle.

Hey, thanks, Ray, for that.

Anthony, 20, 30 seconds, landing the plane.

What do you got?

Mathematician and statistician George Box has a phrase that fits you.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

So go make disciples.

And if that means members, great, but don't make it a requirement.

Wow.

That's good.

Church.

That was so good.

Church.

Last I checked, membership's not listed in the Bible.

I don't think it talks about membership, but it does talk about making disciples.

And so Church Online, people focusing in that realm, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the commands I have given you.

I'm pretty sure that's verbatim.

Maybe that's NIV 1984, but it's close.

Hey, so thank you for that.

Anthony, appreciate you coming in and jumping on this.

It's been a great podcast.

Ray, once again, man, love having you on.

My name is Jeff.

This has been the Church Digital Podcast.

Appreciate you.

Listening audience out there and looking forward to letting you hear us next time here on the Church Digital Podcast.

Y'all have a good day.