EP009: Eric Geiger & The Theology Of Church (Ekklesia) Online

Jeff here. We'll get back to the podcast in a second, but I wanted to let you know of an

opportunity to help you further develop your church online. Here at The Church Digital,

we found some of the best ways for churches to grow their ministry online is to work alongside

other churches. To that end, The Church Digital is opening up some coaching cohorts in January 2020.

Through our cohorts, you'll be connected with churches with similar goals in place in ministry,

and work through these goals together over the six months under the guidance of the crew

here at The Church Digital. In 2020, invest in your church online. Invest in you. For more information

and to find out how you can save 20%, visit thechurch.digital slash cohort.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Church Digital Podcast. My name is Jeff Reed, and it is a pleasure

to have you join us again today. We've got a great episode, and I'm excited.

about today's guest. Once again, I do have Ray DeArmas joining us as a co-host. So,

hey, Ray, you want to say hey to everybody?

Great to be with you guys again. Excited.

Ray's got such an amazing podcast voice.

I appreciate that, Eric. Thank you.

Good stuff. Hey, oh, we already tipped him. I thought we were going to play another game.

Yes, the host. That was, guess the guest.

So, hey, guess the guest. That's weird. Hey, we've got Eric Geiger, Reverend Eric Geiger from

Mariner's Church, lead pastor on the podcast today. I am moving up in the world. I called in a bunch of

favors to get this guy in here, and I'm excited. Oh, come on. It wasn't that hard, dude.

Listen, Eric. Eric has, we used to work together at Christ Fellowship Miami back in the day before even

Simple Church was a thing, or maybe Simple Church was becoming a thing. I'm not actually sure all that

rolled out. Yeah, it's around the same time.

Yeah. So, Eric was executive pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami, where I was production guy

underneath him. And Ray, you had some time with Geiger down there as well, right?

Oh, absolutely. I consider Eric to be a huge influence on my life in ministry. Just phenomenal.

Very good stuff.

Dude, thanks, man. Thanks to both you guys.

So, we're going to do a little surprise here. Let's play the game of best Eric Geiger story. No,

I'm kidding. We're not going to do that. Because, yeah.

Especially when it comes to tech. I mean, Jeff, there is, the problem is, I think you were the

one who coined the phrase, the curse of the Geiger. Oh, wow. Only because mics kept going bad whenever

I spoke. I will attest to this, that I have never seen anyone with as much bad luck when it

comes to tech as Eric Geiger. Yeah. And as much as the bad microphones are, it's not nearly as bad

as Spanish soap opera on the screen. Oh, that was crazy. In the middle of your message. I was

preaching and a Spanish soap opera popped up on the screen behind me. Oh, my goodness. Literally.

No audio, just the video. Theologically. Now, Jeff, you weren't in charge of that at the time.

No, I was not. I was a mere volunteer. I cannot be able to be responsible for that.

But James, who was at the time, who's a great guy. I mean, he even looked at me like I have no,

just never in my life have I ever thought that would happen. So, theologically, it's either

the Lord loves me a ton and he trusts that I can be sanctified by those things and the enemy's really

out to get me because I'm being used by the Lord. Or, or I just have a whole lot of sin in my life.

You know, it's like one of the two things, right? Or it could be that the Lord wanted to reveal that

Carlos Ponce, famed soap opera star, is a member of Christ Fellowship. Yes. And show him in all of

his glory. Show him during a sermon. Maybe a little bit of humility involved in the conversation,

but we'll just roll on from there. Yeah. Hey, so, so here's what we wanted to talk about here at the

Church Digital Podcast and try to have some semblance of conversation involved in this. So,

Eric, I feel like I'm going to call him Geiger for the episode. And I apologize. That's what I've

called him for a decade plus. He wrote an article in response to a Dave Amundson article about Omni

Church. And it was this, it was this great thing. And I read the article. I was like, man,

I got to get Eric on here because I want to really hone in on a couple of these points talking about

Omni, Omni Channel and Geiger transported into moving Omni Channel into Omni Church, which I love.

But hey, I know Ray DeArmis is like the, every time we talk about Omni Channel, he like lights up and

goes crazy here on the show. So Ray, man, a two minute overview. What is Omni Channel?

So the idea of it basically is that you're looking at your online church and your local

church. And Eric, feel free to correct me here. Just a little bit more unified light in terms of

the way that people are encountering and experiencing not just the sermon content, but even some of your

discipleship content. Different organizations like Home Depot. I love using Home Depot as an example.

When I buy something from HomeDepot.com, when people ask me where I got it, I say I bought it from

Home Depot, whether I went into the store or whether I got it from their website. It's, to me, it doesn't

matter. I just tell them where I, where I received it from. And so in the same way, churches, not just

through their content, but even through community have some pretty unique opportunities by keeping their

discipleship process and everything aligned in digital spaces and not just in physical spaces. And so, Eric, can

you tell us a little bit more as far as how you view Omni Channel in the church and how some of that's

broken or even kind of changed your mind on things?

No, no. You described it perfectly. So, you know, Omni Channel would be, it was a word initially

designed for e-commerce and marketing saying, Hey, it doesn't matter where the customer interacts

with Home Depot or Best Buy or, or any company. They don't care which channel you're in, as long

as you, you know, do commerce with them and have a relationship with them. So if you apply Omni Channel

to church, you wouldn't, you necessarily to the extreme degree, wouldn't, um, you wouldn't care

if the person connected to your church via, uh, some social channel, as long as they interacted

with the same content, you wouldn't care if that was live or, you know, via social, you

just wanted the interaction to happen. The, the, the, the deeper layer, which I didn't spend

a lot of time talking about on the, on the blog, cause you don't have time to really process

it is even in an omni channel strategy, like Warby Parker, for example, if you look at them, uh, selling

glasses, they, they open up brick and mortar. So they started online and they moved to brick and mortar.

So it's not only brick and mortar companies like Home Depot, who then moved online, you have online

companies that moved to brick and mortar. And the reason they moved to brick and mortar is because they

actually feel, or research has told them that the conversion rate is higher in mortar than it is online.

So online, you might have a conversion rate, you know, if you go to Warby Parker website, you might have

a conversion rate of 8%, 10%. They use the word conversion differently than we would in the church. Right.

Sure. Uh, but meaning that somebody who goes to Warby Parker site, uh, would, would purchase maybe eight

to 10% of the time, but in a brick and mortar store, it's, it's usually 50% or higher. Uh, and so they're,

they're like, man, we got, we want to have that. We want to have that level of engagement. So even,

even e-commerce, um, and you're often, you're actually hearing more of a term called unified

commerce now instead of, uh, omni channel, which is basically all the channels are unified. Um,

but even they, they are like, Hey, look, we need, we want brick and mortar because of the high level

of engagement that it produces. So if you, if you apply it to a local church, you, it wouldn't make

you want less face-to-face interaction. It would make you really still value face-to-face interaction

because you have some that started online and are moving to face-to-face because they realize the value

of it. Um, that's one. The second thing, and I did mention this in the article Jeff talked about,

I do think we have to be careful with the term. It's a helpful term. I'm not against

the term. I use the term, but every example you and I have given, we, we are looking at companies

whose role is to, to have a customer. Absolutely. I don't, I don't want, I don't want to view the

kingdom like we're creating customers or that a church is about a customer. You know, listen,

I'm using the term. I'm using the term. I'm just saying we need to carefully use the term

term because we, we, we, we really are. Um, well, I think Jeff Reed's got a famous tweet about,

Hey, if, if all we're doing is, is, um, sitting around, I mean, if we're not making disciples,

we're just a bunch of guys throwing it. What's that tweet, Jeff? Come on.

If we're not doing discipleship, we're just a bunch of guys sitting around throwing parties

on the weekend. I mean, I'm not saying it's a powerful tweet, but, but it, it lives out there.

And this is the thing, man, like we just fast forwarded to the end of the podcast. I was saving

the stuff towards the end, but I'm sorry. Let's just, let's just jump in the, jump in the deep end,

man. It's, it's great. So like, I would, I would say to this that you're right. Church as a whole,

when they're doing church online, we're creating content. And as a result, because it's content,

we're creating consumers online. But when we try to say things like, Hey, I can't tell you,

Eric, how many pastors I've talked to has said, no, we're not doing small groups online.

That's not my job. I'm not responsible for discipling people online.

You can't do that. And so it's, it's like you, we can't do ministry, but ministry is what validates

what we're doing with our content to make it a viable opportunity to change somebody's life for

real. And I want to be consistent. So like, I'm going to sound like I'm talking on both sides of my

mouth a bit, but I'm really just want to be consistent. So the reality is some of our worship

services create consumers too. So we have to, so we have to be careful that if we're going to say

that about online, that we also don't say, well, I mean, we'll really, what, how different is it

really than, than, than the worship service that we have? So I, I'm cool with it, creating those,

those conversations. Now, if the worship service is, is not only about content, but there's times of

prayer and there's times of connection and there's times after where there's relationship building,

then it is more than about just the content. But if the worship service is designed only for the

content, then you really can't look at online as if it's inferior. You know, it's very true. And

it's difficult for, for people to understand that because even for instance, you know, we're saying

content, a lot of pastors would struggle through that and say, but I prefer the theological term sermon

or something along those lines. Exactly. And well, it may be, it may be indifferent to us,

but even they struggle in terms of the theological implications of how some of that lines up and how

it hits somebody. Um, can you talk about, uh, and just kind of give a view in terms of the theology,

uh, behind why this is a great idea to put our content or our sermons online and why we need to

provide a next step for people in terms of what's next for them and their spiritual growth, even if

they're not in the room. Yeah. So I always respect when people are consistent in their theology. So

for those who, um, are against quote unquote online church and they're consistent, they don't put their

sermons online and they, um, or they, they, they're just really careful to be sure it's not called church,

uh, because they theologically are, Hey, the word ecclesia means the gathering and this isn't a

gathering. Uh, I respect the consistency of that view, you know? So, um, that, that, that's where

they're coming from is that, Hey, it's not truly church because it's not a, it's not a gathering,

you know? Um, now typically the, the, that view also believes that a church shouldn't have multiple,

um, services even because a church really is one gathering of, of a group of people. And so if you

have multiple services, you, it's not one gathering. So it's really like multiple churches, you know? So,

um, that's, that's that, that would be that, that camp, you know, or that, or that argument. Um,

for me, I look at it as just want to be sure I separate missiology and ecclesiology. So for sure,

uh, we, I don't think we would want to say there's any problem with putting your services out there

from a missionary context, like when the radio went live for the first time and CS Lewis ministered to a

bunch of people and, uh, during World War II and help people wrestle with the claims of the Christian

faith or when television went live and Billy Graham started being broadcast in the gospel, uh, people,

no one, no one criticized that, you know, I don't think so. Um, and so online get, it really is. I mean,

everyone's walking around with smartphones now. And so we have an opportunity to put the gospel in

a context that's super accessible to people. Um, it's just a question of if, if you're going to use

that as equal to, to, to, to the, uh, to the physical experience experience in, in your opinion,

what's the negative with church online? Like, so if, if church online is, is less than, and, and you've

not said whether it is or isn't. And so let's, let's just pretend it's not Europe. You're, I'm not

going to date you, but you're older than me. So you're mid forties. You're, you're welcome for that.

And so you're like, you're, you're, you're a senior pastor. And so people in your age, when you're

arranged, some have issues, some don't. What, what are the issues that church online needs to overcome?

So what are the negatives that's keeping it from having being the same as a physical expression of

church? Yeah, I think, you know, the first would be the theological. So just to realize that there's

a camp of people who are, who have, who do make a great solid argument that it, it means gathering and

therefore it can't be, it can't be digital. Right. So there, so there's that. Uh, but, but I don't

think Jeff, you'll ever win with those, you know, the online is going to win with those. So, so put the

theological, um, that's one group. And then there's the, just the practical it's, it's people who are

like, man, I, I just know personally, I'm not super connected or I know personally, I passively

watch a television show and I, and I don't want people to passively watch my, you know, a sermon,

you know, or I know that, um, that when I watch something on Netflix, I'm vegging and I'm not like

connecting with a whole lot of people with those who, who theologically, um, aren't looking at this

from a theological, uh, struggle. They're looking at from a practical struggle. What online church has

got to overcome is, um, helping people connect, not just listen to content, but even to the theological

crowd, I'd say, Hey, can we be on the same page that putting the message of Jesus out into a whole

lot of places is, can we put, can we, can we all agree from a missiological standpoint, like just

getting the message out? It's good. And I believe most are like, Oh yeah, absolutely do that.

It's just when you then move it from its missiology to its, its actual church, right? That that's when

then, um, that you, you're, you first have to have the theological conversation. And then if you

get over that hurdle, there's then the practical conversation. So the, the theological definition

of church would be more centered around the one hour on Sunday. Ecclesia is really too, you know,

it's the word for church in the new Testament. There's, it actually means the called out ones,

but then also it means the gathering. So like, there's a, um, you know, I'm not saying anything

that people haven't already gone public with like Mark Dever, who are, who I respect at Capitol

Hill Baptist, like he's against the, the multiple campuses, which, you know, I'm, I'm not against

and, um, because he believes that, that, uh, the, the church means he's the pastor of a gathering.

So he would only have one service. He wouldn't have more than one service.

You see what I'm saying? Because the church is, the church has to be able to gather together.

I guess the thing that, that I would wrestle with, with this, and, and I know it's, it's different.

And I've, I've, I've friends who are connected with, with Dever in that, that school of thought.

And I don't want to make it about Dever, but it's the, where does discipleship come into play with

this? Because yes, church is the gathering of, uh, coming together in a corporate body, but do we not

have a personal mission and a calling to go and, and share and create community on our own and whether

that's bringing it in or, or going out and, and investing like where, where does that, where does

that lose its flavor in context of online? Because everything that we've talked about is still

centered around this, um, this one hour service, which is funny. I would actually say that my church

isn't the church where I'm sitting in a pew for that one hour on Sunday. My church is, is the

collection of, of, of six or eight people that I connect with on a regular basis and live life with

in context of, um, the Bible and learning about that. So like, what's the, where, where, where am I

theologically not lining up in context of, of online or is it's just an evolution where some people aren't

going to get it and we're theologically okay on the other side? Yeah. I think that the, it would be

like, Hey, just, you know, I would want to respect people where they are theologically on that. Um,

and I, I, I personally, where I am, I want to use the tools of the day. Um, you know, Titus one

to the pure, all things are pure to those who do not believe, uh, nothing is pure. And so

basically the, the online can be used for pure things and it can be used for not pure things.

And I absolutely, I want to, I would love to, to use it for pure things. And I think the church is,

is for sure the mission of the church. And then obviously I want to wrestle with wisdom on

how the tools are used, uh, to fulfill functions of the church, right? So functions of the church,

the church gathers for worship, the church gathers for community, the church lives on mission.

How can the online tools be used to help those functions? You know, I'm, I'm great with those

conversations. And I think those are the right conversations. We're in a different, we're in a

really crazy day now where the average attender of a church has used to be someone who went like

twice a week, you know, like when I got in the game 20 years ago, when I was, you know, a 20 year

old youth pastor, you know, a, a, a good church member went twice a week, you know, used to tell

people on Sunday mornings, don't only be a Sunday morning Christian, you know, like get plugged into

something else. That was, that was a normal thing to say. Now, man, the data is just really staggering.

If a pastor will look at it, um, the best way to track it is to just pull out, pull out, um, cause

you check in your kids every week, um, is to pull up the number of kids in your church and see how

many, like, look at the last sermon series you did and then look at the percentage of people who came

all five or six weeks of that sermon series. And I promise you, you're going to be overwhelmed

with, uh, unless you've already done it, you're going to be shocked at the people who are, are just

not as consistent as what you perhaps think that they are. And so do you want to use online to, to,

to keep that, like, if you worked your tail off as a senior pastor, the, uh, in a sermon series,

do you want that content to be accessible to people outside of the gathering? Um, just look at the data

and you probably will, you probably will want that, you know? Yeah. Um, I know I do. I know I do.

You know, Eric, one of the things that I appreciated about working underneath you is that

you always have a strong drive towards guiding people through the discipleship process. And you

talked about how people are, you know, maybe once a monthers or twice a monthers in terms of their

regular times. How can folks leverage that online content to help people take next steps to maybe

increase their opportunity to being there on a regular basis? It's the right question. And I think

it's something I'm wrestling with here. Our team's wrestling with here. We want to do more than just,

like, use online as a way to rebroadcast our sermons, which we are doing that. But what,

what, how can we use things that we're creating to help people take an even additional step? And so

we're testing some things. Like I, I did a series in Romans eight, um, in the third week was the famous,

um, you got to kill sin or sin will kill you. And so it was a 40 minute message, but there's a lot of

stuff you can't really hit on that weight of a topic in 40. So we did a Facebook live additional content

and after the message for people to tap into. And it was like 20 minutes of walking through the famous

book by John Owen, um, mortification of sin. So we, we want, we actually didn't just rebroadcast the

content, but we, we provide some additional content and we view that as a next step, but that's just

one test. I don't know if anyone's really nailed this yet. Um, I, we, we, we do need some churches

to nail this so that we can have some examples. Um, and I, I don't, I don't know if we'll be one that

does or not, at least, I don't know if we'll be a pace setter or not, but I want, I'd like to,

I'd like to, to use the tools to help people take next steps.

Well, I, and I tell you what, you know, Eric, just even, even one thought, how many multi-sites

are you now there at, uh, at Mariners? Uh, well, we, we see, I mean, some of them are plants that,

that, that don't have the name Mariners now. And, um, you spun something off. So that, that,

that Karen Mariners name would be, uh, three others. Okay. Well, and even on, even on the plant

side, like to me, I would look at church online as a way to, to plant campuses and or churches,

you know, start to look at the, uh, you know, the equations, the locations to see where you're

getting people together. And so like, how hard, like I'm, I'm, I'm actually asking for one to know

myself, but also if I'm a regular, I'm, I'm thinking about regular pastors like me who are

listening to this. How hard is it to see those demographics? You know, how hard is it,

is it back in tools on your website? So any web, any web host can tell you where they're watching

from? Yeah. I mean, Google analytics, um, can, can drill into that and that's Google analytics is

free. Uh, you just put it in a bed code on, on your website and back into CMS and, uh, and Google,

Google gives you those reports on a regular basis. And so any given Sunday, you can know where

people are pulling from now there's, there's other stats and other things like how long they watched

some of that stuff that you can pull in from other sources, but that's a good, yeah, that's a good

step. So if you, if I'm a senior pastor listening and I'm like, man, that would help me with my

strategy. That's something that they could contact you on. And you could, you could, you could,

that's something you could solve somebody on. Like, Hey, let me, let me look at your,

let me set up Google analytics for you. This is going to help, you know, where you could

launch something in the future. Sure. That'd be great. And so part of this also is as a, as a result

of that, once you know where these people are, start to cluster them together into a, like a

micro location, a house church, a micro site, uh, meeting and meeting in a home, meeting in a

conference room, work conference room, just different areas and start to cluster, whether it's

small group curriculum, whether it's actual doing church services, watching and experiencing

it together, doing a watch party or something, you're creating these, um, physical locations.

You know, you're talking about Ecclesia as a separation from, uh, it's, it's lacking the,

the community in context of online. Whereas I would actually pitch their options where online

births, these Ecclesias around these, these communities around, and whether you're clustering

this for a church plan or a micro site, all of a sudden online is, is the vehicle that's

helping you create these, these pockets of growth instead of pulling away from and hindering.

So if it's truly a unified experience, if you, so if you take omni-channel church, that's

that idea to the, to the furthest thing here, yet you're committed to a discipleship process.

So hang, you're, you're, you have both, you believe in the tools and you have a process.

You could have somebody who every week they watch at home every single week.

That's, that's the, that's the service they attend.

Right.

Yeah.

Their next step is to be in a group and they then are, they, they, they then show up on

Tuesday nights to a physical group.

Right.

Then their next step is to serve or to do outreach in the city.

And they, so I, you know, truly omni-channel church would be, they, they can ebb and flow

between physical and online environments throughout the whole process.

Correct.

And still feel like they're part of the church, which is, which is significant.

But the, the wrestling currently is most people, when they hear online church, they're only thinking

the weekend service.

They're only thinking one step of the discipleship process.

They're not thinking the whole thing.

That's right.

And let me just throw this out there.

Sorry, Ray.

No, it's all right.

Is that not even a fair statement?

Let me, let's just be honest.

Is that not even a fair statement in context of church where churches itself defines itself

a lot by that one hour on Sunday?

And maybe not so much, maybe it's not to the extent of church online, but there are churches

out there that struggle with that ideology.

Agree.

I think that's why I said it would have to be a church that's coupled with like church for

us is not this one thing.

It's, it's, it's an overall discipleship process.

Yeah.

And that's where, and I'm glad Jeff brought that up because that's, that's some of the

struggle that we've seen overall.

And I think in the last few years is there are a lot of people who've considered church

just, Hey, I come for the content.

I come for the worship and for the word, and I don't necessarily have any kind of interaction

with believers throughout the week, or there's nobody who's necessarily helping me grow

in my faith in Christ.

It's just this one hour of interaction.

And this is where not just church online, but church in general can become a dangerous

place where I've even really come to appreciate like the work that Robbie Gallaty has been

doing and just trying to help people grow in their faith by getting them into community,

even where they're at and helping people take those next steps.

It's why those things can be so crucial, whether it's, you know, through an online platform for

our folks who travel, because we've seen that or, or whether they're able to gather in person

just because of the, they need that kind of accountability.

Yeah, that's good.

How do you, as, as a lead pastor, so, I mean, and, and Mariners is huge, like, and just in

the context of size, California, you've got a wide varying range of people that attend different

demographics, different.

How do you make a decision for something like this?

Like theologically, I'm agreeing with this.

I'm not agreeing with this.

Once again, I'm not, I don't want to put you on the spot for a decision and a direction,

but more of what decisions, because, because realize the people that are listening to this

are technical people that need to convince someone like you of what, the way that they

think.

And so coach me through here.

How can we connect with, with you as, as a high level leader to show you some of these

things to, to get you to understand?

That's a great question, man.

Hey everybody, this is Jeff with the church digital.

We're going to break the interview right here.

That was a great question.

The answer was even better, honestly.

And so rather than to go through an entire conversation here as, as Eric Geiger eloquently

answers that question and all the conversations afterwards, we're actually going to break the

episode.

We're going to come back because we just had a great episode in context of Omnichannel and

Unified Church.

But the conversation that's coming next as we talk about how to talk to your leadership

about church online, honestly, it's just a whole other episode into itself.

I honestly thought I was landing the plane with something simple and yeah, it wasn't, but it

was awesome.

So you definitely want to check out the next episode.

We're going to wrap episode nine right now.

Episode 10, Ray DeArmas from Christ Fellowship Miami, Eric Geiger, lead pastor, Mariner Church

and myself diving into that, how to talk to your leadership.

Hey, if you got any questions on this past episode, check out the show notes.

Don't forget while you're there, subscribe to this podcast, man, support it.

Feel free to leave a review as well as that helps us get the word out and helps us get this

content in front of other eyes.

But for Eric, for Ray, my name is Jeff.

Thanks for listening.