EP004: Tyler Sansom and Church Anywhere (Small Church, Micro-Locations, and Church Online)

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Church Digital podcast. It's great to join y'all today. I've

got Ray Diarmus here joining us. Hey, everybody. Awesome. And I also have, and excited about this,

Tyler Sampson, who's joining us to talk a little bit about Church Anywhere.

How's it going? Yeah, great. Hey, so Tyler, man, we listen to Ray all the time, but Tyler, man,

tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, I'm a pastor from Southern Indiana area. I've been

in and out of different jobs at a church for now seven years full-time. So I started as a worship

pastor, kind of transitioned into more of a teaching pastor and oversee all of our, what we call Church

Anywhere locations. Awesome. So like Church Anywhere, what is that really, what is that about? What does

that look like? Yeah, it's taking technology that is available to us, whether it's an online stream or

online content and using that to bring people together in a physical location. So it's a big

online to offline model that we've been doing for the last two years. Yeah, we've talked a lot about

online to offline in the past, in past episodes. But, you know, and I think Jay Cranda is actually the

guy who invented this, or at least he's the guy that I give credit to out at Saddleback, where you're

trying to get, you know, the content that we experience in church through church online to use

it to affect our lives with the gospel offline, you know, basically in the real world. And I love

this aggressive model that Church Anywhere is doing, where it's taking that message, that content,

and getting people to share it physically in the real world. Like, you know, Tyler, what are some

examples of this? Yeah, some examples could be anywhere from a family in a neighborhood deciding

to have church with their neighbors, who probably wouldn't go to an actual church location. So we've

got a couple of those, and that's in a home. But we've also got ones that are in a jail, and we've got

volunteers that will go each week to this jail to take church to them. We have a homeless camp that

meets every Sunday at a local church that has allowed us to use their fellowship hall. And so we have

about 70 homeless people that meet each week. These are people that are not going to step into a normal

church setting, and they still can experience worship with the body of Christ together. That's just a

few examples. There's, I think there's 14 right now, all together. Wow. So you're literally doing

homeless church, but that's not at your church facility. That's at another facility? No, we partnered with

another facility closer to the city that's allowed us to use a room that's big enough to hold about 100

people. And so we've got roughly, when warm weather, we've got about 70 cold weather, we dropped down to about 45.

So, wow. That's great. Tyler, how have you empowered your people to take the content that you guys are

creating and sort of giving them a vision for what could be? Yeah, so we have really, really empowered

volunteers. It's very non-staff driven. And so we call our volunteers the campus pastors of the campus.

So we've, we've really commissioned them and ordained them to go out and be the pastors to each of these

locations. I'll give you an example for at the, at the jail campus, one of the jail campuses that we do

is at state prison. There is a man who was baptized two Easter's ago. He had spent a lot of time in

prison. Our staff identified him as a potential leader. He's got a lot of leadership gift. He just was on a

wrong path. He found Christ and we, we poured into him for a year without him knowing that we wanted

him to be the one to start this jail campus. But then through that, through that pouring into it,

he's, he's now launched a prison ministry that has about 300 guys that meet every single week

to, to do church together. He leads the small group portion of that. He's recruited all the

volunteers for it. It's a pretty good deal. That's an amazing, powerful story. That's like

Saul of Tarsus kind of vision where you see somebody who's on the other side of the line of faith

and you're like, this guy is a given leader. God has a purpose for him. Not that we don't see that

in other folks, but tell me about that, about the risk taking involved in that, because some folks

would hear that, especially in church leadership and say, are you nuts? Yeah. I mean, it takes,

it takes a leap of faith for hundreds of years. Our strategy as the church has been to get people to

come to our building and, and that's where we'll do ministry. We really are trying to take,

it's the idea of church anywhere. We didn't call it first capital anywhere. We called it church because

we want to partner with other churches to get ministry outside of four walls. Um, and so there's

a huge risk in that because it changes the paradigm of how we've done church forever. Um, but with that

risk, there's also incredible reward. Last year alone, we had 49 first time decisions for Christ

through church anywhere. Um, which is like, that's huge for it. We're a church of 900 in a town of 3000.

Like we don't have a ton of resources. We're really pouring everything we can into the community rather

than our building. Well, and by, by using the technology that you have and, and, and scaling it

out, like cost on this has got to be relatively small. I mean, by, by doing church in a, in a home,

it's, it's what, it's a Roku or hooking a laptop up to an already existing TV. Yeah.

Parting with another church for a homeless ministry, like it's, it's prisons, you know,

you're using the technology that that's in place. It's, it's relatively inexpensive for,

for church anywhere. Yeah. Our package is at most $600 to start a campus and that's absolutely

no technology available whatsoever. Yeah. And I'm just, just quickly paralleling,

like launching a multi-site campus where I've seen startup budgets, like five, six figures,

$600 seems really inexpensive to, and, but, and, and one of the things that I love about is, is,

is you're not, you're not empowering pastors to go get into the area. You're, you're empowering lay

people. You're empowering volunteers. You know, the same Holy spirit that, that lives in the sent

pastors, the same Holy spirit that lives in the people. And you're training them with the gospel

and letting them get out into those neighborhoods.

And we're intentional. Like I said earlier about calling them the campus pastors of this, because

it's not just Joe Schmo. Like we've obviously poured into each person that we trust to start a

campus, but we want them to take that ownership. We want them to feel like they are pastoring

these people. It doesn't, we don't want it to feel like just another way to serve at the local

church. We want them to really take ownership of their campus and make it the best that can

possibly be.

That's good. I want to dig a little bit more into that. How much training do you guys provide

or even just kind of vetting before you actually give them that title of campus pastor? Cause I can

definitely say like on the onset, if I'm sitting on the leadership table, there's some liability

concerns or some different things that I would struggle through. So what's the process look like

for that in terms of time and investment before you give them the title?

Yeah, it's, it's we, we don't have a like laid out. We're going to meet for six weeks and do

this. We, we identify the leader and then we individually spend time with them. So the point

person for that campus would, would go ahead and spend, build a relationship with them.

So it's very relational based. It's not really like a program that we would put them through

to become a leader. It's more of let's identify who has this gift and maybe not even, they don't

even know they have this gift yet. And then we're going to spend time with them. And we make them

shadow other campuses, things like that. That's, I guess that's the program part, but it's really

about that building a relationship with them until we are at a point where we trust them

to go ahead and step into that leadership role.

How, how long of a, of a process of kind of like observing, shadowing, you know, reverse,

like you get somebody who's cold to the idea or you've targeted, let's say it this way,

you've targeted somebody who wants to do this and you like, this is the person. How long

are they observing until they're actually executing and doing something?

It really depends on where they're at in their, their walk in, in their faith. If they're,

if they've been a believer and have had years and years of ministry experience, obviously

it's a much shorter time. If there's someone like the guy I mentioned earlier, the start

of the prison ministry, it could be months before we would, would try to put him into that spot.

We just, we don't want to set someone to fail. So it's by case basis.

Awesome. And how many, how many of these are you doing right now?

Right now we have 14 and we start, um, another two in, uh, in a week.

So we go to another jail in, uh, next week.

So you've got your own like little prison ministry, like birthed out of church online,

church anywhere. Yeah. It's crazy. Um, because we're, there's several prisons around the Louisville

area where we're at. Um, once one of them gets going, other chaplains will hear about it and

they're like, Oh yeah, let's do this. It costs us nothing. And you guys, you guys provide everything.

So let's do it. That's good. How do you guys get the content to the prison areas? I know we've done

some prison ministry in my context and some of the concern is the low tech that we have to get in

there because they don't enable us to jump on the wifi. Maybe it's a different situation with the

prisons that you're ministering to. So if somebody wants to start this in a local prison, how would

you guide them through that process? Yeah. So we provide them with a Chromebook and, um, we are in

the prison ministries because of the lack of internet. We are one week behind. Um,

so, uh, they'll have the, uh, let me start out with this. We edit our services down to 30 minutes.

Um, so we can do 30 minutes. We have an hour long total block of time in prisons. So we have 30

minutes of content and 30 minutes of small group to help develop relationships. Um, each week we'll

bring in 10 volunteers, 10 to 20 volunteers, depending on the size of the campus. And there's,

those are the people that lead the small groups. So we have the, the lay campus pastor,

the volunteers that come in and they have their Chromebook, um, that is already, uh, filled with

that previous week service that's edited down to 30 minutes. Um, I'm, I'm just curious. Is that

worship, musical worship and teaching? Is it just, it's usually two songs and then about a 15 minute

message. Um, and often a special element that we've done in the service. So, and it, the, the 30 minutes,

it's interesting because like, you know, we've, I've struggled with, you got a 75, 80 minute service

and, and trying to get, do something like the church anywhere where get it into like a office

conference room and equip an office, uh, worker to, to open up and do something like that. But like the,

the lunchtime itself is only like, you know, 45 minutes, maybe an hour if you're, if you're lucky.

And the church service itself was longer than even the discussion piece and, and it, and it wouldn't

fit. So adding it down to it, to a smaller block, man, that really opens up some more opportunities

for these. We prefer it when it's like that, but we absolutely want to have every campus like that.

There are some that are in homes that, that would rather just watch it live, things like that. But,

um, as we launch out campuses, we always start with the 30 minute. Uh, I think the, the small group part

is every bit as important as the content building those relationships is really what it's about.

How much in terms of crafting the content ahead of time, are you guys thinking through, all right,

this is the block that we want specifically for this teaching?

Yeah. A hundred percent. We, um, we switched to a teaching team model late last year, um, in order

to help craft, um, messages together. Um, and then also to, to make sure that the content that we're

producing works for both church here and church anywhere. Um, that's pretty insider language.

That's just what we call our physical location and then the other campuses.

So like your leadership's whole hog on this, like they, they bought it hook, line and sinker. This is,

this is the vision of your organization. This is not like a, a tag on extra thing. Like everybody's

bought into this. Yeah. Everyone bought into it and, um, we launched it as church anywhere. Um,

and then there we were in, um, we're in discussion of like phase two of that right now. Um, which I

don't know how much detail I'm allowed to go into on that one. Don't get yourself fired.

Off chance our, uh, our leadership watches this. But yeah, we're, we're really, we're really going

to push, uh, the idea of everyone becoming, um, a minister to wherever they're at. So taking the

church outside of our walls, whether that's in their neighborhood, whether that's when they play

basketball with a group of guys at the Y, um, however they can take a church outside of our walls.

Um, that's going to eventually become our major vision of the church.

I don't think that's, I don't think that has to necessarily be thought of as like scary

innovative because I've heard dating back to like purpose driven church. That was almost the

encouragement for groups. And so now you guys are taking it a step further, I think, and taking

this content and saying, Hey, we're going to unleash you, uh, to be the minister is where you're at.

Kind of like what Warren used to say, every member of minister. Uh, so are you guys going to

communicate that philosophy? Like everybody here has the capability of being a campus pastor right

where you're at, or how's that going to work in terms of just what you're thinking?

Yeah, that's, uh, yeah, that we've been in, uh, several, uh, meetings in the last, uh, several

months about how we're going to communicate that. Um, the, the launch for that is, um, we're thinking

August of this year will be the launch of really pushing every, we want every person at our church

to, to be involved in some type of call it church anywhere, call it an initiative, call it whatever

you want, but to go and minister wherever they're at. Um, and we will help provide the technology or the,

the, um, the means to do that.

That's good. Now, I know you mentioned that, that it's a small community that you guys do, uh,

ministry in. So right now, uh, um, how far out do people spread out beyond the reach of your

church in order to accomplish this mission with church anywhere? Does it go out like beyond your

county? I'm kind of curious about that because folks stay connected with church for so many different

weeks. Sure. Yeah. The farthest one away is two hours. Um, and there's, there's also one that's,

uh, about an hour away. Um, and then anywhere from 45 minutes to five minutes or the other ones. So

there's two that are out pretty far outside of our area. And then the majority of them are within the

tri city area here. Wow.

So do you have specific viewers that are outside, like regionally away from, from where you guys are

at with, with church anywhere? Like is, is your spread just of your broadcast? Is, is it that far

going where you have potential to spread? Yeah, we have, we have a widespread and obviously the goal

would be to get them on board with this whole church anywhere idea to, to start, but we have a

group of people that watch us in California all the time. And I would love if they would start a

church anywhere in California. We're not there yet, maybe eventually, but, um, right now we're, we're,

um, within that two hour radius. Um, but with viewers on the online campus from, uh, lots of

places across the country. So how are you leveraging data that comes into your online campus to help

start church anywhere? You just mentioned these folks from California. I'm wondering how often

you've reached out to somebody and say, head, would you like to start this? Yeah. Um, we did that with

the, the campus is about an hour away. Um, that was like our first one that we were like, Hey, we

noticed there's 15 people here that are watching. Let's, what if you guys did it together? Um, and that

turned into a home campus. Um, we're also utilizing pop-up campuses. Um, so we're, we're, uh, plotting,

plotting points to where, um, there's a lot of people gathered that, uh, might be interested in coming

together for a worship service. Uh, we did our first one last, uh, fall. I think I actually shared

that picture with Jeff, uh, uh, at a conference in DC last year. Um, let's, um, let's unpack that

because I find when I say the word pop-up church to a pastor, like I get blank stare. Um, it's a new

concept that not a lot of people are doing, but the people are doing it are exceeding, succeeding doing

it. Explain what a pop-up church is. Yeah. We, um, we decided that, uh, just like pop-up stores that

come up near like, uh, Christmas time. Uh, why, why could a church not try that? So last year we have

an event, um, each year where we do a big festival for the community and, um, we throw it and it's a big

free day where they get food and all this kind of stuff. So we said, why don't we find a, uh, a location

that's close to, um, people that view us within our like 25 mile radius. And instead of having them

come to our building, which is what church has been for a long time, what if we just did a pop-up

church for one day only and see how many people would come. Um, now with this, we, we wanted,

we wanted it to look full because we wanted people to, um, to, to be drawn to it. So we had, uh, we

invited all of our, our people to come if they wanted to. Um, we're a church of about, uh, eight or

nine hundred on the weekend at that pop-up campus. We had close to 1500 people. Um, super cool.

So, so it's, it's really, it's just putting a location, putting a church service, um, you know,

in, in a place of, of high traffic where you're going to get a lot of, of attention. Um, and we

use relationships with people. Yeah. We use our data that we've like the, uh, the locations of the

IP addresses that we've found from our online campus. Like, Hey, this person's, he's only 25

minutes away from here. Um, he's probably, and he's never come to our, our building. I wonder

if he would come to a free, uh, carnival slash worship service. And those people came, which was

cool. I mean, like, I don't know that many churches that have done these things. So

we were just really kind of throwing stuff into the wind and hoping something would, would fly.

So I love that when you, do you, do you look at the metrics like a lot and say, okay,

I've got a bunch of viewers over here in this, in this town or in this area. Um, I need to send

someone over there to start a location, or do you let the people come to you and say, Hey,

I'd like to put a location over here. I, at first we, we looked at the metrics, um, like crazy. Um,

and then as we've grown to, uh, the size of the campuses that we have now, um, we've,

we've had enough people that have approached us and consistently approach us that, um,

this is probably going to sound bad, but any more, um, uh, work would probably require a different,

a second hire. Um, and so right now we're letting people come to us because we just don't have the

resources to be, um, looking for more locations without leaders. So that's awesome. Well, I mean,

you're, you're scaling and you're working with, with what you've got and using, uh, your resources to,

to the max capacity to, to duplicate and like, and just even talking about resources, what is

like, uh, you know, and I've had this conversation with other churches and they're like, well,

how are you going to budget that? And how does giving work? And you know, money's obviously a concern.

How do those things work at like a church anywhere location?

Uh, yeah, let me tell you, I'm going to tell you a quick story because it's my favorite story from

church anywhere and that it'll apply to what we're talking about. But, uh, there was a guy named Jerry

at Branchville prison, um, which is an hour away from us. It's one of our campuses.

And, uh, he wrote us a letter probably three months into that campus and said, um, I don't make much,

I make 10 cents an hour. Um, but I, I feel like I should give to you guys because you are my church

family. So each, uh, each month he sends us a $10 check and it comes from the prison. Like it's,

it's super government official letter, but we get a check for $10 from Jerry each month, which I mean,

that's, that's not only a powerful story, but that is a testament to the discipleship that can happen

within these things as well. Um, it's not all viewing a service. It's all about building relationships.

And then together you can worship. It's just like regular church. Uh, so some of the campuses they

give, um, consistently, obviously like a homeless campus, probably not going to give very much.

So we, we realized we're not going to be making a lot of income from this. Um, we had a challenge

weekend last year and challenged people that, um, if we were going to continue to do these church

anywhere things, they're going to have to up their giving. And so we had people commit to,

I'm going to give $10 extra a month to go to church anywhere, that kind of thing.

Um, it's not, it doesn't cost a whole lot of money. It's mostly an upfront cost, but, uh,

it's really just been our people stepping up as far as the giving part of it. Um, budgeting for it.

We, uh, we started with literally zero budget. Um, so the, the first campus we started, um,

we had to take the money from a different budget, uh, to, to buy the television. And, um,

then our leadership saw like, Hey, maybe there is something to this thing. So, um,

the last couple of years they've, they've added more and more to the budget. So right now we've

got enough this year to start. If they didn't have any technology, we could start, um, 12 campuses.

So, okay. All right. So you've got, there's somebody out here there who's watching this,

you know, video right now, listening to this podcast and they're already broadcasting church services

online. They've been wanting to do this, uh, and they don't know where to get started. They don't know what to

do next. They caught the vision, but they're stuck. What do they need to do?

Yeah. Uh, well, um, I would, I would really focus on making sure that the product is excellent. I

can't stress that enough. Um, because I, the, you guys have seen some, some church services or

in secular services that just throw a video with like a one camera and a board mix that,

that just doesn't sound or look good. That's not something that you're going to,

you need to, to, to craft it to where people will actually be engaged. Um, that goes from,

uh, like Ray's question about how we, um, produce our content for the weekend service.

Like we're very intentional about making sure that we have four touch points for church anywhere spots

within the actual weekend service. So we, we address them four times every week.

Um, we write content to where it can be cut down. Um, and then we, we, um, we do a lot of, um,

post production on videos, things like that to make sure that it's a, that's a quality product.

I cannot stress that enough because I don't think it will work very well if it's, uh, just some guys

that are putting something on a screen that doesn't look or sound good. Um, from there, after you get

that, um, I think the easiest, uh, the easiest way to start this would be to, to, uh, identify five or

six leaders, um, from your church, uh, that, that maybe they're plugged in, maybe they're not

identify people who you think could lead and just spend the next few months pouring into them without

even telling them what's going on. Um, really make sure that you're, you're pouring into them and,

and building them up as leaders, uh, from there, figure out what they're passionate about and where

they hang out. And then, um, once you figure that part out and once they're on board,

just release them to go do ministry. You will provide the material for them. You'll provide

the resources and then they go out and, uh, and just fulfill the great commission. They're going

to go out and make disciples. Awesome. So, I mean, just real quick to review that,

because that was good. You work on your quality and, and there has been a lot of good quality.

There's a lot of bad quality out there, but work through that and get it. Um, and one of the

things and Tyler, I know we're going to talk about this later, but I'll be back on. But like,

you talk a lot about how to do quality broadcast quality production on, on a, on a low budget.

Like I have conversations with churches and, and, you know, and, and I've done like the six figure

video upgrades for churches and, and, and like there, there's times where you have to play that card,

but there are times where, man, you can do some really quality stuff with some really inexpensive

gear right now. And so working through some of that, you know, recognize. And,

and one of the things I want you to unpack on this, because you said you, your, your church service

recognizes church anywhere four times, at least four touch points. What does that look like?

Yeah. Um, so the, the intro to the church service, um, is usually, um, either me or one of the other

pastors on staff that says like, Hey guys, welcome to first capital. If you're in the lobby,

go ahead and make your way in. Cause we're going to start in a second. Hey,

if you're watching from church anywhere though, um, you're part of our church family too. And we

just want to say a special welcome to you guys. Um, we're about to start worship here in just a

second. So similar to that. So that's something like that four times during a service that they'll,

they'll, they'll call out to recognize that. Yeah. So during the, the meet and greet, uh,

most churches have like a meet and greet time. We'll say, Hey everyone, turn around and greet someone

around you while people are greeting in person. We look at, um, we call it camera three. It's the

closest camera and the host on stage directly, um, addresses church anywhere. He's like, Hey,

while they're meeting, we just want to say, we're glad you guys are here. Why don't you guys turn

around and greet somebody? Um, that's all kind of thing. The pastor does it once. And then we do

one at the sign off at the end. Very cool. And I know, uh, you know, you also said identify

leaders and that's, that's golden and then provide resources. Um, and that, that actually brought up a

question. Cause I've talked with a couple of other churches that are doing this and there's something

that everybody gets stuck on. We don't have a good formula for it yet. What do you do with the kids?

Yeah. Um, if you find out, you should let us know as well.

I had a feeling like, cause we just, we haven't been able to find that, that sweet spot with, uh,

with the micro locations of, of like doing a, doing a separate service for the kids or what.

So we have, um, we are in, uh, part of this, this big vision strategy that we're coming out with

in August. And once again, I can't go into a ton of detail about it, but, um, one of our

upcoming hires or somehow getting resources for, we would love to start a, um, YouTube channel

specifically for children, but not as a church service. So kids right now are watching like

people unbox toys and they'll watch that for hours. So how can we utilize content like that, um, and spin

it in a gospel driven direction. Um, but not so much to make them not want to, to use it. So in

these micro sites, um, parents use their phones all the time as babysitters. So why not have them

be watching content that we've created or we've resourced, um, at that time?

That's good. That's real. That's real solid that you guys are looking at staffing that position,

or at least looking at it from that perspective of this is so important. It takes a lot of resource to

create this content, it takes a lot of time to craft it. And so, you know, having somebody with

that kind of vision just right off the bat, just says how serious you are about this. Um,

because a lot of look at that and say, uh, you know, that's something that we look at as a luxury,

but you're looking at this very intentionally. You're saying, no, this is, this is part of the

future of where we're going. I mean, the new iPhone update that we, it always gives me a,

how much screen time that I had each week, um, every Sunday, it'll like come up with a thing and

it's embarrassingly large. It's like eight hours. So like if eight hours of screen time, how, how can I,

as the church utilize that eight hours that people are already looking at screens? Um,

because we don't have eight hours with them for a church service. We've got an hour a week with them,

but if they're already looking at a screen for eight hours, like surely we can, we can leverage

that. Um, that's just the world we live in right now. Yeah. The communication models are changing.

It's, it's not just one hour on Sunday. We've got access 168 hours a week to do something.

And so the churches that are understanding that and are changing their communication methods to not

just put all the energy towards that one hour Sunday church service and instead utilizing social

media, utilizing mobile app, utilizing web, um, even texting just to, to get message and to help

them be a disciple, not just a consumer of a one hour a week thing. That's golden. By the way,

I'm six and a half hours. So man, that's a little embarrassing for you. I will say my wife and I

went on a road trip last week and I'm pretty sure we watched all of parks and rec. So, uh, that's,

that's gotta be well done. Real quick, just taking off of what you were just saying about Sunday

morning. Um, how much open is church anywhere towards not taking place on Sunday? Cause I know

a lot of folks struggle through, well, you know, going to church on, we want church to be on Sunday,

but how much are you guys open it up towards? No, this is taking it to people. So it's whenever

two out of 14 campuses around Sunday right now. Um, the other 12, 12 services. So like a lot of them

are on Tuesdays. I don't know how that we ended up with that, but it was like one worked on Tuesday.

So now every leader is like church anywhere days, Tuesday, but, uh, we have a, uh, the Tuesday,

Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday right now. Uh, and soon to be Monday. Monday is the next one coming.

So, so what, what are the two that are on Sunday? Is that, are those like just in homes where people

are used to the, the one of us at home? Um, one is at a place, uh, a rehab center for people who

have Huntington's disease. Um, so these are fully functioning adults that their bodies are shutting

down on them. Huntington disease is terrible. They can't really get out, but they, uh, they're all

there mentally. And, uh, we have 17 of them that meet, um, at that facility each week. It's pretty

amazing. Yeah. I'm just curious. Did somebody just wake up and have a heart to want to do it

at a Huntington disease? Yeah. We had a, we had a lady who's a nurse there, um, that would have kept

having to miss church on Sunday. So she took her iPad, plugged it into the television and said,

Hey, anybody want to come to church with me? And they all started coming. So then we staffed it

and resourced it. And, uh, uh, it's okay. That that's like the greatest story I've ever heard.

Somebody who has to work on Sunday, missing church. And she's like, Hey, we're just going

to do church here. And your church actually like allows it and resources to do ministry.

Well, I mean, those, those 17 people are, um, are people that need the gospel as well. And they're

never going to step in our church because they can't. And so I would absolutely sacrifice one family

that can't come to our church service for another 17 people to hear about Jesus every single time.

And, and what's what, what I love about this and just, and we can, this is a whole other show is,

is that your church is on the smaller side of the equation. What are you, 900 people? So this is not

a church with a ton of resources. Um, but what you've got, you're, you're aggressively using to

through church online, through church anywhere to get the message out there in front.

Like just real quickly, what, what challenges like, have you overcome my small church to this,

to this vehicle that's reproducing church and micro locations?

Yeah. Have you ever heard of Cordon? Either one of you Cordon, Indiana, that's where we're located.

No, I had never heard of it either before I took this job. So it's don't feel bad, but, um,

um, Cordon is a really, really small town on the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky. Um, so it's

about 30 minutes from Louisville. So we're close to a big city, but, um, we're really, really small.

Um, so three years ago when we started streaming our internet speed, um, download was one megabit per

second. Uh, so we obviously couldn't stream here. So what we would do was we would capture our Saturday

night service and post produce it. So we multi-tracked it. Um, we mixed all of it. Um, and then we had it

ready for Sunday morning. We would drive to the worship pastor's house on Sunday morning who had faster

internet. We would stream from there and make it back in time to start the third service. Um,

so in between first and second and third services, we would stream at his house and make it back in

time. So that's definitely a challenge that we've overcome. We finally had, um, fiber internet come

through our area and we jumped on board like right away. So now we're totally live. Everything we do

is happening in real time, which is awesome. Um, great. Yeah. We used to multi-track because we didn't

have the capability to mix in real time. We've since then have, uh, spent a little bit of money

building a, uh, a separate broadcast mix studio, um, to make sure that the audio sounds good.

You guys know that if audio sounds bad, then no matter how good the video looks, it's not a good

video. Um, so we've been intentional about that. Um, so those are some, some big challenges and just

financially in general, we're, um, we're a very blue collar society. Um, our, our kids in, in

local schools, like 68% of them is below the poverty level to have like free lunches and stuff.

And so, um, it's just been a challenge to, uh, to try to resource things. Um, we can't really buy

high-end gear, but we can learn all about the gear that we have and use it to like its full capacity.

That's, that's just been the biggest challenge.

That's right. That's very encouraging though, Tyler. And especially for a lot of folks who are

in communities like yours or everybody in church, no matter what size feels restrained in this

particular area in the budget. And so it's always comforting to hear, Hey, we're just trying to

maximize resources wherever we're at. Um, if, if you were to engage a senior pastor and you were to

encourage him, whether either church plan or even he's been around for a while and he's already got the

fear. Hey, but if they're not showing up in the room, how do I know if they're really involved in

our church? Um, what would be the feedback that you would give them to encourage them and say,

Hey, listen, this is legit.

Yeah. Um, it's, I mean, it's a real, it's a real scary thing for, for senior pastors. The whole idea

of online church in general is like, ah, man, they'll just stay home and watch it in their pajamas.

Um, but I truly believe that, um, God has given us the internet. Um, and one day we're going to stand

before him and he's going to say, Hey, I gave you this avenue to literally finally bring the gospel

to, to everywhere in the world. Like you have the opportunity to do that. What did you do with it?

Um, and fortnight, yeah, we did fortnight. Did you use it to just like mess around on

TikTok or did you, did you use it to spread my gospel? And, uh, that's kind of where we, we have

landed. So, um, it's been proven that, that it works for us. We had 49 people last year that

it's not that they just like raised a hand. It's their lives are changed forever. Like,

it's not a, it's not a 10 minutes from now issue. It's an eternal issue. And 49 people are now, um,

going to, to worship Jesus forever. And that's a, that's a huge deal.

And that's, that's good stuff, man. Hey, like, listen, thanks. Thanks for sharing. If there's,

if people are interested in getting more information on, on church anywhere, um, where do they go? What

do they need to do? Yeah, they can, they can reach out to me. They can reach out to you and you, you

know, a ton about, uh, micro sites and all that good stuff. And we've chatted enough that you could

put them in the right direction. I'm going to shamelessly plug something right now though. So in July,

in July, we are having a conference called the online church conference. My church is hosting it.

Uh, down here in the Louisville, Kentucky area. It's a one day with an optional stay over. Um,

it's very affordable and we're going to talk a whole lot more about, uh, things like church anywhere,

things like how to get started with, uh, with producing a product that would, would work for

church anywhere. Um, how to engage your community online. Uh, we got guys like Jay Cranda is going to

be doing a keynote from Saddleback. Um, uh, Jeffrey, uh, who's on this podcast is going to be doing a

keynote and, uh, some other guys that are going to be leading some killer workshops. So that's awesome.

Thanks for doing the selfless plug that ended up as well. So that worked well. No, listen,

I'm excited, uh, about, honestly, I'm excited everything about church anywhere. Like to me,

it's, it's the model because it's not a, like you're not a mega church. I think 2000 is like the mega

number, whatever it is that it constantly is evolving, but you're not a big church, but you're

a church that has a vision for how online can resource and get people the gospel and empower

people to share the gospel and get connected. And so like, it's not a virtual building you're trying

to gather people into the, the beauty of this is that you're empowering, you know, these 14 people

to be campus pastors at different locations scattered around. And some woman who works as a,

as a, uh, a technician or a nurse at a rehab center for, uh, Hotchwood Hodgkins. No, what it was in

I mean, it's, it's like, my gosh, if, if, why would I not as a pastor want to do this?

Sure. And, and it's, and it's, it's very few churches right now that have a vision like from

top to bottom where it's, let's go. I was at a conference last week and I met a, a church in,

in new England and, and he's been, he's been the pastor, lead pastor. He's been wrestling with this

for about six months. And, and the deal where he's at is, is, um, and we'll probably get him on the show

at some point, but literally he's, he's saying the question, 98% of people in new England are unchurched.

They all hate church. They're not coming to my building. If I'm going to reach people,

I can't get them in. I've got to figure out how to take church to them. And now he's starting to do

your model. Like I'm literally describing to him what you're doing, Tyler, of, of taking, uh,

using church online to take gospel, create these micro locations around Francis Chan, uh,

evangelism of the future doesn't happen in our temples and cathedrals, but in our living rooms,

in our homes. Yeah. And so the idea of, of empowering people with church, with the gospel

to not just watch a service, but disciple someone man is, is, is phenomenal. It's super exciting.

And man, I'm, I'm glad I met you. I'm glad you're doing it and, uh, keep going, keep,

keep pushing on this because you're setting the standard right now that other churches are looking

at. And then they're wondering, man, can, can I do this? Um, and so if for more information,

check out that conference, uh, what, what website should they go to on that?

Yeah. It's church online.me church online.me. So we'll put that in the show notes and, and, and some

other things and we'll link to the church anywhere site as well, uh, for that. And, and, uh, Tyler's,

um, you know, social media and all that we'll include in there and it's going to be awesome.

Well, guys, thank you for the time. Any, any closing thoughts before we wrap?

I think we about covered it. Awesome, man. I appreciate you guys, Tyler. Uh, thanks again,

Ray. Thanks for jumping in and, uh, we'll see you guys next time. Thanks. All right.