EP003: Jay Kranda and Creating Healthy Biblical Community thru Church Online

Hey, this is Jeff with The Church Digital. We're going to get started with the episode here in just a minute, but before we get there, we all know Stadia, the organization that's been powering The Church.Digital.

Well, guess what? Stadia is opening up some learning communities. We've been doing this for a while now. We've got about 70 churches that are actually part of these learning communities.

They're learning how to thrive, grow, and multiply, not just physically, not just digitally, but digitally, the combining of physical and digital.

And it's been a beautiful, beautiful thing. We've got content coming in from churches like Crossroads, from Saddleback, like Church Home.

But guess what? It's not a content thing. Content's nice. Content doesn't change your church. Let's just say it. It doesn't.

I'm a podcast operator. I understand this. It's not going to change your church.

The ability to walk with someone and to help you understand some of the guidance, some of the accountability, the community of connecting with other churches, engaging with them,

conversations with people as you wrestle with some of these things to try to figure out how to make your physical church and your online church authentically you that lines up with your missions, visions, and strategies,

or maybe is even tightly intertwined that maybe some of that strategy changes to get more online.

This is what Stadia is trying to create, an opportunity for you to learn and to dialogue and to change your church to thrive, grow, and multiply.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Hey, the learning community starts in August.

So right now, go to stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital.

P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L.

Stadiachurchplanting.org slash digital.

And more information will be there for you to learn about these learning communities.

This has been great. It's been fun.

But let's go ahead and get you now to that podcast episode.

Well, hey, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

My name is Jeff Reed, and it is a pleasure once again to be with you today.

Here on episode three, Church Digital Podcast, we focus on church online and a lot of the implications that it has for discipleship in the long run.

Implications is a big word to say when you're trying to say it quickly.

I'm joined today by our guest host, once again, Ray D'Armis, online campus pastor from Christ Fellowship Miami.

Hey, Ray, you want to say hey?

Hey, everybody. Good to be with you again.

I'm excited because today's guest is a professional basketball aficionado much like myself.

So I'm very excited to have him on.

I know. And you're wearing your team colors.

I know we're listening to this, but I just, I want to let, like, I didn't come with my jersey on, so, or my warm-ups, so.

Well, yeah, these are Brazil soccer colors.

My wife is a Brazilian, and so anything else outside of Brazilian soccer wear in my household gets burned pretty much.

So I am required by law and by marriage to wear these colors.

But I'm glad you noticed, man.

Well, we're going to play a game here because voice number three has not yet identified himself.

So what online pastor do you think we're talking to?

Okay, this is the worst game ever.

Let me introduce Jay Cranda to the show here.

Jay is online pastor at Saddleback and the godfather of online pastors in the American church.

So I, for one, have enjoyed the relationship I've built up with him over the years.

He's been instrumental for me saying leadership, look, this is the way Saddleback does it.

We should do it this way, too.

And if you've not really dove into looking at Jay's setup and how he structured things at Saddleback or Jay's website, jaycranda.com, you definitely should do that because Jay, man, he's on top of the game right now and doing a lot of things healthily in context of church online.

As a matter of fact, isn't that like your branding, Healthy Church Online?

Is it something like that?

Yeah.

When you say Godfather, I have like Godfather 3.

Like, am I going to die on like an armchair?

Like, and I'm just going to drop something and that's like the way I end.

Why did you pick the worst Godfather movie of all?

I don't know.

It's probably a self-image issue.

I don't know.

That's a good question, right?

You won't die in this episode because I need you for at least three more.

Okay, okay.

Episode four.

That's my contract.

Yeah, that's what you're on for.

And we've been lamenting here, and I don't want to get stuck here, but we've been lamenting

through LeBron Woes with Ray and I being, you know, Miami Heat fans over the years.

And Jay is experiencing much sorrow these days in Lakerville.

So, coming from LeBron fans, former LeBron fans out there, maybe current LeBron fans, but

whatever.

I still stan LeBron.

I love the guy.

Jay, I'm sorry.

I know.

We're going to have a good year next year.

I'm hopeful.

I'm naively hopeful.

That's my attitude always.

So, naively hopeful Jay Cranston story.

Okay.

Hey, so let's roll through this thing.

Here's what we want to focus on today.

And this is one of the things, and when I'm thinking about, hey, I want to talk about this

topic.

Jay Cranston is at the top of the list for me.

Here we go.

How to get a church online philosophy to align with physical location philosophy.

And so, Jay, man, straight up, five years ago, six years ago, I'm wrestling with this

for Christ Fellowship Miami.

And I'm going on different websites.

And you were, I'm not saying you're the first one that did this, but you were one of the

first ones that was doing it on a large scale where we're physical and virtual.

And the groups, like trying to sign up for a group, it was all the same thing.

And there wasn't a separation in that.

And so, man, like the thing that I want to hone in on is way well done.

But B, like what have been the payoffs for that?

What have been the struggles?

What have been the rewards?

Like at what point did you guys, and let's just start here.

At what point did you guys really align the philosophy with the physical and the virtual

so it really became one saddleback going forward?

Yeah, and I think just to be clear, like think, well, first off, thanks for noticing that.

I think that's something that we've tried really hard to align.

But I think with a lot of people that I've experienced with, and I know you guys have had

similar conversations, is around sometimes when you get started with online ministry,

there's not a lot of documentation and expectation around what it should look like.

It's one thing to launch a church or if you're multi-site, launch another campus.

But with online, honestly, I don't feel like leadership had a ton of ideas.

You know, I had resources to go to and ask questions, and there was tons of mentoring.

But that allowed us to do a lot of things.

And something that I learned really early on, that the only way that this is really going

to work is that I got to align with what my church is great at.

And so we started to have those conversations.

And just as somebody that was on staff already, I kind of knew our paradigm of how we kind of

bring people in and send them out and kind of our funnel, our process, how people around

the bases.

And I kind of strategically, and this is especially true when I first got started, because I felt

like there was a lot of, not negativity, but there was this idea that online was going

to hurt our local campuses and our local church.

Not that everybody thought that, but I felt like I needed to over-communicate to our local

staff.

And in my context, my local campus pastors, since we have 19 plus campuses, I wanted to

let them know that I'm an advocate for them.

I never want to keep people online.

So early on, a lot of it just came from us just pushing and really great leadership on

my end, that was above me, that kind of just helped me understand what was important, what

were culturally things that were going on, and a lot of just failures, too, of just figuring

it out.

But I just realized, too, that if I align with what my pastor was talking about in our teaching

team, that that was a good chunk of our weekly experience online.

And if I aligned with the language, then I wasn't having to have them replicate another

process.

Because the likelihood, my pastor, of thinking about different language for online audience

versus local, no, he's probably just going to hold up the response card that he tells

everybody.

And if I align all that stuff, that means I get to easily assimilate people.

So honestly, it makes sense now.

But early on, there was a lot of just, I think this is what we need to do.

And we just started doing it.

And then it started to pay off.

And so it was, it did it, there was more fog early on than I think, if you were to look

at our experience now, it would say, oh, this probably always made sense.

And I was like, no, it didn't.

It was something that we just kind of slowly kind of, it started to make sense as we did

it.

How long have you been on staff at Settleback?

I've been on staff, I think I'm coming up on 10 years.

So I started right out of college.

So it was like, yeah.

It was, it was funny.

I just, when you were talking, I just, I flashed back.

And the year was probably 2007, 2008.

And Ray, it was the, it was the first time we did Revelation at Christ Fellowship.

And we did a, not, not the first time, but the first time under Geiger.

And, and so we were doing, I did a virtual small group and it wasn't like Zoom or anything

like that.

We used a, it was a BBS system.

I think we just was a blog comments.

And so the video was in the blog and comments were underneath.

You know, it was 2007, like technology wasn't, wasn't quite rolling yet.

And, and, and somebody from Settleback called up Christ Fellowship.

And, and, and I was like the production guy who just on the side was like, Hey, I want

to do this for online and just see what happens type of thing.

Just playing around.

And somebody from Settleback called me up and they were like, Hey, yeah.

So we see you're doing online small groups.

Like what lessons are you learning?

And, and like, really like interviewing me.

And I'm like, dude, I'm like some gearhead.

Like, I don't, I don't know what I'm doing.

I just was, was having fun with it, but, but really, really drilling in.

So that's awesome.

So like what, what lessons have, have, have you learned kind of in that process where you

started off the, the kid is college.

You're, you're, you're just coming into this thing.

Not a lot of expectations necessarily up high, but, but obviously you've got, um, you know,

a strong leader in context of, of Rick Warren, who knows what he wants, but maybe isn't specific

in context in this area with, with vision.

Like you said, you aligned it very quickly to what they were doing.

Like, what were the pros and cons of doing that?

So you got a guy that you're talking to that doesn't, that's new in this, like what lessons

would you coach him on?

Yeah.

So, I mean, first off, it's more like, just here's what's happening and where do we want

to go?

And to be honest, like we've had different phases of saddle, of, of our online ministry

of like, this is the clear goal.

Now this is a clear goal.

And most recently, I know some of the conversations you and I have had, Jeff is, you know, we're,

I'm really in this phase now of kind of revamping and re-energizing home gatherings, um, type

of expression.

So we're actually moving way more into that, but I think early on, one of the things was

I, so first off, I, I wanted to kind of educate and I had a boss early on that kind of created

this verbiage for me that I really loved is that we needed to educate our local staff of

the value of the online service, that it isn't just this thing that, you know, people can

just watch and not come to church type of thing is that, um, and we started saying this is that

for tens of thousands of people, the online service or the online campus is the first and

only expression of our church.

So we got to do it right.

And so, and he, he actually crafted that and he, and we had conversations on, you need

to say that in team meetings to other people because they're just thinking you're just hosting

this thing and you're just following up on response cards and you're, you know, and they

might not really have, have thought about that.

But if you educate them on, oh, this is, this is telling our community who we are and we got

to make sure that product as well.

And so that started to really help kind of build that culture within our local team,

because the hardest thing I think for most people on staff at churches is when I come

into a meeting and I want to do this thing that's going to require cameras and all this work,

it's like, I'm another thing on their list.

I'm a task.

And so most people don't like to do things based off tasks.

They like to do things based off vision.

And so I think that was the coaching I learned is like, oh yeah, like, and I was fun.

I was just, I was writing an email this morning about something we want to change up.

And I was communicating to some people and same thing.

I was communicating the vision of why I think this would be important, but I think really

thinking about it, like this really is becoming a front door of our church and my team that's

managing this and my volunteers that we're super lean and we want to make sure that the,

you know, we're doing this right.

The other thing is having a lot of conversations with our worship team and our video team around.

I am somehow representing or interacting with this very polished product.

And you think through from start to end how that should look and be.

And then in my model, I'm plopping on these intros and these outros onto this thing.

And I want to make sure like, you know, early on we did stuff just because we needed to do it.

And now in the last couple of years, we've had more conversations around like, hey, you guys

own that product and I'm kind of just a manager of it.

And so we can change up anything.

And I started to kind of have that conversation because like, I don't like my background is my

background is way more pastoral.

I'm not very, I'm technical, but I'm not a technical person by nature.

And so like, I'm more care about just moving in to fill out a response card.

Um, and so, um, so I think teaching the value to our, our leadership and that starts with

me knowing, knowing those things.

Like I have, I had to simplify our vision.

I had to simplify our process.

I had to figure out like that simple crafting of just thinking about for tens of thousands

of people.

It's the first and only expression of our church was a huge thing.

And I remember when my boss said it, I was like, oh my, I, that makes total sense.

Um, because again, most people on staff are just going about their day and I'm having to

tell them.

And the same thing of telling those stories up.

And the last big thing was, um, you know, when we got stories, making sure that I would

two things, I would save it.

Um, and then I would also forward it and kind of get it up.

And so, and the thing is we would have stories that would come in, but just because a story

happens doesn't mean it's the right story to share.

So like there's two, you know, like there's one story where it's like somebody like, like

a pastor who's going, who's part of another church somehow recommenced their life through

like, maybe there, there's something going on in their personal life.

Well, I don't really want to tell the story of the pastor because he's not my main target,

but the person who's unconnected, uh, we, we, we just had something a couple of weeks

ago, as a perfect example, somebody who had started watching online, um, came to faith,

um, or it was interested and I got them plugged into one of our campuses locally.

And that's the story I want to tell.

So figuring out what are the stories of kind of magnifying the potential of if we really

kind of blow this thing up and really invest more.

So I think those are some of the big learnings, um, early on that there's definitely some cons

too, but I think those are some of the big things that I learned, at least in the first,

you know, five years.

Go ahead.

Let me ask you a question, Jeff.

Uh, when did, when did you guys make the turn from being purely content distributors to

finally getting, gathering people in community?

When did that happen for you?

Yeah, I, so when I became the full-time online pastor, we had online groups previously, and

I probably know who was calling you at that time.

Um, and when I first got hired, the idea was the thing they wanted me to actually manage

was the online groups.

The idea was we have this service that happens, people respond, but like there isn't all this

traditional campus pastor type of stuff to do because like, you don't have to worry about

setup, tear down, you don't have to worry about this main product.

That's kind of on autopilot in a lot of ways.

Um, you can, you build volunteers around, but when we, when our online groups really started

to grow, they go, you know what?

We could actually have the online pastor be over the service and all that stuff and the

volunteer teams and make sure that's going, but their job could become just over these,

these small groups that he's just caring for these small groups.

So I was hired initially kind of as kind of how you would hire like a men's pastor that

he's over all the men's only groups that I was just over all the online only groups.

And, um, and what happened was somebody was doing online groups at that time.

And I kind of assimilated, we kind of like merged together in a way.

And, um, at that time, really from the beginning, when I was full-time prior to that, I wasn't

full-time I was part-time.

Um, it was, it was prior to that, it was just all content and just kind of some volunteer

stuff.

But when I got the groups, they really set the standard early on that we want this to

be not just a crowd building, but a community building thing by making me really the small

group pastor of all the online groups.

Um, and so I think that was, it was like, it was a bar set early on.

Like, this is going to be your core community that you develop that if, if, if your groups

are healthy, that means your online church is healthy.

And I, and I think it kind of, it made a lot of sense to me.

And we just kind of really embrace that model.

You said something, this is off topic, but, uh, you said some talking about groups.

You told me once in the physical churches, people connect to Christ before they connect

to community.

You see that as a accept Christ and invitation, then it takes six months to get them into a

group or something like that, depending upon the church.

But in an online context, you've seen examples of where people connect to community before

they connect to Christ.

We're looking for engagement to looking for friendship.

And it's through those relationships, that real true understanding of who Christ is happens.

Um, he's Jay shaking his head.

Yes.

So obviously he's agreeing with this.

Jay unpack a little bit here.

Tell me, tell me a story or two, an example of, of what that tangibly looks like online.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I think one of the hardest things with online overall is that it, it, it amplifies

this amazing ability to connect with anybody on all sorts of stuff we can, you know, like

example, you know, Rayna talking about like NBA Twitter is amazing.

Like you can just connect with people in all sorts of creative ways, but also, you know,

there's, there is this epidemic of loneliness that is very apparent and disconnection is

happening.

Now, you know, I, I definitely have my ideas.

I know I just saw something you shared not too long ago.

Um, Jeff, I think you blogged about it, but, um, from a report of, of what's happening

with social media.

Um, I think it's just magnifying things that already were there and coming to the, to the

service.

Um, and, and a lot of those conversations come around just, uh, just being wise with

these things.

Um, you know, so a lot of people are like, get scared of technology, but it's, it's the

same thing with like a, you know, with a burger, you know, yeah, burger is not like bad, but

if you eat five of them a day, it's going to be bad.

And it's like, that's the kind of the idea, same thing with fire, fire can either make

you food or it can burn your face off kind of thing.

Um, and so technology there's, there's levels of it.

And I think with us, what we learned is that we kind of, we got this influx of people that

wouldn't normally just go to a church.

Um, and so, or they had disconnected from my church and they were just watching.

And then they started to fill out response cards and engage in new ways.

And for many of those people before they would ever actually show up to a physical church,

they were really interested in the ideas that they could start a small group with their

friends or in, or, or engage with something online.

And they could almost be kind of in, there's two scenarios.

There's one people being kind of brought in back to life of what true community is or what

true church is.

And then there's another group of people that are being introduced to church for the very

first time.

And we're kind of setting the standard.

And so I think it's just, um, I think it was like kind of getting to the heart of it

and of really, what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?

That ultimately it's not this, it's not this American large church type of thing.

It's, it's, it's really church is, or, you know, biblical ecclesia is this idea of, of

it's the people you're doing life with.

So yeah, my church is huge.

We might have 25,000 people, but like I have three other couples that I consider my church.

And when I think about Saddleback, I don't really think about the large thing that happens

every week.

I'm thinking about the, the two, the two to three other couples and all their kids.

That's the group of people.

And actually I've been part of this, this small group between two churches now over the last

15 years.

And, um, that's my church.

I just think we have this abundance of freedom in America that makes gathering large, very

easy.

Um, and so it's, in a lot of ways, the small group stuff is really going back to early church

kind of for the first 300 years, how stuff function.

And so, I mean, we, we've seen, we, we have stories of, of people, um, from everything from

people in domestic issues that are married and they can't get out of a relationship and

they engage with an online group.

And, um, we had one case that that, that woman that I'm talking about lived outside of the

United States.

And I actually found somebody in a different scenario, uh, that lived nearby and actually

baptized her, um, in a, in a rec center, um, in, in another country.

Um, I couldn't share the story or the photo.

I I I've seen it myself, but there was some security issues.

Um, you know, so this person is not able to leave their scenario at this given moment, but

they're able to engage online, be part of an online group for the season.

And obviously our prayer is that that scenario changes.

Um, but that's one way.

Um, we, we have people that, you know, start, um, home groups in their area.

We, we, we had a group of people in Northern California that were all graduates from Berkeley

and they, um, you know, started reading purpose-driven life and they Googled and found us and they

started a group in their home.

And, um, really cool story where like, they got up to, you know, they started meeting and

it was like 20 people were meeting in their home every week.

And, you know, I go up and visit them and baptize three people in a bathtub.

And it's like, you know, and, and the whole time as I'm engaging this, I want you guys to

know, as you hear that story, it's, it's amazing, but I'm somebody who first off got, I got led

to Christ at a church under 500.

I came to Saddleback.

I'm part of this and I'm literally going, what in the world is God doing?

Like, this is nuts.

Like, this does not like, this is not like, I did not sit here.

And master plan this, you know, it speaks to our God.

It speaks to my pastor and our church.

And, and I'm just showing up and I'm asking the question, like, how do I like put this

in a pill and like reproduce it?

You know what I mean?

I'm like trying to ask that question constantly.

Like when I, when I went up to that, that thing in Northern California and I'm literally,

I baptized three people in a bathtub.

I'm literally the whole time.

I'm just like, what is happening?

Like, what is this?

You know what I mean?

Like I probably baptized at my old church.

I probably baptized a handful of people ever.

And now I'm like in this small bathtub in San Francisco, like that.

It's just like, and you're like, how, what is God doing online?

And what does this online to offline thing look like?

Can we scale it?

Does it make sense?

And so some of it, we understand more now.

Some of it, I still don't understand.

And so, yeah, so just that, those are some stories that kind of stand out at the top,

you know, and obviously those are the, like, that's the best stories that I'm thinking about

right now at the moment.

So there, yeah, there, there's a lot there and you mentioned online to offline and I really,

I want to park there for a little bit because online to offline really, to me, it, it revolutionized

the idea of church online because I was, I was struggling with this vision of online without

biblical community, online without community at all, creating this idea of, of isolation.

You know, and we're seeing that, that what you mentioned earlier, what I blogged is USA Today.

And we talked about it, I think on an earlier podcast, USA Today, high school seniors are

13% more likely to identify themselves as lonely today than even five years ago in technologies

career.

And there's plenty of stats of what, like, my gosh, like high school seniors go on 32 dates

less, 32 less dates a year than when they, when, when I was in high school.

Interesting.

Like maybe that's just good parenting finally kicking in, but more likely it is just like,

you know, kids are not, they're not going out.

They're not being social.

And so a lot of people reading Josh Harris is kissing, dating, goodbye is all that's not

allowed.

Ask that.

You can't, I can't acknowledge that.

You know, you know, it blew my mind.

It was, I was listening to something and obviously I, I, I haven't dated in, you know, been married

10 years, but they said like young, younger people.

And I'm, I get, I'm, I'm saying I'm, I'm, I am young, but I, I have three kids and I'm,

I'm out of that phase of life.

But they said like young people now they don't exchange phone numbers.

They exchange Instagram handles because you can just block them on Instagram and you don't

have to block them on a phone, which is really impossible.

And I was like, my mind was like, oh, that makes total sense.

But that's nuts.

Like people are just exchanging Instagram.

Like the phone number is not being handed out.

I'm like, I still give out my phone number all the time.

Like that's anyways, besides the point, I said to a high school kid, I'll text you.

And he's like, what?

And I'm like, and he's like, Instagram.

I was like, cool.

I'll Instagram.

Like, that's a thing.

Who knew?

That's hilarious.

You know, if he would have said Snapchat, I would have been like, sorry, I'm no longer

saying, but I'm 40.

If I'm on Snapchat, it's weird.

I'm just saying.

Okay.

So, but let's hold back because this is important.

Online to offline revolutionized because it's this idea of, well, shoot, you're the guy

who coined it, or at least you're the first person that I've heard said it.

And so everybody I ever talked to, I said, Jay Cranda said it.

So it's got to be true.

Why don't you unpack a little bit and tell us what online to offline is about?

Yeah, I have no idea who coined it, but I always think everything that comes from my

head practically comes from my pastor.

So inadvertently, because he's just constantly spewing wisdom.

So it's probably from him.

Yeah.

So I think the idea was, you know, I've had this conversation with both of you guys is

that, so I go to church with my family.

So me and my family, we go to church, you know, we check in our kids, they have their

own experiences, all this stuff.

And, you know, that's a really healthy experience.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's probably the best experience of what biblical church looks

like, because it's in person, and you're doing life with people.

And so when I started to kind of go into this role as online pastor, you know, I was somebody

who, you know, like cared about my theology, cared about what I was both enabling and maybe

not aware of what I was enabling.

And, and I was just like, what am I, I have these people that are watching and I'm engaging

them, but like, like, am I being a good steward of this thing that God has put me over at this

season?

And, and especially when you start reading, you know, in the Bible, specifically in the

book of James, when you think about some of the judgment that God has for teachers and

people in positions.

Um, you know, I started like it kind of early on, I would just think a lot about it.

And at the time I was in seminary, um, and I was at a more, uh, not traditional seminary,

but conservative seminary.

And I would ask questions to professors and none of them really understood what the world

I was asking them.

And, um, I started to really think about like, well, you know, I don't think everything can

be done online.

Meaning I don't think we're at a place with the technology right now where, you know, somebody

could watch online, engage online and like never leave their house.

Like that's, I don't have like a surrogate type of ready player one type of theology at

this moment.

Some of it is because the technology isn't able and it's just not there.

And so, but what I do feel comfortable in our model, and this is where it's really key.

I might have personal beliefs that might differ a little bit from my church, mostly no, but

I also am in a position where I have to, I have to echo what my leadership in my church

is doing.

So it's actually less about what I think it's about where my church is at.

And so I knew strongly that at the end of our funnel is that the way we do church is

physical expression.

Like that's what we're good at.

That's what we're doing.

And so we kind of just kind of started to work towards this idea.

Well, what if we could reach people where they're at and we kind of bring them to this

offline experience where ultimately they're, they're either at a campus at another church

or starting a small group of people in their home.

And so, and what that practically looks like is usually it's allowing people to watch online.

They take a next step and a individual would join an online group using zoom or Skype of

some sort for a season.

And then after six months to eight months, they'll have some kind of communication around,

Hey, you've been in this online group for a bit.

Have you thought about starting something in your home or going to this church experience?

And we kind of, we kind of have this kind of, we kind of slowly turn up the heat and kind

of move them towards this best expression of online to offline.

And many times somebody will be part of an online group for six to eight months.

And then they, they've kind of learned what a group is.

And when they do something with their friends in their area, it becomes less foreign.

It's like, Oh, this, this makes sense.

And so we really lean heavy into that.

I'm okay with people being kind of in seasons for different reasons.

If they're traveling or if they're sick, there's all sorts of reasons, but ultimately we do

want to move people to this offline expression, which for us is one of our campuses.

It might be a local church or it might, and, and, and the way that we kind of like my core

community, it's people in homes all around the world that are kind of doing life together.

And we're trying to resource them as best as possible as like, Oh, you are a functioning

church.

And what does it look like to do that?

And I say that as like very beta, like there's things we're good at in that and there's stuff

we're still trying to figure out.

What does that actually look like?

Along those lines, you know, in that tool that you created alongside push pay, and I know

that Jeff's going to link to that in the show notes, you talked about how you traveled places

to baptize people in bathtubs and have trained online members from different continents to

baptize fellow believers.

Can you talk about what it's looked like to empower people leveraging some of the technology

and, you know, some of the ins and outs, goods and bads of that, how that's worked out

for you?

Yeah, I think so one of the things that's, especially at a large church, but I think every

online ministry has experienced this is that you can have a huge impact by uploading content

online.

Like you just, you get a lot of eyeballs.

One of the things we started to have a lot of conversations around is, okay, how many people

are actually getting like, that are indicating they're getting saved every week?

And then how many people are actually getting baptized?

And so we might have, you know, hundreds of thousands of people will visit us in a given

year, but, you know, I'm, I don't have the exact number, but it was something like 20 people

got baptized last year that we actually facilitated.

So a hundred, a couple hundred thousand people turn into 20 or so baptisms.

So, you know, that like, that's great.

Like I'm, I'm amazed.

Trust me, that number has gone up over the years intentionally from efforts, but like we

started to have conversations of like a church is much more than just pushing content

out.

It's much more than just a chat room.

It's much more than just our giving metrics.

It's, there's these things and baptisms are one of those things that people in the early

church were getting baptized.

And so we started to have talks about like, how did we actually like scale that?

And so I think early on when we were doing it, it was like, I had to ask questions like,

are we allowed, am I able to encourage somebody to baptize another person?

Like, do they have to be a pastor?

You know, I can, I had my own theology, but I'm also a pastor on staff at my church.

So I got to make sure I align with what my church thinks.

And so, um, and sometimes, sometimes larger churches, um, have different standards, not

because it's, they're trying to be hard on the Bible, but because they're a model for other

churches.

So they have to be aware of that influence.

And so, and so just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, you should do it.

The Bible is pretty free on this thing, but it's, it's sometimes you need to be careful.

And I think early on, we had to have conversations around like, what does it actually look like

to do this?

And so we just now in the last year and a half, I feel like we've had this super openness

now to be able to actually now go and say, okay, you know what, let's create a training.

And so what early on, it was, I had like an audio training of our pastor talking through

how to baptize somebody.

And then I had an email signature.

So in anybody would, um, want to be baptized and they couldn't travel to our campus.

And we weren't expecting to travel to their area.

I would say, do you have another follower of Jesus that lives near you?

We can train them to baptize you.

And they said, yes, we would send them this resource.

Um, that, and then we would set up a three-way call with the people and kind of talk about

like, do you guys know what's going to happen?

And then it would happen.

And then we would document it.

Um, and so, um, we just did a thing, a couple, uh, you know, last week where we kind of went

to our next stage of this, where we created a training, um, for our small group hosts, really

for small group hosts, small group members, where how do you, how to baptize another believer

and how to lead your small group through a private communion time.

And that's going to be the standalone thing.

But like that course that we just shot like a week and a half ago was an accumulation of

like eight years of learnings of what both how to do it.

And also what my church wanted me to do and where we're at.

I couldn't do that training, um, you know, seven years ago.

There's just no way.

Um, and so, and I, I think we, you know, we figured it out, but I, in my head, I, my number

one driver was how do we do more of that?

And because the other thing is I had a lot of people always on waiting lists to be baptized

and I couldn't travel everywhere.

I just, as much as I would love to, it just, it didn't financially make sense for us to get

on a plane and go everywhere.

It may be in the beginning.

It was like, oh yeah, this is awesome.

But then it became a problem as we had, you know, at one point I had 50 people on a waiting

list all throughout the globe.

And I was like, I don't even, cause, cause the question is like, okay, now I got to vet all

these people.

I mean, that's a lot of work.

It's just, there's, again, some problems are, it's a good problem, but we really leaned

into, okay, you know what?

We need to encourage other people to baptize.

And then this is where it kind of came full circle for us.

Well, if somebody can't get baptized right now, what they need to do is play the long game,

start a small group, build a community.

Somebody comes to faith and they kind of build up a group of people.

And, and, and I think, I think that's where we kind of, okay, this is how this is all

kind of, this is why, and this is why I was, I was mentioning earlier, we're talking

about these home gatherings, encouraging these small groups to watch.

We're talking about services together.

And the idea is we want this to become a hub long-term and we have only a couple of

them, but I haven't been able to scale it.

I still have people on, on waiting lists.

And so it's something it, honestly, that number, the baptism number keeps me up.

It's something that I think about constantly.

How do I do that more?

Because that shows true discipleship.

It's just not a viewer.

So.

That's good.

Yeah.

We're going to be, we're actually going to be interviewing Kevin Lee, who's, I think the

small groups pastor with Saddleback.

And so we, we've got that, that podcast scheduled.

I know he was excited to talk about that communion training and, and I hope you guys didn't just

let the cat out of the bag, but I'm sure.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

So more, more is coming down.

He has a cool, he has a cool story.

He was actually in Florida and he baptized somebody.

He'll share that.

Oh, cool.

That's, that's awesome.

But you know, and there's, there's this idea of, of now we're, we're expecting the online

campus or the online church to, to start to, to generate things.

Like it's not a, Hey, let's just throw the broadcast out there and see what happens.

It's, we're going to do this on the small level, but then something interesting happens.

It grows, it scales quickly to where a person cannot handle it.

And when I look at church online, I actually see the, the church being the lid for what

church online is.

And Jay, what you just told is a great example of that.

You're one guy traveling around the country, throw in Kevin Lee.

And now you're two guys traveling around the country.

You got to list 50 people long that you're trying to baptize.

You can't do it.

And so as, as a result, this idea of, and you know,

Jay, you were one of these guys who were saying it early on, decentralizing the ministry,

taking the power of church online away from staff and instead empowering people, doing

that three-way call, empowering other people to baptize and empowering to do that.

Like that's when, when church realizes that it's not about the pastors being the hero.

And instead it's about empowering people, lay people to be the hero and giving them the Holy

Spirit, God giving the Holy Spirit, but utilizing the Holy Spirit, giving them the authority to

do these things.

All of a sudden the power of the church isn't self-contained within that building or within

what's on the stage.

It's within the audience.

And then, you know, I truly believe this.

I think that's when America sees revival, not as a result of what our pastors are doing,

but a result of our pastors saying, my success is not what happens out of result of my ministry,

but when I empower others to do my ministry.

I mean, I was just reading yesterday, actually a friend on staff mentioned this and I was,

I wouldn't say, what's the, what's the book of the Bible?

There it is.

I always want to say, I always want to say filet.

I always want to say filet, but if you read in like, we were just having this conversation

and it was like, one of the first parts of that book is like, A, to the church in your

house.

If you read like the first couple of verses, you know, and it was like, and, and I really

do think, and you've written about this on your blog a bunch, but it's, it's, it's really,

it's thinking less about, if you think about online church as this American high expectation

stage lights and all that, yeah, that's going to be hard to scale.

But if you think more about the gatherings that were actually occurring early on, that's

scalable.

And, and a lot of people say that one of the things that hurt us the most in the history

of the church was this corporate type of movement that happened in 300 AD when it like, when

Constantine kind of centralized it, because it kind of fused with a lot of pagan stuff and

it became this large thing.

And we had to have many conversations.

And even in America, one of the reasons why, you know, Protestant stuff flourished was because

it was this 31 flavors of, and it just grew rapidly.

And the church, the, the, the assemblies of God, the, the Southern Baptist conventions,

the ones that grew the most were the ones that were more open with what it meant.

And so, you know, and there's pros and cons to that type of growth for sure.

But I, I think, I think, you know, and you've written about this, Jeff, is that it's just,

I think there's going to be a lot more small churches that are going to leverage this long

term because there's stuff they're going to do.

And this is what I love, like you speaking at church planning conferences, stuff like that.

I think that, you know, I'm actually more interested about that stuff about like, Hey, who's

going to like really take, is there going to be a network that's really going to figure

this out because there's stuff that I do that just, I'm only doing because I'm trying to

figure it out in my own church model and it makes sense, but it's not going to make sense

in your model.

And so I get really excited about that.

And I know it's happening.

It's going to happen.

I've already seen online church people who've done stuff like this and fail.

I've seen plants fail.

But that's why I like the adoption of like a true planner, like who's not trying to replicate,

but like, actually like, you know, I'm planting physically.

It's like the Perry Noble thing.

Like it's more of that.

It's like, you know, he started doing stuff online, but even that he started doing it online

for the attention of physical, but I'm waiting for somebody who's going to start something

online, do something physical, but also have the intention of also to be global.

You know, and that's the part that's not yet.

It was, it was the joke.

It was like Amazon had to buy Whole Foods because it wasn't enough to own the virtual hemisphere

of e-commerce.

They had to actually do something, you know, in the physical space too.

They had to shut down grocery stores.

But yeah, let me like, cause there was, I spoke at this thing at Exponential and, and

it was, it was awesome.

And I had this, this one pastor, I want to tell this story and I'm still working with him.

We're trying to figure it out.

But he grabs me, he couldn't, I think I got a text message in the middle of the night.

Hey, I need to talk with you before you leave.

And like I said, I was leaving the next day.

And so we got together and we ended up having like a face-to-face conversation behind the

expo hall at like eight in the morning or something like that.

And here's his story.

He's a, he's a pastor at a, at a thousand person campus, a large church in, in New England.

His weekly attendance at New England is like 200, 250 people.

Now, this is him telling me the story.

Numbers don't matter in the story as much as the heart.

He tells me 98, 99.8% of New England is unchurched.

98% of New England has said they will not go to church.

And him having a thousand person building in New England doesn't make sense because there's

no way for him to use that building.

And he says, so a year ago, I had this idea of utilizing church online to reach into homes,

to reach people, but also to empower the people that are attending my church to do church in

their homes, because people are more likely to go to homes than they will to my building.

And he says, he's like, I've been looking a year for somebody to help me with this.

And then I sit in this lecture and you're speaking and you're describing the exact model.

He's like, you have to help me with this.

And so we've unpacked it and we're starting to work through this and it's going to happen.

But this guy's literally talking about selling off major chunks of his property.

Wow.

Because it's ineffective to do ministry in New England.

And here's the, oh my gosh, yes.

But here's the reality of it.

Like the New England of today is America of tomorrow.

The problem that these guys are having today isn't that much different than what other

churches are going to be experiencing.

And, you know, unless you're in the Bible Belt, but even the Bible Belt suspect these days.

And so like, I don't want to be like a prophecy type guy, but it's coming.

And this way of shifting towards, let's not make ourselves the pastors, the hero, but let's

empower people to, with their voice, to lead people to Christ, train them on how to disciple.

And then all of a sudden now we've got disciples who are discipling other people to be disciples.

Like that's the biblical model, the 300 AD, man.

I want to write a book on that.

Like I've, I've done research into that and it's scary how that swayed the perception of

what organized religion is because the, the, the Roman government needed to control the church

and to hold it back.

So they set this structure up.

I forget what it's called right now.

It's just, I'm not thinking that.

But then I see in Creed, but as a result of that, all of a sudden, like we're still using

the same structure, like 2000 years, 18, 1500 years later, the power of the church doesn't

rely in pastors and it doesn't rely in church.

It relies in the people and the quicker in the church plants that are out there and the guys

that are listening that in the small churches, I am far more excited about you guys doing

stuff in church online.

And I've said that multiple times and I will for the seeable future because the understanding

and the capacity of, of creating a disciple is creating a disciple and kicking them out

and moving them on.

You know, the average, the average church size in America right now is 78 people.

And I know we're going to talk about this a lot down the road.

That's 78 people.

That's a small church.

And the first time I heard that stat, I looked at the pastor and told me, and I was like,

man, that's bad leadership.

That's a bunch of like stupid churches that, that aren't getting it right.

And, and, and he looked at me sideways and he's like, what if that's God's way of saying

that's what our church sizes should be?

And I'm like, oh no, that's interesting.

I'm an idiot.

And he's like, what could you do with the 78 person church that you can't do with a,

with a 4,000 person?

And all of a sudden I just start going into, you know, discipleship training organization,

people who are planting that.

And it's like, and that's one of the reasons why I love this idea of online to offline and

breaking it up into, into homes.

Cause now I've got smaller units and, and, and where we can do that, that detailed discipleship.

Hey, here's a question, Jay, like what in context of Saddleback.

So you're doing these smaller units, you got some places around, um, like what's the end

game when, when you sit down, when you talk with leadership, when they're looking at, at

the structure of online, where is all this going?

Yeah.

I think, to be honest, I feel like that question is still, um, I, it's still being figured out.

I think the, I think the hope is that we can be leaner in planting future campuses of our

church, that we can have this kind of crawl step of what does it mean to have these home

gatherings?

And that, um, I, I know the conversation that has been happening has been, you know,

we're moving into this phase as a kind of a society in America specific in, in America

specifically that, um, you know, it's no longer Christianity is this neutral or pro thing.

It's, it's this, um, when we first planted our church, um, you know, before I was there,

before I was born really.

And, um, now we're moving to this phase where like people just would never come to your

church and the joke that the conversations that they've been having here is, you know,

the idea is that if your Mormon friend would invite you to his temple service, would you

ever go?

And he's like, no.

And, and the idea is it doesn't matter how relevant the teaching is.

It doesn't matter how many lights and fog or whatever, um, you would never go.

Um, but what you would do is you would listen if you had a relationship with this person.

And so the, the, the conversation has been leaning towards, you know, maybe the side

doors of our churches are going to become more important than our Sunday morning services

long-term, um, kind of the way that other countries have already gone.

And so, um, and we're just going to go there now.

It doesn't have to be all doom and gloom.

No.

And, you know, you know, the prayer is it won't go that way, but, um, that's why these, this

conversation of having some kind of online or some kind of home gathering thing is going

to be potentially really important for churches of all sizes long-term and thinking about that

78 type of, of experience.

But I think the big hope is that we can do the home gathering thing well.

Um, but that's where it does take, and this is one of the hardest things is, you know, I'm

doing things in my bubble and I got to make sure that I'm interacting with the larger bubble

like very well because it's really easy to kind of float off and be in my own sandbox,

but it takes way more effort and more reward if I integrate and, you know, share what's

working, what's not.

Because to be honest, like, I don't know anything about leading a church.

I don't know anything about planting a church.

That's not my expertise, you know?

And so I need to have that conversation.

I was just emailing today with somebody on our worship team.

Like, I have this idea, um, you know, tell me where am I wrong in my thinking?

Because I don't know anything.

Like, I don't know what, what it would, and, you know, they gave me some feedback and I

was like, oh, that's good.

And, and I, and I think this is where, like, just because you have a lot of people watching

percentage-wise compared to your local campus doesn't mean like you're the resident expert.

And I think if you come into it, it's very open-handed and integrate because I think

there's a lot of ministries, online ministries that are reaching a lot of people.

But I think the deep discipleship is where the local church is just the expert at.

And I think that's why we got to have more of those conversations.

Like, who's doing that well?

Because one part, you know, getting eyeballs online is, is fairly easy.

It's, it's not like automatically easy.

Sure.

But it's like scaling discipleship.

That's a whole nother thing that only the local church can do.

And that's where, okay, so what is your, what is your, what is your

local church discipleship pathway look like for your online ministry?

And that's where the hybrid, that's why I think having somebody who's a pastor who kind

of like knows that part of it is, it's going to be so valuable.

And, and, and I know a lot of online pastors think like that.

I know they're doing stuff, but I think that's like, you know, like in that, Ray mentioned

it in that book that, that I did with Vanderbloom and Pushpay, it was like, out of all the churches,

90% of them are just streaming to Facebook and their church online platform.

And then when you go down to like deeper stuff, like membership and baptism, it's

like in a very low percentile.

So when people think of online church, they think Facebook streaming, they think pushing

content.

They're not actually thinking of like deep church stuff.

So that's where like people go like, well, church online isn't church.

Well, I would go, well, yeah, because a lot of people are just pushing stuff out and they're

not actually pastoring people.

Now there are people doing that.

And that's where, and a lot of that happened with Facebook.

It's so easy to stream now that that's a great first step, but you can't stop there.

You got to keep pushing forward.

You got to develop this out, the strategy and integrate and all that.

So guy out there listening to this broadcast, maybe you're new to church online, maybe you've

been kicking it around and that's it.

You're doing your Facebook feed, you're doing your chop, you're doing your YouTube, whatever

it looks like.

And you're excited about the metrics and, you know, somebody shared the video and you got

a couple hundred more views and that's the win.

Man, let's challenge you a little bit here to take one more step and start to figure out

how to create this biblical community towards that.

Jay Cranda's website, jcranda.com's got a ton of resources there.

I'm just even, we didn't even talk about it here, but the Ecclesia blog that you wrote probably

within the past couple months was awesome.

And I would, I texted Jay, I literally had like the same blog and it was like, well, I'm

going to trash it because he just said it.

So I'll probably bring it back out in a little bit, but it was, it's Jay's Cranda.com's a

great resource towards that.

The church digital, man, we're writing a lot of stuff in that sweet spot as well.

EBooks and we'll link to it in the show notes.

All this is good.

What other, what other resources are out there guys?

What can we, how can we help people that are kind of interested in checking out this biblical

community stuff online?

What am I blanking on?

I, I, you know, honestly, I would say just if I was going to talk to that person who's

thinking about it, I would say the first thing I would consider is if you have a database

of some sort for your church and I would consider running a report of how many people outside

of a hour distance are in your system right now that are like, and so just get an idea.

So if you have, let's say you have, you know, 5,000 contacts in your system, how many of those

have an address that's outside of an hour distance?

And then try to figure out how much have those people given in the last two years?

And I think that's a really good place to kind of start to kind of understand who's there

and the maturity of those people.

Because if you have people driving from an hour away or somehow have engaged, I think you're

going to start figuring out how many people are actually like, again, a lot of times our

church, church online is a very, is an amazing local resource.

But by just digging into your own metrics like that, I think you can start kind of flushing

out like, oh, wow, we have some people watching from far.

And you'd be surprised where, you know, people watch online, they give and, you know, that

might be a good way just to kind of see the seeds of what's potentially, if you kind of

invest a little bit more into it.

Yeah, we had a, we had a small group leader, a regular giver for, with the online, a regular

attender, literally met every metric that we were trying to evaluate for a physical campus.

And she lived in Atlanta.

And so, like, there's plenty of those stories, especially as you're more, one of the, one

of my favorite stats to look at every Monday was the Google, but it was the locations field

and starting to see where people were watching from and, and then, you know, trying to figure

out how to cluster them together.

And I know, Jay, you're doing like some of those watch parties and, or meetups, I think

is, is some of the things that you're doing in an attempt to try to cluster some of these

people together.

And literally, man, I could talk about this all day, but I want to be faithful to time as

we're wrestling through this.

So, Ray, let's start with you up top, man.

Any, any closing thoughts or anything as we're wrapping up this episode?

I really appreciate Jay, just, you know, you, you upholding kind of your pastors, uh, buying

into this, you know, one of the first things I remember hearing from Rick Warren was every

member of minister.

And it's funny how you guys have carried that out online and I just think it's so beautiful.

And so thank you, man, for, for your thoughts and your time.

Thanks.

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

Go LeBron James.

Oh man, we are not going to end on that note.

Um, Hey, so person out there, um, listening to this, be encouraged.

Um, realize like Jay, I mean, he, he said it, but the biggest takeaway is that the guy who's

with the church, with the thousands of people who's doing this.

And when I ask, Hey, what's the end game?

He's like, we haven't figured that out yet.

Uh, don't be frustrated if, if your church hasn't got it figured it out yet.

If they're not, if they're not listening, if they're not seeing the big picture of it

yet.

Um, it's, it's, it's a long conversation.

Uh, and, and it's one that, uh, given the opportunity to let leadership grow with you,

uh, is one that will pay off in dividends long run, uh, in the long term, because there

will come a point when you need leadership buy-in for something.

And I can speak of this personally, like, uh, there've been seasons in my life where I ran

by myself out to accomplish a goal.

Uh, and I did not bring leadership with me.

And then when I needed something from them, they didn't actually own the ministry.

Like I did because I hadn't brought them into that process.

So do that, work with your leadership, uh, go step-by-step with them through this.

And don't be discouraged if you don't know the answers.

Cause I don't, honestly, I don't think that anybody does.

We all see little pictures and pieces of things, but in the end, um, we're still trying to all

figure this out together.

So be encouraged by that.

Check out some of these resources, check out the show notes and, uh, for Ray, for Jay, uh,

and, uh, other crazy people who like LeBron James playing basketball.

Uh, this has been Jeff Reed with the church digital podcast.

Appreciate y'all.

And we'll see you next time here online.

Talk with you later.