Podcast Episode 26: Episode 192: Special Edition with Jay Kranda

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Jay Kranda from Saddleback Church is one of the world’s first online pastors. Join Jon and Emily as they dive into a can't-miss conversation with Jay about the history and future of digital ministry.

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This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock partner Triumph Tech, a full service specialist partner. Rock partners provide crucial support for Spark Development Network and important services for the Rock community. Connect with Triumph Tech today at rockrms.com/partners. Welcome to this special edition of the Rockcast podcast. I'm host Emily Forman, and with me today are Jon Edmiston and our very special guest, Jay Cranda. Jay is the innovative tech pastor at Saddleback Church. He was hired as one of the first online pastors in 2010, and he's now one of the longest running online pastors in the world. You may have run across Jay at his website, jkrande.com, or maybe his ebooks or podcasts, his conference talks, but especially potentially his book, Online Church, is not the answer. We're gonna be speaking with Jay today about digital ministry, and some of these concepts come out of his books. We do recommend you get your hands on that. You can find it at Amazon.com. Currently, Jay is overseeing a weekly crowd of many thousands of people that attend Saddleback Church's online experiences in a variety of digital platforms. And excitingly, Saddleback Church is also in the process of migrating to the Rock platform. We're really looking forward to discussing digital ministry today with one of the leaders in this space. Welcome, Jay. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to jump into this, and I will say we are very excited about coming into the Rock ecosystem as well. Well, we're we're thrilled about that. We're so happy to chat with you here today. As , and our listening audience does, anyone who spent about two minutes listening to anything coming from Rock, they know that digital ministry is the heart and soul of what we're doing. We will check the boxes on getting everyone the admin features they need, but when it comes to digital ministry, that's where our heart is. And so I think we have a great intersection there. We're really interested in exploring the different views and perspectives on that here today. So let's start with some of the vision and philosophy about digital ministry, a kind of as you've expressed it and the the viewpoints you've built up in your time and experience in this area. You titled your book Online Church Is Not The Answer, which sounds a little bit different than your actual perspective or what you've been doing. It's a funny thing to to title your book. What was the central problem you were hoping to challenge with a title that? Yeah. I mean, it's it I do feel I was a little scared to release that title, to be honest. I wasn't sure how people might receive it. Really, , I I kinda came to this understanding early on doing online ministry and figuring out what this could look for our church was that there were I would have a lot of friends that were I would call them, , digital missionaries. They were really pushing the church to evolve in this area of digital ministry. And I think sometimes missionaries can kinda go off the edge where they push a little bit too much, and they're doing that for the sake of evangelism for whatever they're doing. But sometimes they forget the grounding at times. And for me, , I I kind of I lay out this example. , I think of the way I use digital in the context of my my marriage. , my wife and I, we text each other throughout the day. , we may call each other. We're we're always interacting with each other, but we but we always come home to each other physically. , we we we are , I kinda use the the phrasing, we we have a geo relationship, , , there there's a reason why we come home to each other. And I think I think that my title was kind of reminding everybody that online technology are amazing things, but there is something to a physical expression of our faith. And to think that can be disconnected, I I I think is wrong. And so, , reason I use that word online church is a lot of churches over the last, I would say, 15 have adopted streaming strategies through platforms church online platform or CHOP that's called commonly used as shorthand in this space. And so a lot of people will just, , get on CHOP or start streaming and they check the box. I'm I'm doing online church. And my encouragement is to think beyond just streaming and think about how you how do you actually disciple people with all the digital and technology tools that we have at our hands. That's great. So you would say then that digital ministry complements the local church and that physical expression of gathering together? Yeah. I I think they are they they work together. And again, it's not too different, I think, to even how we're wired in our faith that we have a physical being and we have a spiritual being. , I I to remind people that, , we we're primarily connecting with our creator even in a non spatial way while there's also a space , spatial connection as well. And so, , there's this interesting dichotomy that kind of exists in this. But, yeah, I I see it as, at least in this current stage, it complements together. Very interesting. John, what comes to mind for you when you hear the term digital ministry? Well, recently, kind of epiphany. I I think the word digital ministry just took on a bigger meaning to me. I think when you get into your work, you kind of get a pattern of what you think a certain thing is. And then when you go out there and you start reading books Jay's or hearing podcasts where Jay's on it, I think you kind of opened up my perspective as there's a lot more to digital ministry than even, , I usually typically work in. The expressions of digital ministry I typically work in are more asynchronous. So it's creating daily Bible experiences, daily prayer experiences, daily content, trying to push as much content out to people so that they can ingest it. And that's more of an asynchronous thing, but I think lately, listening to more of what Jay's been talking about has opened up my eyes , wow, there's a lot more. Mean, of course streaming has always been a thing, I've known about it, but I've never really considered it as a part of as much as , how do we support that? , how do we build features for that? So I think it's just , if you just take off the word digital, it's just ministry. Yeah. And ministry is a huge area. Right? There's groups, there's worship services, there's children's ministry. And I think it's just the same thing and and it's just a big world. Yeah. Definitely. Jay, do you think there was any amount of overcorrection toward digital ministry during the COVID pandemic? And what's the balance you feel we need to strike now? Yeah. I mean, I think there was a lot of churches that just started to embrace streaming because they were forced Mhmm. During COVID. And so, , I I had a friend of mine who leads a local church here in Southern California. He'd kinda jokingly use the the the analogy of, , , pre COVID, our church was flirting with digital. COVID was a shotgun wedding with Shotgun wedding. That's good. And then, , post, it's , is this gonna be a healthy and unhealthy relationship? And I think there's a lot of ministries, churches that kind of said , oh, they turned on a stream at some point and maybe they jumped on Zoom and then they go, oh, we tried it, it really wasn't that great. And once they could meet again, especially a lot of churches that are coming out of COVID, depending where you're at in the country, some have struggled more to fill back the room. And and I think there's been some tensions there with, , filling the room and maybe how that might impact you financially and some of the budget items. And so I think a lot of churches have recoiled a little bit too much away from it because of some other priorities that are pressing. And so I think I I to again, I I think the balance is you can primarily think about your local city, for example, but also understand that you can use digital and technology in a very local way. And so, , I I always use I I , this is why one of the things that I I to encourage people to think about is I I really learning from organizations that care about the physical experience. So an example of this would be a a Facebook, for example, doesn't really care if you ever visit Facebook's headquarters. Sure. But if you look at Marriott Mhmm. They want you to book a hotel and have a great digital experience simultaneously. Yes. And I think I I I bring that up as an example because it's there's this principle. I'm forgetting the book. I reference it in my book somewhere. But there's this idea that digital will either transform or enhance your strategy. And so some industries have been completely transformed a let's say, a taxi industry has been completely transformed by digital through, , Ubers and so forth. And then there's other industries that have been enhanced, and this would be a Marriott has been enhanced. And I've I think sometimes we look at, , an Amazon and we go, , oh, we should be more Amazon. And I'm not saying there's not things we can learn from Amazon, but Amazon doesn't really care about the physical experience as much. Mhmm. So, , there was a Nathan Art wrote wrote this book a couple years ago, Flexible Church. And this and it's he's Nathan, super sharp dude. Great book. But he looked at Target, and he was , and I I talk about this in my book, but he looked he looks at Target and he kinda says, , Target now has store, drive up, , last mile strategies. And one of the only tensions with learning from Target I would have is I don't think Target cares if you ever go in the store again. Mhmm. And I just think that it doesn't mean we can't learn from that strategy. This is where I would just say, this is why I look at industries that are caring about the physical. Another example would be this, would be a a Disneyland. A Disneyland wants you to book and it wants you to go to Disney World, Disneyland, or whatever, and they want you to have the app. Yeah. And they're trying to do both. And I think we can learn more from those industries than we can look at purely decentralized digital strategy. I hope that makes sense, but that's something I would encourage people to kinda glean from maybe in your daily, weekly, yearly kind of experiences. Yeah. I think a lot people referred to too the blockbuster to Netflix transition, that blockbuster missed. It's it's the same thing you're talking about. At the end of day, they don't care that you came in the store though. They just want your money. And it's it's hard to find secular examples because we don't want their money. We just want to change their lives. Exactly. Yep. Definitely. Okay. So there may be some churches out there yet that haven't really jumped in. Maybe they dipped a big toe into digital ministry, but they haven't jumped in. And if they're thinking about it and wanting to get started, what would you say to a church that's starting from scratch and wanting to understand the best way to do digital ministry now? What's the first step they should take toward that? Yeah. I mean, I I think at a high level is the reminder is every church, , we have similar similar goals, but the way we go about, , our methodology is gonna be a little bit different, , depending denomination and geography. And so one of one of the things I really encourage churches to do is maybe to to lay out on, , a whiteboard or something this is how we disciple people. So you have a weekend experience. You might have kids ministry. You might have small groups or bible studies, a discipleship class. Lay out your approach. And then the question is is how how can you is there a digital component to each of those areas that you can do? And I I have a tool called the Alpha Omega tool where I kind of, , encourage people to integrate digital in some of these key areas. And so I think that's one way to kinda think about that. And and, really, the the goal here, as a reminder, is healthy digital integration into these key areas doesn't mean digitizing and forsaking the in person. It just means providing some kind of so, , I I use the example often of, , integrating digital into your kids ministry at your church doesn't mean that you have a YouTube strategy for kids and you no longer have Sunday morning kids programs. No. No. , that's really important. But maybe what you could have is you could could text all the parents on Sunday afternoon a a point that got covered and, hey. Here's something your kids learned about today, and that you can ask them this question to reinforce the learning. And a texting strategy is archaic technology technically to today's standards, but that could be a healthy digital integration into your kid's ministry. Mhmm. And so I think we think, , for example, my church, we have we have, , a VR ministry, and people to talk about the VR ministry, but the VR ministry is for this very rogue group of people right now. and and I I think it could it's gonna be relevant in the next decade. But I think most churches, , probably just thinking through, hey. How do I get on Instagram, , YouTube, maybe have an email strategy and a texting strategy? I think 90% of churches just need to dial in that. And if you dial in that well, then you can start thinking about some of these other experiences. Mhmm. Great advice. And really what you're trying to do is provide that personalized ministry touch to people after they leave your building. Yeah. Yeah. And and you're I think every church is trying to figure this out. I was actually just talking to , talking about The Rock. I was talking to one of The Rock one of the churches on The Rock, LCBC. Mhmm. And was hearing how they do texting in the on the platform. And I was so enthralled on this because, , one of the things we try to do, , , this is something I think every church has, but how do you make big church small? And even small churches have scale problems on this, and big churches have even bigger scale problems on this. But I was hearing from their team how they in The Rock, they go in and they text people, everybody that checked in on Monday, Tuesday. And that's a very personal touch. And and we were talking about this because over the last eight years or so, there's been this shift away from email as way more business and way more promotional and text is more personal. But I was , how do you do this? , I was trying to figure out, , how do you text people? Because some of the texting platforms and tools, you have one number and you have this inbox and it's super complicated when you have a lot of users. And I was finding out that Rock has a way to have individual numbers and you can manage it all within the system. And I was , oh, this is really cool. But this is that sweet spot of how how do you use technology to do something very personal and and you that aligns with your strategy. And, again, maybe twenty years ago, they would have been calling people on the phone, but people don't really want calls anymore. No. , that's not the way people they want the text, but then I'm but then I'm , how do you scale texting? And then I'm I'm finding out, , oh, The Rock does this with this and that. I'm , oh, that's awesome. We're gonna do that. Very cool. What would you say are the mindset shifts that a church needs to make before they even touch technology? Yeah. So I I kinda jokingly say this a lot where , , we church history is full of people being, , killed over introducing change too quickly. Yep. And and so I think I say that, , sometimes change is scary for church leaders and and understandably so. , I understand the culture is changing very quickly. There might be some reasons why God only allows us to live, , a hundred years because we only can endure so much change in our lifetime. And I usually try to say that the the hardest part about understanding technology and digital, at least even for myself, because I have I'm I'm approaching 40 and I have I have a 14 year old, a 12 year old, and an eight year old. And I watch how they use technology and the things they think I'm dumb on. Yeah. And I'm pretty savvy in this space. And I see the change, , oh, wow. They use some of this stuff way different than I do. Mhmm. , it's and and if I'm looking at maybe the coming generation going, oh, this is gonna change a lot more than even, , I think I'm ready for. I think I look at every church leader in all these churches. I go, yeah. This this stuff is scary because it's moving constantly. And I to remind people that using digital technology in your church's strategy is a moving target. This isn't just , , this is why it's really hard to write books on this because you write a book and it's outdated before it even gets published. Yes. And so I I usually just try to, , audibly say, , hey, change is coming. We all kind of are figuring this out together, and don't worry. Just start taking swings. And I have found with every step, the fog kind of lifts a little bit more, and I start understanding it a little. It's it's being a parent, , where, , I don't think I I think every month or year, , I more understand what it means to be a parent. And when somebody asks me , my my youngest brother just had their first kid and he was asking me about what does it mean, , , what does it mean to be a parent? And I'm, , thinking, , oldest is 14. I've been married in seventeen years. , I don't know how to communicate Yes. Everything I've learned. And there's so much I don't know Mhmm. Because we're just entering into the high school years, ? Yes. And so, , I I think I this is why I to say change it just there's a lot of change. Just start taking swings to learn. , think of it more a batting average Mhmm. Than you need to get it right a % of time. If you just get it right 20% of the time, you're gonna be you're gonna be good. And trust me, it'll start to make sense. Yeah. That's good. And so you can't wait until everything because that's never gonna be Yes. Yeah. That's So what would you say are some common mistakes churches might make when launching a digital initiative? I so one of the big things I I would probably say is there there's this probably a little bit of fear of empowering a younger generation or a more technical person a little bit too. , they don't wanna empower people. They wanna, , put it in a box. And I think there's this tension around , I I always try to encourage church leaders generally that you don't need to know what the plan is. You just need to cast the vision of what do you want it to be. And let the smart people or the younger , and I say younger, I'm stereotyping here, but let them figure it out and just coach them. And so, , you're not trying to you're not trying to build something that's perfect. You're just trying to figure it out as you go. And I I to encourage a lot of churches that you have people I mean, we were talking about this before we recorded, , I think about what , I think about the the plan of the way Rock built up as a company, and I'm really intrigued on that because of of just being interested on those stories. And think about this. A lot of churches have people who go to their church, who have built businesses that maybe even have marketing skills that do this for work. And I don't know if churches know how to leverage that expertise well as a ministry gift. Think you're right about that. I I think it's just a it to me, it's just start impact , you the pastor who went to seminary, , have a master's in theology. I mean, I don't use it anymore. But, , it's , I I was in those classes. I know what I got taught. Trust me. I'm not u , I'm not , my day to day stuff and that some of the technology stuff, I'm not using it a lot. So I think just empower , cast the vision of here's how our church thinks about digital technology, the theology of it, all that. And then, , hey. Just help us execute. Just empower somebody else to execute. And I think there are business people. And, , I always joke, , if you wanna have a better Instagram strategy at your church, just find the teenager that has five times more followers than yours and let them do it. Yep. ? And so there's something around there would become the way I might coach there. Yeah. That's interesting. I'd to turn the same questions to John, and let's narrow the focus specifically to the Rock platform. When a church is ready to get started with the technical side of digital ministry in the Rock context, John, where would you recommend that they start? Well, I think it's about building a solid foundation. And I think there's a lot of vendors in the space who who kind of pitch this silver bullet. Just do this. Just buy our product and everything is solved. And I've worked in the industry for, , shockingly thirty years. I've never seen a silver bullet. It usually starts not as looking a suit, it looks a pair of overalls. And you just got to think of something to do and then just do it. And I think when it comes to your data, you really have to start with solid foundation, making sure that you have some clean data. That said, don't turn that into a project. That's probably a task. Need to get moving, you need to experiment and you need to innovate. But of the things that we talk about too when we innovate is we always pick a few benchmarks, a few metrics that we want to hit so that we know what success looks and it keeps us engaged on that. Because it's easy to roll out projects, it's hard to stick with them. And as soon as you roll it out, you think you're done and you're not. It's just starting. Right. Now you've got to engage with it. You've to get people to engage with it. And I think having a metric to look at helps you guide the path. That said, don't marry your metric. It's just a starting point. You can change it. And don't turn that creation of a metric into a project either. That's usually a few minutes. , hey, how are we going to measure success? Okay, that's how we're going measure success and then what are the things we're going to do to get this line to go up? And then have someone hold you accountable to doing those things. And if that line and that metric doesn't work, then be okay with it. It's I always tell people too, if you're starting a book and you don't it, don't feel you have to finish it. you have every other book in the world to engage If that metric or that project isn't getting you the success you need and you feel you've done the hard work to to to give it a fair shot, then move on to something else. Yeah. So in in both cases, have a strategy, learn from people who are successful currently, set a goal, and just get started. Measure that, and keep learning. And have the expectation that's just gonna be gritty. I don't think we Yeah. Easy to look at where, Jay, you are now, and think, oh, that was just a magical you ended up there. No. That was a lot of work, and lot of grit and a lot of false starts and a lot of Yeah. U turns. And everybody has to expect that. Yeah. We talk about a lot of times, if you look backward at something that's been hard and successful, you see a straight line that went from where you started to where you are. But in reality, are so many highs and lows, and often more lows than highs that you have to go through to get there, that it only looks easy in retrospect or to an outsider. And I think a good story to think about too is I I think about the church in the fifteen hundreds. A little church in in Germany who decided that they were going to try a new thing called print ministry. The printing press was just discovered and this church was , Wow, we could use this for something. Now in retrospect, we're , Really? That was even a decision? But someone had to come up with the idea of a track. We could print a track. Someone had to come up. We could use this for kids ministry. We could print out little coloring sheets for them. And in hindsight, everything seems obvious. But when you're on the pioneering side of it, I'm sure they made a lot of mistakes with that print ministry. Yeah. And people were shocked , are you kidding me? We're gonna waste paper this? Yeah. In in retrospect, everything looks easy. Yeah. Yeah. It it it's so funny because there's so many examples of those where it's , was heretical at first. And then it starts to , people see the potential in it. And it's I mean, it's that classic reject, receive, redeem parts of culture and technology that we gotta process as, , followers of Jesus. I I was watching a documentary recently, and it was talking about how when Walt Disney went to, , somewhere in Europe and she he saw, , a a pre show of, , an animated short that was done. And it was kind of and one of but one of the things that was said was you could never watch a full hour and a half animated show, a movie, because it would hurt your eyes. Oh. And that would and so thinking, well, if it's , , 1920 or whatever it was when Walt was in when he saw this and, , he goes and makes Snow White. And but it was funny because when I heard that, I was just laughing how, , ridiculous that sounds. But you're right. When you look well, back in that day, , there's there's gen this is actually can be true now, but there's this this lore with there's this is kind of something they're figuring out with VR. , is it healthy for the eyes to be in VR? Mhmm. And there and so I was comparing it, and and and some of that's it's totally different. So I'm not I think there is something to be we have to process with developing eyes, looking at screens as much and all this. But it is funny how automatically there was another one with I think it was John Wesley or somebody. There's that famous story of he when they were preaching, they were preaching in the churches, and then he one of his I think it was George Whitfield, was preaching outdoors, and it was seen as unholy to preach outdoors in the open air at the time. And they were, , judging George Whitfield because he was doing these evangelistic things outdoors. And John had to, I think it was John had to switch his mind, , why can I only preach inside, , a church? , why can't I preach? And it was a big part of that explosion. But I was just laughing. I'm and so it's kinda not too different than, , evangelizing on x or evangelize , it's just the same type of conversations all over again. But, , we gotta we gotta weigh the pros and cons and wrestle through all that. Well, I'm sure they wrestle through with, , well, if we print the sermons, people will stop coming and we'll have no physical connection with them. They'll just sit in their homes and read these sermons. Just read. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure, , it seemed a valid fear back then, and it didn't come through. In fact, what happened is, , we got some of the most powerful sermons out to hundreds, millions of people, and they still went to church that weekend. Mhmm. Well, let's leverage some of this experience you both have and talk about some specific recommendations for digital ministry success. Jay, what would you say are some essential components for a healthy digital ministry? Yeah. I I kind of I obviously have this approach of thinking of it more holistically, meaning, , it's not just one aspect, but if you link it all together, it starts to feel actual church Mhmm. done, , fully. And so, , I think of it as the four s's where you have, , a streaming strategy, which is kind of a content strategy. Then you have that might be on platforms a YouTube, an Instagram, whatever it is. Then you have a strengthening type of expressions of your church. And this would be more of the programming way that you disciple people where you might have, , classes that you train people, maybe a membership class. You might have bible studies. So that might be a Zoom strategy or some kind of LMS. Or that might be a content strategy, just having a library of content that your groups can access digitally. And then so streaming, strengthening, then you have social where you might be places where you can talk to people and people can talk to other people. That might be on Instagram, a WhatsApp, or some kind of platform where there's social dynamics. And then, , kind of the the last one is kind of the the one that's the most boring, but it's really important that underlines it all and I think kind of is the foundation is your systems. Mhmm. And this would be a Rock, a giving platform, any , and and sometimes people have many of these systems, and sometimes you have one or two of these systems. And so if you have streaming, strengthening, social, and systems, I think all those together start to feel it's actual church. And this is where I would say, , a lot of churches are really good at maybe streaming in social, but they're not doing any of the other stuff. Sure. And my encouragement is to kinda think beyond that and kind of have more aspects. The premise of your book, really. Right? Yeah. So how does spiritual discipleship fit into this digital technology space? Yeah. So I I think one of the most compelling things about digital is kinda going with John was talking about this, synchronized, asynchronized type of things. And, , you have , church, at least I would probably say more the American church, maybe the European church, has really nailed in the synchronized experience on Sunday morning. , we're really good at getting people in a room. We're singing together. We're doing this. , that's social proof. There's a lot of good stuff. They're and that's biblical. , I'm not I'm not saying it's not. But I think one of the one of the other corresponding powers are these asynchronized experiences that I've really , and this is the printing of the bible, for example, was a huge thing in this. Now you could you could translate the bible. You can read it on your own and then you could keep and it's it's this it's this huge dynamic. And I think there's way more opportunities. So as much as I love streaming on YouTube live, I think YouTube is this tremendous platform. It's the second biggest search engine. It's it's this huge platform that most churches should really invest more into. But I actually think more of the more compelling experiences around digital and technology for churches are these asynchronized things, getting them into a WhatsApp group and having a thread where you talk about things going on. And think about that ability to move somebody along a spiritual journey where they don't have to be in the room together and they can just, , text you or message you or they could , I I always think about this. I have two brothers, and we're very close in age. And we haven't lived under the same roof since we were 16. And one of them during the military really early, another one kind of lived separately too. And one of the most compelling experiences that I have today outside of my relationship with my kids and my wife is my text message thread that I have with my brothers. And we don't live near each other. And I just love that, , he lives in Missouri and and he was having one of my middle brother was they were having some floods and some tornado warnings and I'm just, , texting him. And I just say, how cool it is that I can have this experience. And when I look at that experience, I go I I think about how many versions of that you could have in a church community with a pastor, with a small group, with a ministry team. You can have these experiences and you can just send them links. Hey, did you watch this? Did you send this? And you could watch it and then talk about it. I think that's where I think when I think about discipling somebody in spiritual growth, I think I'm I'm kinda getting above this, but I get really excited about the potential of that at scale. Mhmm. And that's one of the big focuses of Rock in in general as well is meeting people where they are connecting them, providing personalized connections and content. John, what are some of the top things you think about in this area? Well, definitely the systems. Mean, and I get I agree that's the most boring one. But it's important to have a good a good foundation to build off of. And that might be Rock, but it might just be the the the system that you have today that maybe you have a process problem, not necessarily a technology problem. So it's not always about changing systems. But then once you get beyond that, I think another thing that I see is this, we need more content. People are starving for content every day. So they're turning to YouTube themselves. Mhmm. And I think a lot of the content in the eighties and nineties was purely entertainment. Now we have infotainment. So when I'm on YouTube, it's usually infotainment. I'm learning something and I'm being entertained by it. And I think if we can create more of that spiritual content, and there's there is that on YouTube, but people are having to source it themselves, which in some cases is a little dangerous. So I think churches have to be curating content. And I think churches today are a little bit nervous about putting out any content that they didn't fully make themselves. And we gotta get churches sharing more of their own content, and we gotta get churches okay with curating the content for them, going onto YouTube saying, Hey, this is a good video. I can't certify everything that this provider or author will make, but I'm putting my stamp on this one video. Because people are just gonna starve, or they're in content starvation right now, spiritual content starvation. And if if churches don't give it to them, they'll either find them themselves, and it'll either be spiritual or not spiritual, or it might be bad theology. Yeah. And that's why we have tools within Rock the content library. We're just trying to get churches sharing content. These articles that you've written are great. Let's get them out to and and widen the audience for them. But it's gonna have to go beyond that too into all the different content providers that are out there that are doing great work, and how do we share that through the church? Yep. It definitely is putting ministry ahead of technology preferences. Okay. I get asked this question at least monthly, so I need both of your advice here. How should churches think about their digital ministry team? Who owns it and how do you staff it? Jay, let's start with you. Yeah. I mean, I I would come at it that the objective really shapes the structure of this. And and so, , for example, there's a difference between it being a an extension of your church, meaning a ministry, almost a , think of it a , you might have a young adult's ministry at your church where they meet on a separate night of the week. And that might be the way your online ministry is structured right now where it's just , hey, we broadcast our experience and then we provide some light engagement. And I would go, okay. It's a ministry. And so in that model, it might sit on a ministry team and maybe it's lightly connected to your production kind of worship team. Mhmm. But if you wanna do even more and you might have more of a campus, meaning you do full programming of what you do locally online, it might be more of a campus, and that's connected to a maybe your executive pastor or, , if you're multisite, you're multisite pat I mean, it all depends on how you're structured. But I I I to , I I really encourage people to, for most churches is, , dial in your weekend experience and then start thinking through real discipleship stuff beyond. And this is where I think this is why I always I usually have a a phrase I say a lot where I say, think less about the views and more getting people on video. And so, , think about ways to connect people to each other through WhatsApp groups, maybe doing a monthly Zoom type of connect, and think about actually and then if you do more of that, that drives how the structure might be. And so and then there's a lot of ways you can kinda go. I'm curious how John would answer this Yeah. From his perspective. Well, I I would to do digital ministry, need two things, technology and a good user experience. If it doesn't look good now I I agree with with Jay too. Don't good content, or having enough content is better than perfect content. Think even more authentic you can be, the better. But your mobile apps, your websites are gonna get judged by the way they look. Yep. And that's just the kind of the way it is. So I think a marriage between the technology team and the creative team is it makes magic. We we when I worked at CCV, we did that. We called it Creative Technologies. We stole the Pixar saying that art plus technology equals magic. And I also think too that technology teams in general spend too much time worrying about administrative features for staff and not enough on tools for attendees. And I think by pulling them out of the administrative operation sides helps them focus on things that change people's eternal lives versus, small improvements to staff productivity. Those are important, but you'll always have that. Jesus said, The poor will always be among you and so will the administrative features. But what we need to do is be out there reaching people. And so I think if you can't put them under the same organization, you got to have a healthy relationship between the two. There can't be, and there tends to be sometimes some friction there. So clearing that out, I think, is a huge win. Yeah. Alright. Let's talk about success. Jay, what would you say a basic digital ministry dashboard should look ? What should somebody be measuring to know how they're doing? Yeah. I mean, a high level, of course, the way your ministry thinks about this area of your church is gonna shape a lot of these numbers. So, , for example, one church might be more of a ministry strategy, meaning, , they just broadcast the weekend and they're very weekend focused. And so it's gonna be a lot of weekend metrics. Another ministry might be way more discipleship focused, and so a lot of these metrics are gonna be more deeper. And so and then if you're more of a campus strategy online, meaning an online campus, kind of the phrase some people have used, they're gonna be way more campus related metrics. And so, and the way I to encourage a lot of churches first thinking about this is you wanna see if people are moving from your stream into your community, and so I wanna see movement. So, , I to have a high and low metric. So, , you might have how many people viewed your service from, let's say, a Sunday to Saturday. So take a seven day range. How many people viewed it across all your platforms, add together maybe a website, YouTube, Facebook, whatever. Add all your views together. How many people viewed it? How many people had a retention number is the next the next column? Some people watched ten minutes or fifteen minutes. So a hundred views. Maybe only 20 people watch fifteen minutes of it. And then the last column would be how many people filled out a response card or took a next step. So you might go from a hundred to 20 retention at fifteen minutes, and then you might go to three next steps. And if you see those numbers together, you start to see actual stories. So, , an example of this would be, , whenever they build a new Chick fil A, they'll they'll do traffic reports. So how many people drive at this intersection? And let's say 10,000 people drive through this intersection over five days and they see that as potential chicken sold, but that doesn't mean that's actually sold. So if they have 50,000 people drive by this intersection in a week, they might be able to educate that they're gonna sell this many chicken sandwiches and then this many people and then so that you can see movement. So the views show potential. Yep. And and so this is where I would and so this is where I think during COVID, a lot of churches started measuring impressions and views thinking it actually counted as people, , watching. Yes. So they would say, , a thousand people attended our our church experience. And I would go, well, they watched less than a second. , I don't think that that should count. But I'm not saying that's not important. I'm just saying you gotta weigh it. And that but if you do views with retention and next steps, you actually see a real idea of what's happening that that's healthy. Mhmm. How would you see a platform Rock bridging the digital and physical ministry? Yeah. So I , to me, one of the one of the things that's really difficult is I think the Internet has made it easier than ever for us to use different tools. And so there's a lot of churches sign up for things. Oh, we wanna we wanna have emails. Oh, we'll sign up. Oh, we wanna text you guys. We'll sign up. Oh, we wanna have a whatever, streaming strategy. We'll sign up. And so churches right now have are paying for and using variety of tools. The problem is is that those tools don't talk to each other. Mhmm. And what's really nice about Rock is that it's a it's, I would say, it's more of an ecosystem. And you guys could correct me if I'm wrong here because I'm I will be stuck I'm talking under my pay grade. But or above my pay grade the yeah. I'm above my pay grade here. But the the the pro of a tool Rock is that it's able to do a lot of these things and integrate with a lot of these things. I mean, I was just reading last week or last couple weeks, , guys are constantly integrating with new tools and platforms. And what that means is that the data is flowing across all these platforms. So when I look at somebody in this this tool, I'm able to see what's actually happening. And there's so many there's so many , one of the things that I is is that if you are able to actually get everybody using the same platform, now you can actually have a real pulse of what's going on in your church. So it's not so, , this is where, , I remember one of the when I first got into ministry, my pastor, what we would do every month is we would we would get together as a high school leadership team. We'd get together and we would look through the roster of a 20 kids on our roster in our high school ministry. And we would actually go name by name to see who had been there the previous the the past month. And they're , hey. Have you guys anybody seen Jamie the last month? And if we nobody had seen Jamie, they would move Jamie into a different category, meaning we needed to contact Jamie, because we hadn't seen seen her in a while. And the thing with Rock is that, for example, if you have if you're using Rock, it's up to date. Your people use check-in features and they're checking every time you're there. You can get an alert if Jamie hadn't been there for two weeks. Yeah. And that could be sent to somebody. And this is the beauty of of a Rock is it it integrates all the data, and it'll it it allows you to scale, I think, care at a lot better level, especially if you get everybody on board and all these systems integrated. And so I think it's a great companion tool to scale what you're trying to do. John, what are your thoughts about the tools of Rock as supporting digital ministry in all of these contexts? Yeah. I definitely think having a tool where this is a central place where all your data resides is really important. And that's been from the very beginning. From the very beginning we've been told by some that that doesn't work. You have to have all these tools and they have to integrate all amongst themselves. And that goes back all the way back to when I worked at, , Honeywell and American Express. I've just never seen it happen. All those writing integrations to all these different tools just doesn't work. And so, yeah, it's a little bit putting all your eggs in one basket, but your eggs are going to be in baskets. So pick a good basket. And it's just been a model that's kind of proven itself out. But it's not one that in beginning at least, was a tough model to sell. And I think a lot of people wanted us and expected us to be a church management system, which we are, we checked that box. But from the very beginning we didn't label ourselves as a church management system. Actually, if I'm being honest, was labeled that way for about three to four weeks. It was a very short period. And then we changed it to relationship management system, because we really wanted to focus on, even before digital ministry, people part of it. And then digital ministry kind of grew up all around, and we kind of grew with it. But I do think having all your data in one place is super important. To be honest, I feel that's one area we still need to keep working on, is that there is so much, so many gold nuggets still in the ground inside the database that we don't expose. We're trying to constantly expose more and more of it. But when I go into a Rock instance, man, there is so much valuable data in there. And it's our job to kind of help partner churches to get that data exposed. Right. And in ministry, when we're talking data, we're talking people. Whenever we approach siloed various tools, and you can't write perfect integrations to everything and keep up with them, right? So your data's gonna get stuck somewhere in the pipeline. Wherever your people data is stuck, that's where your knowledge is stuck on people. So administering to someone when you have less information is much harder. And Jay, it's super interesting to hear about your your physical activity that you were involved in of of addressing a 20 kids. It would be you'd hit an inflection point very soon after that one twenty number, I think, where it'd be very difficult to do that well. And so that's when you move into the, , data as a human. Yeah. It's it's interesting because, , , our founding pastor, pastor Rick, would always say this idea that, , he he knew everybody's name up to a certain size at our church. Mhmm. And then there hit, , a moment he he couldn't remember everybody's name. And his capacity for remembering names was a lot greater than I think the average person. But I think a lot of churches, , don't realize might think, oh, we don't need this tool because we're only, , 200 people or 500 people or whatever it is. And I would say, I don't think I think there's a reason why, , Jesus only really discipled 12 people very closely. I think there there's a scale problem. And so you actually integrating technology correctly into your ministry doesn't replace the relational connection. It just again, it amplifies it. And I think it and this is why I think, again, that experience, , we did that on a Word doc. And it was funny too. It was one it wasn't even, , on a Microsoft SharePoint or whatever. Well, that didn't exist. It was just one Word doc. One Word And we would print it out. Yeah. And we would and I remember doing that, , in I was doing that in college. I was, , I was doing an internship, I remember, , this is a really good idea. , I love this. And it was using some purpose driven strategy stuff in this sense. But I remember I remember going, , but this is very tedious. And this is where, , again, it's simple stuff, but just to know , hey, how many people were at church this weekend? And and you might not be able to know, , exactly because not everybody has kids. But if if I know how many people checked in, I can know how many people didn't check-in. Yep. And then and then you can run reports how many people are in our roster that haven't taken our membership class or how many people have are in our roster that are members that aren't in a group roster. I mean, you could start to actually get a sense of how deep your core is or how many people have given in the last year. Oh, wow. We might have 10,000 people, but only 5,000 people have given the last year. You might have a you might need to think through , oh, why aren't more people giving this is where, , a good tool that has all the data that can help you in your process can scale your care. Because now that shapes , oh, wow. We really need to schedule this or do that. Yep. So so many good nuggets of information based on your experience, Jay, and John, yours. This will be a really valuable podcast for people who are at a variety of states in their digital ministry and wanting to learn and grow in those spaces. Jay, beyond your role there at Saddleback, what are some other churches that you see that are, , doing a great job in digital ministry right now and might be a great example for someone to pay attention to? So I I will say that I am I I prob I'm pretty candid that I feel we are good at a lot of stuff at our church, but I'm constantly learning from other churches. Mhmm. , constant. And I say that to encourage you, , you need to have an awareness that you have a lot of blind spots on this because, , digital is this, , constant involving thing, and we need we need a lot of feedback Mhmm. And iterations. And so I'm constantly seeing something from another church and going, oh, , I need I'm I'm taking that. And I didn't even think about it that way. And so, so I'm I I do this con I probably church hop more on on a week on Monday than probably anybody because I'm always, , curious what people are doing or how they're executing strategy. So I say that as an encouragement. Please learn from other people. One of the cool things about digital technologies, we can watch and engage and learn from everybody. I could go and see how another church uses Rock. Yep. And it's awesome to kinda oh, that's I had no , I gotta I'll I'll I'll answer the question, but I'll I'll I'll say the tangent is there's a there's a big church that uses Rock, and I signed up for their for something that they do online. And I I got an email with a header email of the campus pastor in this email. So what happened was they had created an automation that anybody who creates an account automatically gets an email from their campus pastor. And this church was a large church with multisite. And in the template of the email was a photo of the campus pastor. And I literally created this account because I was just kind of stalking them. And I literally was , oh my goodness. We can create header templates and they can get , everybody who creates an account can get a personal email from their campus password. That's awesome. and to me, somebody listening and , Jay, you don't do that? Yeah. It's dumb. I should have already thought of this idea. But when I saw it, I literally emailed back the guy and I was , I just wanna let , , I'm introducing this on week one of being on the Rock. Oh, that's awesome. And I think it's just this, , you gotta be learning and and digesting. And so, , a great church that I think does online ministry really well, and I I I shout them out. They're part of the Rock community, but Church on the Rock in Saint Louis. I love what David and Tommy have done because I think they are very local focused, but they've leaned into digital in a very advanced way. They do they're they're a they're a large church, but they do they do they punch up. , they do a lot more than the average church their size. And I'm very impressed on how they align their mission and vision, and they integrate digital connected to local. Yep. Well, Jay, thanks so much for sharing your insights. And if our listeners are interested in hearing more about strategic digital ministry and how to approach it, they can find your book again on Amazon, church on sorry. Online church is not the answer. So check that out and and start your journey today. Or don't be discouraged if something you've done in the past hasn't worked out for you. Keep going and learn from each other, and that's a huge component of the Rock community. Thanks so much for joining us today. We appreciate your insights and are so excited to have you, joining this community. Do a church that loves the idea of using Rock but hasn't taken that leap yet? 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