Important Dates, News & Notes For Church Communications | Katie Allred

Jason Hamrock: [00:00:43] Hey, Katie, welcome to the show. How are you?

Katie Allred: [00:00:46] Yeah, thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

Jason Hamrock: [00:00:48] Man. You’re like, this is, is this episode number four that you’ve been with us now? fourth time? Five times?

Bart Blair: [00:00:56] I think so, I think it’s fourth, yeah. Yeah, we’re coming up to the end of season three. She was on the very, well, the very first episode, which is still one of the most watched and listened to.

Jason Hamrock: [00:01:08] You should go watch that episode.

Bart Blair: [00:01:10] It was stellar, it was you two alone. I was not there, but it apparently rocked because…

Jason Hamrock: [00:01:14] People love Katie.

Bart Blair: [00:01:15] People are still listening to it.

Katie Allred: [00:01:17] Thank you.

Jason Hamrock: [00:01:20] Well, I’m excited to have you here. And our listeners know who you are, but just in case we got some new listeners, why don’t you take a second and introduce yourself?

Katie Allred: [00:01:32] Sure. Yeah. So I am the founder of churchcommunications.com. I started it back in 2015 as a Facebook group, and it really grew on its own and just kind of took on a life of its own. And I think as many pastors, maybe you started a church plant and you saw that church plant grow to a church of, you know, 5000, I feel like have pastored many churches during that time, even though it was the same church, and so I think that people might be familiar with that feeling. Outside of that, I am an author, I work in technology, I love Jesus, and the church, and I have always just been passionate about helping churches grow and to share the word as clearly as they possibly can, where they can, and as often as they can. And so, yeah, that’s kind of where I am today.

Jason Hamrock: [00:02:24] Yeah. Katie’s got a huge heart for the local church and church communications. Like just, how do you communicate effectively in a church? And so she’s an expert and has a lot to say It’s fun to listen to her talk about it.

Bart Blair: [00:02:39] If I’m not mistaken, the last time Katie was on the show was right at the release of the book. In fact, you opened your box and showed copies of the book with us on that episode. How long ago would that have been?

Katie Allred: [00:02:51] So that was August of 2022.

Bart Blair: [00:02:57] Okay. So August, so eight, nine months ago.

Katie Allred: [00:03:02] Yeah. It’s still a baby, it’s still in its infancy.

Bart Blair: [00:03:04] Yeah. So how have things gone since the release of the book?

Katie Allred: [00:03:09] Yeah, you know, it sold out fairly quickly, and it was hard to get them. Which is great. I bought.

Jason Hamrock: [00:03:14] I bought a lot, I did.

Katie Allred: [00:03:15] It was all Jason, actually, no, yeah. Which is kind of funny, I was not expecting that at all. So yeah, that was neat. And then the book’s not just done really well, I think like what’s really great is that I’ve heard from a lot of churches, and I’ve heard from a lot of people individually. What’s fun now is that people are joining the group because of the book. So I’ve seen multiple people say, hey, I picked up this book, and she mentioned the group in the book. And I was like, oh, fantastic, that’s so much fun because I really created the book for the group, not, you know, the group for the book. So I think that’s really fun to see people coming to join the community after that. But at the end of the day, I’m just really passionate about the community and how I can help them grow.

Jason Hamrock: [00:04:05] Yeah, yeah, I’m excited. We’re going to dive into what you did with the book, but before we do that, I guess we should talk about a new partnership.

Katie Allred: [00:04:17] We should probably discuss our new partnership. Yeah, if you would like to do that.

Jason Hamrock: [00:04:22] Oh, you’re going to put it on me. Well, okay…

Katie Allred: [00:04:25] Sorry, that was because of my desktop. But for the people who aren’t watching this via video, I’m just changing colors over here.

Bart Blair: [00:04:33] It actually looks like you have a fire in your office as it’s causing an orange glow on your face. This is better, yeah. Okay.

Jason Hamrock: [00:04:40] There you go.

Bart Blair: [00:04:41] All right. Well, talk about a distraction, a little ADD moment there. All right, partnership, let’s rewind.

Jason Hamrock: [00:04:47] We are so excited to be announcing that Missional Marketing is a partner with Katie and Church Communications. That came into effect on January 1st, and so we’re co-owners, and we’re so excited, Missional Marketing is, we’re thrilled. All of our team is thrilled about this partnership because just like Katie was saying a minute ago, we love Jesus, we love Him passionately and deeply. And we want more and more people to know him, and we think that’s best done through local churches. And we care deeply about church communications, and so we want to help churches just get better at how they communicate so that they can share the Gospel with more and more people. So what better partnership to have than with Katie Allred and Church Communications? So the opportunity came up and we said, yes. It wasn’t even a…Before she even finished. Yes, the answer is yes, we’d love to partner with Katie and her team. And it’s been a blast the last 3 or 4 months now that we’ve been kind of talking. And of course, we have a relationship that goes back years. So this wasn’t like, you know, we thought of this one day, it was a kind of a thing in the making, and we were just super excited.

Katie Allred: [00:06:00] Yeah, well, I’ve been really excited and I know our team has been really excited to have some fresh energy and we’ve been enjoying discussing all the new stuff that we have coming up and coming out. And yeah, I’ve just really appreciated the, again, just having that same mentality of like we want to help the local church do the best job that they can, reaching the people in their communities the best way they know how and to help them grow.

Bart Blair: [00:06:27] I think it’s important to note that church communications and Missional Marketing are two separate entities, right? It’s not becoming one organization, but we get the benefit of the synergy of two different teams who both have kind of different creative spaces and different areas of expertise. And we’re actually pulling together to really benefit both organizations, right? So I think that, you know, Missional Marketing will become stronger because of our connection with Katie and the people that are on her team, and then hopefully Katie and her team feel like there’s a benefit with connecting with some of our people and some of our expertise. And so it’s really, I mean, we really don’t know that we can fully predict just how far this partnership will allow our two families to grow and to go. But above everything else, we want to honor Jesus with what we’re doing and think, you know, everything from just the initial conversations about how this is all going to come together and even now what it looks like going forward, it’s all about ultimately pointing people to the King of the universe and, you know, make making decisions that are going to be ultimately not beneficial for church comms, not ultimately beneficial for Missional Marketing, but beneficial for the hundreds, if not thousands and thousands of churches that we get to interface with on a regular basis, so very excited. I’m pumped and I know our team is pumped. So yeah, I’ll just reiterate what Jason said.

Jason Hamrock: [00:07:52] So let’s dive in, I’ve got three things I’d love to talk to you about, Katie, and just kind of get your input and pick your brain a little bit. This will help a lot of people. As Katie was mentioning, she wrote a book we launched back in August. You got to get the book, if you haven’t, just go to Amazon, and look for Church Communications by Katie Allred, buy the book, buy it for your whole team. It’s a workbook, okay, so it’s a book that you want to read, and there are different chapters in the thing. But Katie, talk about what you did with this book in the, you know, the courses that are going to be coming out pretty soon.

Katie Allred: [00:08:29] Yeah. So the book itself is definitely a textbook. I wrote it with my 18-year-old students in mind when I was a professor at a college. I said, what would they know and what would they not know about church communication? If somebody was just to pick this up off the shelf and they just got assigned to do social media through church, like, where would they begin? You know, or they just became the communications director, the first-ever communications director at the church. There are so many people who probably listen to this that was like, yep, that was me.

Jason Hamrock: [00:09:02] That was me.

Katie Allred: [00:09:03] That is me right now. And so I designed it and I wrote it basically as a roadmap for people who just haven’t done this work before. And basically, it’s a marketing primer, it’s not like a communications primer. It’s not, I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of advanced theory in there. I mean, I think maybe I threw a couple of crazy ideas in there if you want them. But I think mostly more than anything, it really is a primer on what is branding and what is social media and how can we use it best. And we need to build a website, or we’re rebuilding our website, what should we do? What platforms should we use? How should we build it? Should we use a designer? Should we not use a designer? What happens in a moral crisis? What is our crisis communication plan? There are some very like, just basic things that I go over in that, and so I think that has been really helpful for the church.

Jason Hamrock: [00:10:00] Very much so, because you can just pull it off the shelf when you enter into one of those situations, whatever that might be, and there’s an answer in that book. And so you have taken the book now and you’ve put it into an online curriculum, like something you can actually go through. And talk a little bit about what that’s looking like, and when that might release for our viewers.

Katie Allred: [00:10:27] We can’t give away too much, Jason…

Jason Hamrock: [00:10:30] But we gotta give away a little bit.

Katie Allred: [00:10:31] We’ll give away some. You know, I think that we’re still working on the curriculum right now, which is really great. And recording all the videos and stuff to go along with it of me teaching, and hopefully, we’re going to throw in some other people teaching, just to just encourage everyone. And also because I think other people have better perspectives than I do necessarily on specific topics. You know, I never, well, you know, I take it back, I have branded a church. I was about to say I’ve never branded a church. I have, I don’t know. But, you know, like, I have never done some of these things, and I think some people have walked through them more hand-in-hand than I have, and so getting their perspective is always good. So we’re coming up with this curriculum. It’ll be, you know, probably around 12 modules that you will walk through with hopefully some homework and some quizzes and some guides on how to get started doing church communication in your church. And I am excited about it because it’s going to be very helpful for a lot of people, and I think that we plan on at least doing some beta testing this summer and hopefully launching this fall. We’re gonna, fingers still crossed, you know, don’t come back at me and be like I thought this was out. But at least that’s my hope.

Jason Hamrock: [00:11:56] Yeah, we’re excited about it because it is going to be a helpful guide. And I’ll tell you, we talked with lots of churches. Sometimes, you know the listeners, you guys, we talk with you and you have a lot of questions sometimes, you just run into things. It happens all the time, I talked to a church not too long ago and they had this crisis. Right? Their lead pastor abruptly resigned. What do you do? You know, and so we were able to speak into that. But that’s the kind of stuff I think it’s going to be really helpful for our listeners that are, if you’re in the church communication space at all, you know you’re project manager, a director, a designer, whatever you whatever role, this curriculum is going to be really helpful for you. So I’m super excited about it to come out sometime here in 2023, we’ll see. But it’s going to be good.

Bart Blair: [00:12:44] You know, I consider myself a pretty competent teacher. And one of the things that I’ve learned over the years as a teacher is that not everyone can simply read a book and learn, they need some more tactile experience and also need some of the visual aspects of it. And so that’s one of the things that excites me about taking the book, where I’m sure that thousands upon thousands of people have benefited from reading the book, but there are some people that are just simply not going to get the most out of it simply by reading it. And so being able to put it in a format that allows people to walk through it at a pace that works for them with some exercises and things that they can actually put into practice, and then hearing from some people who can teach and coach them through each of the the the units, I think it’s very cool. There’s no grade, so this is not flashing back to your college professor days where you have to grade papers, you’re creating a curriculum for which there are no grades. Right?

Katie Allred: [00:13:38] Yeah, of course. Well, mean can grade you if you would like me to, I do have the rubric, so that is possible. But yeah, there’s no grade. This is more for, you know, people who are continuing their education. But I do think, you know, it’s going to be very helpful for so many people, and I am excited to see what churches learn because I think that they’re going to help me, you know, teach other churches as well along the way. That’s something I really enjoy is the synergy that comes from people learning together and discussing this. And like you said, Bart, you know, people, you can read it. But I always like to think of when I was, this actually goes back to my camp days, okay, so when I taught camp to, you know, I was a third through sixth-grade camp counselor. And I remember them telling us in order for people to really understand, or for children to learn really well, they need to read it, they need to hear it, and then they need to do it. And so, you know, we’ve got the book, you can read it, now, you need to hear about it, so you need to listen to the curriculum, and then do it. And I think doing it together with people is always really helpful.

Jason Hamrock: [00:14:50] That’s really well said. Yeah, that’s gonna be fun. All right, well, we’ll wait till that comes out. The next thing I want to talk about though, Katie, is there’s a conference coming up real soon, in June, the end of June. And it’s the Church Innovation Summit. It’s the AI, Church AI Innovation Summit. Will you talk a little bit about what is that and why are we putting together a summit on AI?

Katie Allred: [00:15:17] Yeah, so it’s churchinnovationsummit.com, for anybody who’s interested in registering. It is totally free, we do have an all-access replay pass if you want to get the bonus stuff or you want to watch it six months or so afterward. But what I love about this, and the Church Innovation Summit we’re hoping will become an annual event, we’ll find out. But, you know, this one’s focused directly on artificial intelligence. And something, I just don’t know, there are so many neat things that have come out. If you haven’t already experienced ChatGPT, I highly recommend getting in there, it’s free and just play around with it. But I think that there are so many new technologies now that can make your job at the church, especially as a church communicator, so much easier. There are logo creators that are AI-based, and there are headshot generators. And so how many times have you needed a good headshot of your pastor and couldn’t get one right? And now you can pay $17 and upload a bunch of random photos of him with his grandkids and just cut out his head and then you can end up with some professional headshots. So I think there are so many good things, yeah, that are coming because of AI.

Bart Blair: [00:16:30] I didn’t know you could do that. But I’ve got a few pictures of Jason Hamrock, I’m going to see what kind of headshot.

Jason Hamrock: [00:16:35] Oh, come on now.

Katie Allred: [00:16:36] Try it, yeah.

Bart Blair: [00:16:37] All right, that’s fun, that’s fun.

Katie Allred: [00:16:39] I’ll send you the website after this, but obviously, you can just look up Headshot Generator AI or whatever. But yeah, even Canva now has AI tools where you can just select a part of a person’s shirt and say, change the shirt to a professional shirt, and it will change the shirt or change the background, like, you can even do all that in Canva now. So there’s so much coming that I want to help people understand it and navigate it because I think it’s going to make their jobs easier, but also because I don’t want them to be behind.

Bart Blair: [00:17:15] Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that, like you just said, it’s going to affect church communication staff, but it’s also going to affect pastors and preachers.

Katie Allred: [00:17:26] How you write a sermon.

Jason Hamrock: [00:17:27] Yeah, and it is advancing fast. So, you know, we’re going to do our best in this conference to kind of, we’ve invited a bunch of people who are as expert as you can be in this field that’s just evolving daily, for them to talk about how this is going to impact you and your job, your church, and what that all means. And that’s going to be a fun, I think it’s going be a really fun, free conference.

Bart Blair: [00:17:57] We’ll make sure to link to churchinnovationsummit.com in the show notes. So if you happen to be driving right now and you can’t remember, just go to the show notes, go to our website, MissionMarketing.com, go to the podcast page, and we’ll make sure that we link to that if you can’t remember it. So, very excited about that. We’ve got a couple of the Missional Marketing team members who are probably the two smartest people that we have on our team who are going to be part of the conference as well, and some other guest speakers.

Jason Hamrock: [00:18:22] That’s not Jason and Bart.

Bart Blair: [00:18:24] No, definitely not. But one of them is Jason, one of them is Jason, it’s just a different Jason. You will actually, if you tune into the conference, you will hear the smartest Jason we have on our team. We actually have several Jasons, and you might rank like number 3 or 4 on the list.

Jason Hamrock: [00:18:39] I’m at the bottom. Okay.

Bart Blair: [00:18:41] No offense, it’s just that these guys are like, they are technical wizards. Jason is very good at a lot of things, but when it comes to the technical stuff, these guys, like, they know the ones in the zeros in ways that…

[00:18:53] Yeah, they’re the best of the best.

Bart Blair: [00:18:54] That we can never even imagine understanding the ones and zeros. So, very cool.

Katie Allred: [00:18:58] Sometimes I miss that. Like I used to be a one-and-zero girl, and now I’m just like, not in that world anymore. And sometimes I’m like, I miss it, let’s get back to that. I’m just taking apart networks and putting them back.

Bart Blair: [00:19:12] Not my thing.

Katie Allred: [00:19:13] Not for you.

Jason Hamrock: [00:19:14] No, not for me.

Bart Blair: [00:19:16] Yeah. More power to the people who can do it.

Katie Allred: [00:19:17] Take tables and put them back together, and build cat5, and all sorts of crazy stuff. I know.

Bart Blair: [00:19:24] Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Katie Allred: [00:19:27] All right, it’s a wild life, so…

Jason Hamrock: [00:19:28] So we’re not going to talk about Cat5 in the Church Innovation Summit, I guarantee you that.

Katie Allred: [00:19:33] If you need to know how to make it, you can send me a DM on Facebook and I will tell you how to do it.

Bart Blair: [00:19:39] Okay? Just in case. Just in case you can’t find the YouTube video that helps, just DM Katie.

Katie Allred: [00:19:44] No, DM Katie.

Bart Blair: [00:19:48] Okay, it sounds like you actually have a need to be filled somewhere with that geeky stuff. So, all right, got it.

Katie Allred: [00:19:57] I think I miss teaching.

Bart Blair: [00:19:58] Got it. All right, hey, we got one more thing that we need to talk about, something that’s coming in the fall. Jason…

Jason Hamrock: [00:20:04] Yeah, well, so we’re having a church communications conference, it’s coming at the end of September. A lot more details to come out on that, we’re really excited to be, obviously, be partnered together in this with this conference. But you did one last year, you did kind of like the inaugural kickoff, if you will, because, you know, I think we did it in the past, but COVID and all that kind of stuff. So talk a little bit about what happened last year, and then what we can anticipate this coming year.

Katie Allred: [00:20:30] Yeah. So last year what I really loved was that we kind of zero based it from any conference that I had ever like attended, really. I wanted to do something different, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about the term unconference, but almost wanted to unconference it. And so what we did was almost made it more academic, honestly. So we only had a few speakers, like a handful of speakers, we had like four speakers. And after each talk, we broke down at our tables and discussed and had a workbook and kind of discussed what they spoke about and how it can apply to your church in your context specifically. And to me, like, learning from others and networking with other church communicators is where the gold is. I think that that, for our community, is where the gold is. The fact that we have all these opinions and all these different ways that we have done things is something that just cannot be recreated anywhere else. You can have a million experts, but you only have one group with a thousand people who have actually done it, right? And so I think, like I like to consider all these people are the experts and how do we flip the script, right? Like, how do we make it not so much about the speakers and what they’re presenting, but about the people around the table and who they are and how they operate, and how they can learn from one another? Because even the beginner church communicator can offer something new to a person who’s been doing it for 50 years or, you know, in reverse, right? I think that there’s a lot that can be learned from someone who’s been doing this for so long. And so I think that that’s what I really love about our conference and about our conferences and what’s coming up is, is the community aspect of it all, of really focusing on the people and not so much the like, I don’t know, breakout sessions, keynotes. Yeah, that’s fine, and you’re going to get that. Like, you can go, there are a million conferences that you can get that anywhere, that’s fine. I’m not mad at those places.

Jason Hamrock: [00:22:41] Yeah, yeah, they’re great.

Katie Allred: [00:22:43] Yeah, they’re alright for someone. But what I really want to do is celebrate our community really well and learn together and get that energy that only comes from us being together. And so we encourage our sponsors even to be a part of the room, we don’t want anybody, like, feeling left out, we want everybody working together to think collaboratively. So Bart, did you come last year? Now tell me more about your experience at it.

Bart Blair: [00:23:14] Yeah, I was there, and feelings a little hurt that you don’t remember that I was there, but I was there.

Katie Allred: [00:23:19] I thought you were there, but then my brain went.

Bart Blair: [00:23:22] You had a whole lot of stuff going on, so, yeah.

Katie Allred: [00:23:24] It’s a busy day for me.

Bart Blair: [00:23:26] Yeah, it’s okay. Here’s the experience. And if I were trying to help someone make a decision about whether or not they should go, these are the reasons that I think they ought to go. Number one, the conference is authentic to who the church comms group is. It’s not like the church comms group is trying to put on some conference and be something we’re not. You talked about the authenticity, the emphasis of the community, and 100% you get to know people, a lot of them face to face that you maybe have even interacted with in the church communications group, which is very cool. I actually got to be a table facilitator and sat around a table with, you know, seven, eight other people who weren’t just church communications professionals, there were people at the table who were the pastor’s administrative assistant who also happens to have the responsibility for the social media accounts and the weekly newsletter and things like that. And sitting right next to her across the table from that person was someone who’s been a church communications director for a decade or more. And the conversation around the table after each presenter kind of presented their content was just really cool because it was really, it was like a cohort or a mastermind of people sharing ideas, sharing their experiences, and really just blessing each other. We had people at the table who were coming from churches of, you know, a 1000, 1500, 2000 people, and we had people sitting at the table in churches of 150, you know, 200, 250 people. So this conference isn’t just for like the high-level church comms people, it’s also not just for entry-level, I don’t know anything about church communications, it is really an invitation to come to be a part of the community in person, just like you would if you were in the group. Where anybody who has expertise and experience in something can be a blessing to somebody else. And, final note, we were really well fed, Katie, I don’t know who was responsible for putting together the lunches, but…That was you?

Katie Allred: [00:25:26] I love food, so I make sure that you’re fed. I was raised Southern Baptist, and so that means I have to eat at least every three hours or I will die. So, yeah, no, I’m going to make sure that there’s food. So, yeah, we had donuts last time in the morning, and we had snacks throughout the day, and then we had hot chicken at lunch.

Bart Blair: [00:25:46] Hot chicken, I won’t forget the hot chicken, and there was so much of it too. So you know what, if you come, it’s an opportunity to hang out with people that you can build some real relationships with and enjoy meals together. If you don’t get anything else out of it, it’s a great time to eat. So there’s my plug. The dates are September 21st and 22nd, are we in Nashville again? What’s the location? Is that the plan, or do we have a location nailed down yet? We are working on that, it’s going to be in the Nashville area again, and we’re kind of working on all those details.

Jason Hamrock: [00:26:16] I’m really excited about this year’s theme, and we came up with this one because it just seems like there’s so much change going on around us, outside the church, right, and even inside the church, and just the way we do church. And so our theme this year is The Next Era, and how we can really look towards the future. And some of this, there’s a reason why we’re doing the AI conference coming up because that’s going to be part of what’s happening with how we do church communications in this drastically changing era, coming out of kind of COVID, right? And a lot of churches are growing, which is so, thank you, Jesus, because we’re on calls with a lot of churches and they’re having record attendance at Easter, which happened not too long ago, and more and more people are coming back. So how do you deal with all that? How do you deal with all the things that, you know, Katie talked about, anything from social media to staff changes to just things that happen inside the church and your department, and how do you handle that? We want to really kind of tackle that and speak into it and collaborate. It’s going to be fun.

Katie Allred: [00:27:26] Yeah. So it’s going to be in late September, we’re still nailing down the exact specific date, so it’s going to be that week, so don’t worry, Bart.

Jason Hamrock: [00:27:33] Kind of around there.

Katie Allred: [00:27:34] It’s going to be that week. But just check churchcommunications.com, we’re going to be posting more relevant information. Obviously, join the group if you haven’t, we’ll be posting relevant information in there. And I am really looking forward to it, we’re still nailing down the venue, but it’s going to be incredible and I’m really excited to just spend some time with our people again. But in Nashville, Tennessee, again, because that’s my homeland, I’m forcing everyone to come here because I think it’s the best place in America.

Jason Hamrock: [00:28:02] It’s a pretty good place to go.

Katie Allred: [00:28:04] It’s a good place, there’s great music, and there’s good food. And then you could just take some time and enjoy it with your team if you want. So, you know, that’s what I think at least.

Jason Hamrock: [00:28:16] I agree. I agree. Nashville at the end of September, it’s going to be nice.

Bart Blair: [00:28:23] All right. We need to wrap this podcast episode up, I will give each of you an opportunity to kind of give a parting shot. We’ll start with you, Jason, and we’ll let Katie have the last word. Jason, anything that you want to just kind of share? As you know, a lot of churches as they listen to this are moving towards the summer months. Any encouragement, any special words, anything that you want to [inaudible] for our guests.

Jason Hamrock: [00:28:47] Yeah, it seems like there has been this, and it’s probably in your church too, there’s been a little bit of a wave of more and more people attending. And I want to encourage you to not lose sight of those people that come to your church and give you some information, especially if you’re generating emails, communicate with them. Don’t just assume that they’re going to come back. And so that’s my parting shot, is that throughout this summer, into the fall, you really want to be focused on how do you continue to cultivate new people that are showing up to your church and don’t just kind of hope they show back up again? You have to be somewhat intentional to connect with them, and that will pay off big time if you actually take the time to, you know, connect with them. And sometimes that’s your job as a director through, you know, emails. Sometimes that’s the ministry’s job to pick up the phone, you know, the phone, and actually call. Like that’s a foreign concept to some churches. Do you mean you call people? Yeah, you do, you want to connect with people, that’s one of the best things you can do. So that’s my parting shot, and keep the momentum going.

Bart Blair: [00:28:47] Katie, over to you. Parting shots?

Katie Allred: [00:29:51] Okay. So I think, and I’ve said this a million times, life change happens in the context of relationships. And like Jason said, you’ve got to build those relationships. I think, like, Jason said, I’ve seen a lot of new people come to our church too, and so just seeing it grow is always a really wonderful thing. And people are coming to hear the Gospel and also to find community. I think that that’s the funny part, right, is that people come to our online community to find community because they are lonely in their job. But then people come to church to find community locally because they’re, you know, growing and learning and doing new things in their community. And so, yeah, I think like figuring out how to make more of those connections and actually keep up with them is, you know, our next like big foray. And I know that obviously there are CMS and CHMS systems and there are different ways. But you’re right, I don’t think there’s anything, you know, better sometimes than just the old-fashioned connection of picking up the phone or obviously texting or, you know, my church emailed me with like a whole bunch of questions because they were like, what do you do exactly? And so I remember getting that email and being excited to like meet with them and those kinds of things. So that was a lot of fun. So I recommend, you know, actually just reaching out to people and looking them up, adding them on Facebook, adding them on Instagram. Like I think that’s also a new and fun way to like actually follow up with people.

Jason Hamrock: [00:31:22] Yeah. Agreed.

Bart Blair: [00:31:23] Hey, thank you guys so much for hanging out with me. It’s been a privilege to hang out with both of you, I respect both of you a ton in what you do and the company that you lead, the organizations that you lead. And for all of our listeners, thanks again for tuning in. If you’re not subscribed where you’re listening to the podcast, make sure that you subscribe. Give us a review. We prefer a five-star review, we’ll take a four-star, but we really prefer five stars that will feed the algorithm of the podcast world and make sure that if you’re watching on YouTube that you don’t just subscribe, but you ring the bell so that you get notified about future episodes. Thanks again, Katie, Jason, I’m Bart, and we’re out.