Innovative Approaches to Digital Ministry | Alan George

Bart Blair: [00:00:06] Well, Alan George, thank you so much for coming back to be a guest on the Missional Marketing podcast.

Alan George: [00:00:12] Thank you so much, Bart. I’m excited to be here.

Bart Blair: [00:00:14] We’re glad to kind of have a reconnection. It’s been a couple of years since we last spoke, since the last time you were on the Missional Marketing podcast. The last time we met, the world was just coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, church restrictions were being lifted, and we had a really in-depth conversation about the church online space. And I’m excited about our conversation today because I think, as we were talking before we started recording, that a lot of dust has settled for a lot of churches as it relates to their online ministry and their online presence. And so what we want to do is lean in with you today about some best practices that you’re seeing with churches, and really just help them kind of make sure that they’re still putting the right foot forward when it comes to online church and online ministry. But before we get into the details of all of those things, why don’t you share with our audience a little bit about your background, your ministry history, and how you ended up doing what you’re doing today?

Alan George: [00:01:12] Yeah. Thank you. I’m honored that I get to come back and be with you all and your audience. So I am originally from India, born and raised in the Middle East, I spent most of my life there. I moved here to the US in 2004. I don’t know if it’s a common story or not, but I met a girl, fell in love with her, and wanted to marry her, so moved here. I started off in corporate. I’m a pastor’s kid, so involved in church for pretty much a lot of my life. And when I moved here, I remember in 2008, towards the end of the year, our family, we were praying for the next year, praying for just, God, what what do you have in store for us? And I remember clearly hearing God say, do you trust me enough to quit your job and come work for me? Mind you, I moved to the US and you know, this is like four years after moving in. We’re living the American dream. We had our first kid. We’re getting ready to buy a house. And I was like, I don’t want to quit my job right now, I need some money. And secretly, I think God heard it. I was like, God, you don’t pay that well, so I don’t know if I want to do this right now. And long story short, I didn’t mention that to my wife, and on her own she heard the Lord say the same thing, and so we made the decision for me to quit, and step out into full-time ministry.

Alan George: [00:02:31] I was on my own for two years, and around 2010 is when I joined the team at Life.Church, and about six months later my wife joined the team as well. So both of us got to live out the dream that we’ve always had to do ministry together. I started off at one of our campuses at Life.Church, and about six months into that role, I got offered the position of the church’s online pastor. That was not my plan, I enjoy digital stuff. I enjoy the tech world, but I’m not a digital native if that’s the term we want to use. And so when this opportunity came about, I thought, man, like, I don’t live online, like I am a face-to-face person. I loved being in a physical location, I loved getting to shake hands and hug people and just that’s where I wanted to be, and so this kind of pivot really caught me off guard.

Alan George: [00:03:24] But when we spent time in prayer, I’ve always had a heart for the world, had heart for global audiences. And I felt the Lord say, hey, here’s an opportunity where at the click of a button you can reach the world. And that kind of really opened my eyes and I thought, that’s what I want to be a part of. And so it was uncomfortable for sure because that was not my normal audience. But, I think looking back, I could see God’s hand in it. So I served in that role for almost ten years, all through Covid, all through the pandemic. And then towards the end of 2020, again, no plans were changing, but heard God say again, hey, your time here is done. And I was like, get thee behind me, Satan, because this was home for me and I didn’t want to leave Life.Church, I loved it, it was my church, and I just felt like God was saying, no, I want you to help other churches figure out how to do what you were doing. So I stepped off the team end of 2020 and started partnering with churches and pastors to help them figure out what does digital ministry look like in their context.

Bart Blair: [00:04:28] Alan, thanks for that background there. We’re going to link in the show notes to the previous episode that you were on, and we got into a lot more of the details about how your role at Life.Church kind of became a church online pastor and how that ministry sort of got started and how that was built. So for those of you who are watching or listening, if you want to know a little bit more of the story about how that all came to be, check out that previous episode. As I mentioned earlier, the last time we had you on the show, you were really kind of fresh into the season of doing coaching and consulting for churches. We’re a couple of years down the road past the pandemic where, you know, a lot of churches that didn’t have an online presence or a substantial online presence sort of really had no choice but to give themselves one. And now here we are, a couple of years later, or four years later, I guess, and people are starting to ask the question, what is the value of this? What do we need to do with this? Do we leverage this or not? So why don’t you share a little bit about some of the experiences that you’ve had over the last couple of years, as churches have moved away from the full necessity of having an online presence, to now seeing it as a space for opportunity, for missional opportunity and missional engagement.

Alan George: [00:05:46] Yeah. You know, part of this I sensed while we were going through Covid. So I hate to bring everyone back to that time, but when you look back at that time when all of our locations were shut down, in fact, it was not just churches, but it was businesses, and there was a lot going on. You see other industries beginning to pivot, because as their physical location was shutting down, the ones who were thinking about not necessarily a location-based strategy, but a people-based strategy, you see them thriving because what they did was they didn’t build everything around their location, they built everything around the people that they wanted to serve. So they changed the way they were meeting the people that they were trying to meet.

Alan George: [00:05:46] I think, interestingly enough, my sister is actually teaching at a university, and both of us, during that time, our conversations were very similar. Because I noticed it was the church and the world of education, the two of them were the only ones at that time that I was hearing saying this phrase, I can’t wait to go back to how it was. And you would hear that time and time again, because both of our models, education and the church, were geared around this building-based strategy. Come to me on a weekend, and when you come into my building and walk through my doors, then I’m going to meet you where you’re at. Versus everybody else, we’re going, okay, you can’t come to my building, I’m going to come to you. And I think what’s important for churches to remember is post-Covid, the whole world, as they deal with other industries, they’ve all pivoted and they’ve all moved, and we need to as well. We can’t keep thinking about a building-based strategy, we need to start thinking about a people-based strategy.

Alan George: [00:07:37] Oftentimes, when we say from the stage, and I’ve said it many times as well, hey, thank you for coming to church today, you know, we’re glad you’re here. As your pastor, we want you to know that we want to walk with you through life and we want to do life with you, all of us in some form or the other, we’ve shared that. I feel like we’ve got to actually now start meaning what we’re saying, and what I mean by that is we have the opportunity to meet people where they’re at, but it’s not limited to a Saturday or Sunday service. We can meet them on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And so I think the way we need to start thinking about digital is this is not just about taking a service and putting it online, it is about meeting people where they’re at.

[00:08:16] So from a perspective, like if you’re in communications, if you’re in marketing, if you’re an online pastor, if you’re a senior pastor, executive pastor, whatever your role is, in fact, I would even say youth teams, next-gen, all of us, we need to be thinking different. This is not a there’s a church online pastor on our team and this is their world. This needs to be our world because the parents if you’re next-gen, the parents that we’re connecting with, small groups, everybody, they only come into our building once a week, but the rest of the time they’re online. How do we build a holistic strategy to meet our people where they’re at? That’s how we need to start thinking about it.

Zac Bernauer: [00:08:57] Yeah, Alan, that’s very good insight with Covid because I was on staff during Covid and the pandemic, and although our team was very, we’ve got to get online, and that’s where I found my passion for digital marketing, I even felt my peers and even my church was, we need to push them online. But as you said, the reason we should care about online ministry is a lot based on like, we want to reach people where they’re at. And not to sound weird, I always talk about it like, what’s the best way to reach someone when they’re sitting on the toilet scrolling the phone? And we miss those very vulnerable spaces a lot, but it’s important. So what do you think are some mistakes or assumptions that us as pastors or churches make about online ministry?

Alan George: [00:09:49] I think, like I mentioned, we’ve got to go beyond the let’s take a service and put it online. A lot of times when you say church online or digital ministry, it’s kind of boiled down to that. I’m going to take what’s working in my building, and I’m going to throw it online, and I’m going to put two hosts on there because I think it’s fun and I’m just going to hope it works. This is not that, in fact, I would even say digital ministry doesn’t mean you have to have an online service. You could have a strategy without an online service. That’s why we’ve got to rethink this thing, it’s not about putting the same…Let me back up just a bit, the online service, or the service and taking that and putting it online, that came out of a building mindset. I have a building, I need to put an event together in that building, and now with online, we’re just taking what works in a building and throwing it online. And then we talk about, man, I’m not seeing enough engagement, I’m not seeing enough of this. Well, we’re not seeing it because we’re not meeting people where they are, we’re expecting them to come to us instead of us going to them. So I think we’ve got to kind of not get rid of what we’ve been doing, but take a moment with your executive team, and with your leadership team to go, okay, let’s revisit who are we as a church? What’s our mission? A lot of mission statements will say, man, I want to reach people all over the world. But when it comes to what they’re doing, they’re only reaching people in their community. Which one are you? Are you reaching people all over the world, or are you reaching people in your community? I think even finding clarity to that level is key. So starting with your mission. Who are you as a church? What are you trying to do?

Alan George: [00:11:30] Second, if all you’re thinking about is that online service, then I think we’re missing a huge opportunity, I think, third, is getting the rest of the teams involved. I’ll give you a quick example. For years when I was leading our church online team, we were thinking about ways to reach the next generation, and unfortunately, we never found a way that really succeeded or that really worked. When Covid happened, because our buildings were shut down, our Next-Gen team, they had time on their hands and so they said, hey, how can we figure out, you know, what to do with digital? How can we help? How can we partner? And so what happened was our team brought the expertise of doing ministry online, and Next-Gen brought the expertise of doing ministry with Next-Gen, and they led the initiative and it worked. What didn’t work for us for many years, worked when the Next-Gen team got involved. So this is not about, oh, I have a church online team, let them figure it out. It’s about each team thinking of how they could leverage the tools and technology that’s available to them. So at least start with these three. And obviously, there’s more, but I think starting with the basis of who are we as a church, it’s got to be more than an online service. How can I involve all the other teams? I think that’s a great place for any church to start.

Bart Blair: [00:12:49] I hear this often, a level of frustration on the part of pastors who believe that online ministry depletes their weekend attendance, right? And of course, we’re going that’s when we’re calling an online broadcast church online, right? When all we’re doing is broadcasting. And I was having a conversation actually, early this morning, with a friend of mine who’s not in ministry, but it’s a guy I’ve known for many, many years. And he asked me a question about church online, and we got into the conversation. I said, you know, I think that reaction when pastors say, and in fact, I heard recently of a megachurch that’s talking about completely cutting their live stream, they’re not going to do it anymore. Why? Because they feel like what they’re doing is they’re creating a situation where people will just stay at home and watch church for an hour on Sunday and not ever show up in person. And I said, I don’t think that that’s the problem; I think that that’s a symptom of the problem. I think the real problem is that the church has created a consumeristic culture in the first place, which communicates to people that the most important thing, and really the only important thing, is that hour on Sunday. And therefore, whether I do it in person or I do it online, I’ve checked the box and that’s all I really need to do. And what I hear you saying Alan, is that online ministry actually is not at all the hour on Sunday, it’s everything that’s happening in the 167 other hours of the week, therefore let’s double-click on that for a moment. What does that look like in practicality? When you start talking about, you know, we can talk about high level, we do these things, our children’s ministry, our Next-Gen ministry, our discipleship ministry, they do these things online. What does that actually look like? What are some practical examples of some things that churches are doing that are actually effective in an online space?

Alan George: [00:14:38] Sure. I love how you talk about that because, so in our experience, I can only talk about our experience. We started doing church online, like service online, in 2006. If you look at the Growth of Life.Church, specifically, our online community grew, as well as our physical locations. We’ve been adding physical locations and have continued to do so since then. So the argument of it’s stealing from you know, if you do online, it’s stealing our people. That doesn’t stand true, at least in my experience. Every time I’ve been to a place where we didn’t have a location just to visit our community, the number one question I get is, hey, are you guys starting a location here? Because the ones that are passionate about it will always be passionate about it. The ones that are your couch potatoes, we’ve got them in our physical buildings as well, we’re just fooling ourselves by thinking that they’re fully engaged when they’re not. That’s a whole nother conversation.

[00:15:38] I think when you’re talking about practical things. Now, when I said that you don’t have to do a service, doesn’t mean you don’t need to do it, I think you still can, if that’s who you are as a church. I think a lot of churches right now, we’re just doing what the next church is doing rather than thinking about who are we as a church. So I would say starting with that question of who are we? Who are we trying to reach? If doing an online service fits in your strategy and in your identity as a church, then I would encourage you to do it. But as you do it, one quick practical thing about the online service and I mentioned this, you know, they put two hosts. I get the question like, should I have two people or one person? Should I film in my lobby? Should I film outside? I think the answer is, yes, it depends. The way, I’ll explain kind of why we used to do how what we used to do back in the day. For me, my focus was a global audience, and so when we were looking at a global audience, the more I filmed in a building in one of our churches or on stage, it created the sense that what’s happening, like all the excitement is happening in this building. But what I was trying to do globally was the church is not a building, you are the church. And so I wanted the people attending my service to feel like even if they’re at home or in a coffee shop, or a group of people have rented a space and they’re meeting together, that’s where the church is. So I actually almost never filmed in one of our physical locations. In fact, when I thought of filming, as a team, we were like, well, if we do that, people would feel like they’re missing out. So for me, that was the strategy. Now, as a church, if you’re thinking, I want to drive attendance in my physical building, then I would film everything in the building; I would film outside, I would film in the lobby, I would film on stage. So practically, you’ve got to figure out what you want to do. Whether the question is two people or one, both work. What are you trying to create? For me, as a large church, people already can feel disconnected. And so what I wanted to do was I wanted them to feel like I was their pastor. If I wanted them to feel that way, then I’ve got to make it feel like, almost like I’m having coffee with them. So I don’t want to do it here because if I stand up, the shot will mess up. But if I were on stage, I would talk very differently. Hey guys, how are you doing today? I’m so glad that you’re…like it would feel distant but appropriate on stage. But if we’re talking face to face, I would speak like this. A lot of times our communicators for online will speak as though they’re speaking on stage, and I believe that that’s not really connecting well with your people unless that is the atmosphere I want to create. I’ve done two people when we want to do something fun or exciting, I usually have two co-hosts. So I think a simple practical thing for your online service is to identify what you’re going after. Have a clear strategy based on that. Your location matters. The number of people matters as well.

Alan George: [00:18:42] When it comes to other ministries and ways to involve them, I think small groups are a little bit more easier to wrap our minds around because, a lot of people, you know, you communicate online, you send resources online. But what we noticed was that especially if people didn’t attend a physical location, to go from attending an online service and then jumping into a small group context, seemed like a huge stretch for people because they like the anonymity online. But jumping from that into an intimate six, seven, eight people group, where I’m supposed to share my heart, we noticed just a huge gap. So a couple of churches, I have been doing this now for a while, they’ve introduced this idea of cohorts or these really short kinds of come join us for 21 days on how to be a better father, a better husband, or something like that. And that’s not as intimate as a small group, but it’s not as anonymous as an online service where you don’t have to tell people your name. And so I think finding some ways that people can take the next easiest step, again, goes back to if I was thinking the way I’m thinking around my building, I’m thinking, come to my church, attend on a weekend, the next thing is a small group or serving. But for someone that’s walking into a building, they’ve said yes already, like at least 10 or 20 times before they’ve even walked into our building, they said yes to waking up, yes to getting the kids ready, yes to driving, yes to…You know, they’ve said yes so many times. Online, they haven’t said yes to anything. They happened to find your link and they’re there, and asking them to jump from that step to a small group seems unrealistic. So a cohort is an easy next step, a lot of churches do it. There’s a company called Apollos where they have an app that’s focused around daily discipleship, and so that’s a great resource as well, to do something like that. So cohorts would be an option.

Alan George: [00:20:38] With Next-Gen, and I know I’m talking a lot, but I’ll give you one more, and then we can kind of we can kind of pause. Something that I would think of is, and I was actually a children’s pastor for the first six months at Life.Church, so I have very minimal experience, but I have a little bit. But I can I can tell you the mindset for me, the weekend was focused on the kids, focused on the volunteers. How do I make sure I have an experience that is meaningful for the kids and children, and I have the volunteers to be able to staff it? The second they leave my building, I need to change my mindset from children to parents. And so how can I connect with parents? I can leverage technology. I can send them the verse for the week. I can send them questions that they can ask during the dinner table. It can be an email, it can be many of those things. And the most impactful thing for me was when my, I believe my son, so I’ve got three kids, and when my son was moving into middle school, they go, all three of my kids go to a public school. Bart, I got an email from my public school saying, hey, your son is getting ready to move into middle school. You know, I just want you to know, at this age, their brains are still developing, their body is changing, and as parents, you might be wondering, how do I answer these questions? As a school, we want you to know we’re here for you. I read that email and I was like, a public school is emailing me and helping me raise my kids better than my churches, better than I was with my parents, and that just messed me up. And so I think, we know the ages of our kids, we know when they’re moving to next grade, we know what’s happening in their life. How can we be proactively thinking about these life stages and thinking, how do I equip my parents? How do I equip them? Because I’m a pastor at a church and I’m still like, I have to go online to figure out how do I have this talk with my son or this talk with my two daughters? And so if I, as a pastor am having those questions, imagine our families in our churches. And so those are three different ways that we could practically meet people where they’re at leveraging technology.

Zac Bernauer: [00:22:46] Yeah, Alan, that’s a good insight. I think, even for our listeners and even myself, I’m like trying to digest the fact that I’m not live streaming, potentially my Sunday morning. Like, then what content am I giving? But you mentioned about almost knowing your why, and that is important because there are…Missional Marketing, we partner and serve with a lot of churches of various sizes, and for some of them, their goal is we need people in person, we want to be able to shake their hand, that’s their charm, that is what makes them who they are. But there are also some of the churches that they want to have a further global reach, so being aware of why we’re doing what we’re doing. Because we do fall into that trap a lot of times of I want to do what Life.Church is doing, or I want to do what Elevation is doing, and we just blur ourselves.

Zac Bernauer: [00:23:38] You gave some really good practical applications of like how to make your small group online and even your Next-Gen ministry. What do you think are some good alternatives, that if a church maybe can’t do live streaming on a Sunday morning really well, but want to be able to engage an audience for a Sunday morning experience, what are some good alternatives for that?

Alan George: [00:24:00] Well, I think most churches today do social media. And I think social media, I mean, it’s free. I think we sometimes overthink social media and we look at social media as this digital advertising board or, you know, it’s all about let me just tell people what’s going on. People don’t connect with announcements. I hate to break it to everybody that does announcements. in fact, I think we should get rid of the word announcements. Because when we think about announcements, to me, so I travel a little bit, and when I’m on a plane, as you guys know, you know, usually the steward or the stewardess will come and say something. And hardly ever, I mean, I’ve got my headphones on, and I am trying to block out what they’re saying because I know what they’re going to say and I’ve heard it a million times. I’m sorry, I know I’m supposed to listen to it, I apologize, you can email Bart about all that, but I’m just being real, I don’t listen to it. However, every time the captain comes online, and the chance is that most of the times that I’ve heard it, the steward or the stewardess, they’re very clear over the speakers. But the captain, you can hardly ever hear her voice or his voice and it’s kind of mumbled, but I will immediately take off my headphones because I want to hear what the captain’s saying. Because the captain will tell me, are there going to be bumps on the way? Am I going to get there on time? Is everything okay? And that’s important. I think we need to quit announcements, to me, they are like what the steward or stewardess does. Now if you can make it fun, it’s different, you know, there are those people that do that, but people know when they’re hearing the same thing. And if your social media feed is the same thing, they’re going to get bored. If your social media feed is authentic and they have the opportunity to get to know you, I think that’s a game changer.

[00:25:54] I’ll give you another example. When Covid was happening, a lot of churches had shut down, many people went to social media, and they were having these back porch Bible studies and sharing their hearts, and you saw engagement go through the roof. The sad part is when Covid shut down, all the online people continued to do what they were doing. But all the physical people that had, you know, physical location people that had used online, they went back to their stages because it’s like, oh, now people are coming back to me, so I don’t need to do it anymore. What they forget is many of them have said that while they were online, more people felt connected to them then than they felt connected to their pastor while their pastor was purely on stage. And so if you want to make your big church feel small, here’s your opportunity. If you want to make your small church feel big, then do the big, flashy, whatever thing. No one’s going to connect with you, but if that’s what you want, go ahead and do that. But if you want connection, then you’ve got to rethink the way that you’re doing social media, at least, and this is purely speaking, social media. There are many other ways we can do it, but I think that’s an easy, free, available for everybody kind of next step.

Bart Blair: [00:27:09] Outside of social media, do you see any churches using any? You mentioned Apollo’s app earlier, and we’re familiar with them and have some church partners that we work with that use their use their tool. Are there any other, tools? Digital tools, digital things that you see churches using innovatively to build their online community. I know some churches have started to experiment with discord, which, you know, for some of our listeners or viewers on YouTube, they’re like, I don’t know what a discord is. Well, that, you know, anything that you can speak into that you’ve seen other churches doing, you know.

Alan George: [00:27:45] And this is where you’ll see the the non-technical side of me. For me, I’ve always leaned towards the pastoral perspective or the people side. And so that’s where for me, it always starts with what am I trying to accomplish? If I start there, I’ll figure out a tool that fits that. Cause I think discord is a great tool. I think Slack’s a great tool. I think they’re all great tools, but I think discord will reach a particular type of audience. Slack will reach a different type of audience. Your Apollo’s app would reach a different type of audience. So I think if someone’s tempted to go start something, Don’t look at the tool first would be my advice. Look at what you’re trying to accomplish and then identify the right tool. It’s the interesting thing is we do this in almost every other area of our life. If I’m trying to. I know you live in Dallas and Zach, you’re in Philly. If I if, if if Bart and I wanted to go visit you. Zach, we’re both going to figure out. Okay. From Dallas, I could probably drive to Dallas. And if we want, we can fly together to Philly. But we will figure out our strategy based on the destination we want to go. When it comes to online ministry, I don’t know why we throw that out the window. We go, oh, what’s this church doing? I’m just, okay, discord. Let’s just do discord. And then we get frustrated when discord is not working, because a church might be using discord to reach a specific gaming community or somebody else. And so I would always encourage teams to first figure out, what are you trying to accomplish? What goal are you trying to figure out how to do? Then once you’ve identified Find that what’s the right tool that can help you accomplish that goal? That would be the kind of way of thinking that I would go after.

Bart Blair: [00:29:29] Ladies and gentlemen, that was worth the price of admission right there. That. Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right. I think we do have a tendency sometimes to to chase the shiny things. Right. We see something that someone else is doing, or we hear about something and we jump on the bandwagon because we want to use it. Zack, I think you made an interesting point just a few minutes ago in that not all churches we’ve talked about this a little bit to some degree. A lot of churches do an online worship experience. Not all of them are good. Sometimes your online experience actually hurts you more than it helps you, especially as it relates to reaching unchurched or pre churched pre-Christian people. Right? you know, my home church here in the Dallas Fort Worth area has a live stream that is television quality Broadcast. I led worship at a small rural church yesterday that broadcast on Facebook, and I went back and watched a little bit of the live stream after the fact. And, you know, it’s no offense to to them, they’re doing the best they have with the tools that they have. But, you know, the the audio compression was not good. The video quality was okay. they’re never going to compete with a large mega-church that has, you know, all, you know, a multi-million dollar, setup. So back let’s let’s back up the truck on Zach’s previous question, which was, okay, if I’m not going to do church online as that main entry point for Sunday morning, what do I do as a main entry point to connect with people online? If that’s if it’s not, hey, get them to watch my service online and then take a next step from there. What are some things that I can do that actually start relationships with people online so that I can begin to actually do evangelism or disciple them online without being dependent on that live stream. Yeah.

Alan George: [00:31:23] Um, which audience are we talking to? Are we talking to the unchurched, or are we talking to people that are looking for a church? Who are we talking to?

Bart Blair: [00:31:34] That’s a good question. I’ll tell you what. Anybody who knows me knows I’m always going to default first to the people who don’t yet know Jesus. Sure. Right. Like I’m like, okay, there’s two components here. Yes, I understand we need to grow disciples to be like Jesus, but we can’t grow disciples to be like Jesus if we’re not making disciples who don’t yet know Jesus. So why don’t we start there? What? What are some things that we can do? Evangelistically. And then we can kind of talk a little bit more about the discipleship side of that.

Alan George: [00:31:58] And, and this is the tricky part. It’s like, so you brought two churches. You’ve got a, you know, large church that’s got, you know, Mil, you know, whatever they’ve got, they’re really set up well. And then you’ve got a rural church. I think the struggle is trying to figure out if I was in the rural community, what’s the best way to reach that rural community versus if I was in Dallas, what’s the best way to reach the people in Dallas? I think that would and I and I it’s hard to give a blanket answer because I don’t know the rural community in Dallas. I can kind of figure out just because I’m more living in that space. I’m also just a quick little rabbit trail. If you’re looking at a large church and this is not all large churches, but a lot of times large churches are doing what they’re doing because that’s easy to do. to pivot when you’re in a large church is very difficult because you’ve got staffing, you’ve got structure, you’ve got all of that set up a certain way. If you want to do the most latest innovative thing, most of them can’t because they don’t have they don’t have extra resources to throw there. We think large churches can do whatever they want. A lot of times it’s harder to turn a big ship than it is to turn a little speedboat around. So if you’re a small church, I actually would say you have an advantage. So that’s just a little.

Speaker4: [00:33:16] Little.

Alan George: [00:33:16] Little thing there. If if I was in doubt, if I was living in the Dallas area, can we do Dallas? Because I’m not familiar with the rural, I think like there’s a church in in the Dallas Fort Worth area called Chase Oaks. incredible church. They’re doing a lot of things. Multi-site church. What they’ve done is they’re doing something really interesting. Again, if we’re trying to think of a digital strategy, I wouldn’t start with the digital strategy. I’d start with who the church is and what they’re trying to do. And so one thing that they’re trying to do is they started this new initiative called, the, the, the, The Good Collective. I’m probably messing up the name, but it’s basically they’ve got a coffee shop. They’ve. And not your typical church coffee shop. It’s like an outside location coffee shop. It’s got.

Bart Blair: [00:34:04] Pickleball.

Alan George: [00:34:04] Courts, they’ve got pickleball courts, they’ve got a basketball court. They’ve actually got a community center where you can. It’s like a pantry. But then they’ve also got another space where they do ESL. They teach you how to speak English. They’ve got, you know, practical work related stuff. And I asked them like training people for jobs and things. And I asked them like, hey, what’s, what’s your goal? What’s your win? And I fully expected them to say, oh, every person that comes here, we’re going to take them to church and it’s going to lead in attendance. And they actually their goals weren’t related to attendance. And I sat there and I’m going like, here’s a church that’s building a strategy not based on their auditorium, but it’s based on the community that they live in. And so for the coffee shop, for example, they’ve partnered with other influencers in the area that are around pickleball stuff and coffee and food and things like that. And they’re figuring out partnerships to post and bring awareness to the coffee shop. You have to do a little bit of digging, which will then help you figure out, oh, this is Chase Oaks doing this. But in my mind, I thought, man, they’re authentically trying to reach their community without just focusing on attendance.

Alan George: [00:35:12] They want to focus on their people now? There is an attendance strategy and all that. So like, don’t get me wrong, it’s there, but they’re approaching it very, very differently. I know there there are a few other churches that I’m aware of. I think Willow Creek is trying to do something similar right now. And so I think there are ways to do this based on the community that you’re living in and who you are as a church. Now, a church could hear this strategy and go, we’re going to do what Chase Oaks is doing. I wouldn’t recommend that, because if you’re not Chase Oaks, don’t do it. You’ve got to be true to who you are, true to what God has placed in your heart. So that’s one. So now when you have that strategy, you want to layer your digital strategy based on that existing strategy. I wouldn’t create a digital strategy just for the heck of it. I would create a digital strategy that matches who you are in person. And so that’s what they’re doing. Does that help? Does that. Yeah.

Bart Blair: [00:36:06] Let me let me speak to that a little bit, because Chase Oaks is one of our, our partners at Missional Marketing. And so I know what they’re doing very, very well. So you’re right. They have their local good initiatives. Yes. Local good center. but here’s the other thing that they have done amazingly well is they have they have tons of content on their website that is felt need based content, blog content, all optimized for search. So they get boatloads of organic traffic to their website from people who are looking for answers to real life questions. They come to the website, and then even on some of those blog posts and on their website, they have lead generation content that allows them to grab people’s names and email addresses so that they can then communicate to them more about the local good initiatives and the other things that they’re doing. Yeah, I think in the grand scheme of things, most roads are probably going to lead to an in-person, on campus, experience at one of their locations. But you’re right, it’s not. When you engage with Chase Oaks, it doesn’t feel like it’s if you’re not in person online, you’re you don’t matter. Right. If you’re not, if you’re not in person, you don’t matter. We can have a relationship online and nurture that relationship for a season until you have enough trust in us to actually show up at an in-person engagement. So it’s a really good example. I’m glad you thought of that one.

Alan George: [00:37:29] And I think sometimes the mistake and I’ve made this. So this is not pointing fingers at anybody else. I’ve made this in my mind because the goals that I had, the numbers that I was trying to focus on, a lot of it was attendance. Unfortunately, no matter what someone was going through, my answer to them was always come to church. Yeah. And sometimes that is the right answer. But sometimes that’s not the right answer. Sometimes it’s spending one more conversation with them, or spending time in prayer. And maybe coming into a 600 or 800,000 seat auditorium is not the right next step for them in that moment. And so for me, unfortunately, I had numbers and goals that I was focused on. And so every conversation, man, my marriage is struggling. Hey, you know what? I think the next step for you is come to church. Hey, I’m struggling with my young adult child. Hey, I think, you know, next step is come to church and I say, I mean, I say this laughingly, but I mean, that’s honestly, it was with good intention, but I was but my priority, I think when I look back was more I need to I we’re this is the mission that we have. It’s I need to bring people to church and it’s a good mission and it’s it’s a valuable, important mission because that’s where the gospel is preached. That’s where a lot of life change happens. But not everyone is ready for that as their next step.

Alan George: [00:38:51] It might be their fifth or sixth or seventh, but in order for me to figure out what their next step is, I need to listen. And so the same thing is present online. I had I had so many people reach out to me on social media, not because they knew I was a Life.Church pastor. It’s because they they just saw some of my posts and they were encouraged by it. And so they would just reach out and say, hey, I, are you a pastor? Or in some cases they’d say, hey, are you religious? Because they didn’t know how to like, they didn’t understand the world of Christianity and this and they just share their heart. And when I would read these posts, I mean, imagine how lonely someone is to where they had no one else in the whole world. They could share what they’re struggling with to, and they have to find some random guy on Instagram or Facebook to to share what they’re going through, hoping to hear a word of encouragement and to me, that that would just break my heart. And so it is not as complicated as sometimes we think it’s just are you willing to meet people where they’re at, put aside our agenda and let our agenda be people first? Man, I think you would see ministry The opportunities in every conversation that can come our way.

Bart Blair: [00:40:11] Wow. man, I’m looking at the clock here, and we’re running out of time. And we really didn’t even get to what I really wanted to talk about today.

Speaker4: [00:40:17] So I taught my.

Alan George: [00:40:18] My stories are, like, long winded. I.

Speaker4: [00:40:20] My answers are long winded. It’s been.

Bart Blair: [00:40:21] Excellent. Alan, one of the things that we did want to talk about today is an online course that you have available for people who are wanting to strengthen their online ministry. The course is called online as it is in Heaven. why don’t you give us an overview of what what a person could expect if they decided to engage with this online curriculum that you have.

Speaker5: [00:40:41] Yeah.

Alan George: [00:40:42] I thank you for mentioning that. for me, this course, especially as I started helping churches and pastors, I noticed a lot of questions that people were asking whether you’re from a small church or a big church, medium size, however you want to look at it. I think there are some foundational things that we need to understand when it comes to some of the things that we talked about, like, what do I do if I want to do an online service? How should I think about it? How do I figure out, you know, volunteers? How do I think about small groups? How do I think about volunteers? What data should I be looking at? Should I do marketing stuff? I even have one lesson that talks about camera communication, because I think that’s important as well. And so essentially what this course is, it’s ten lessons that take you through all of these topics. And then it gives you an opportunity for you. And if you’re going through it with your team for you to set an appointment with me, and we’ll take an hour, hour and a half and we’ll just handle all the questions that you’ve had as you’ve gone through this course. In my mind, I haven’t seen another course out there like this. It’s, it’s it’s one of the best courses and resources out there for anybody that’s trying to figure out online ministry. And if you’ve been doing online ministry, but maybe you’ve been doing it the way, like I talked to a church the other day and the guy, he was the third church online pastor, and I asked him a few questions. So why do you do this?

Speaker4: [00:42:03] He’s like.

Alan George: [00:42:04] Uh. Because this is how we always do it. Okay, what about this? The previous guy did it. Okay. Well, what about. And it’s like, okay, bro. Like, you need to have some, like, you need. You can’t just do what somebody else did. You’ve got to know why you’re doing it. And so if you’ve got a team member or staff member that’s either new or have been in this role for a while, but you need to hit that reset button, I think this is a course that’s critical for anybody that’s in that role. To help you figure out what your strategy for this day and age needs to be when it comes to digital ministry.

Zac Bernauer: [00:42:35] And Alan, where can people connect with you to get your course and be able to connect with you in a meeting?

Alan George: [00:42:41] Uh, best place is Alan v George com. I’ve also got an opportunity where people can set up a meeting with me there and request a time, figure out a time slot and things like that. That’s the best place to start. I’ve got a few blog posts there that talk about some of these topics as well, but you’ll find the course there. You’ll find all of that there. I’ve also got a free PDF kind of e-book available if if for some if they’re interested.

Bart Blair: [00:43:06] Allen v george.com. We’ll link to that in the show notes for any of you who are interested in checking that out. Allen, we really do appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to hang out with us and to share with our audience. Any parting words for our listeners before we wrap this up today?

Alan George: [00:43:25] I if if there’s one common thread I’ve seen in most conversations, it’s people are always thinking about strategy first instead of thinking about their why. Start with your why. Even if you’ve been a church that’s been doing it for a while, go back. Look at your why. Identify. Get that clear in your heart. Why do we exist? Who are we here to exist for? And what do we want them to feel? Think? What’s that next step we want to do? Have clarity in that space first, and it always helps to have an outside voice kind of help you navigate those conversations. So I’ll be happy to do that for any church or any leader that’s interested, and then then build your strategy from there. So that would be a advice that I would give. Bart, Zach, thank you so much for the opportunity. I’m extremely passionate about all the things that you guys are doing as well to help grow the kingdom, help churches meet, meet their communities better and connect with them better. So I love what you guys are doing. Thank you so much for all that you do as well.

Bart Blair: [00:44:24] Thank you Alan, and thanks, Zach for sitting in for Mr. Hamrock today. And for those of you who’ve actually made it all the way to the end of this episode, congratulations. I wish I had a prize for you. I don’t the prize was just great content. Hopefully you found this to be very useful. If your church has an online pastor or someone who is interested in maybe developing a ministry online for your church, make sure that you share this episode with them. And if you haven’t yet subscribed, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, make sure that you do that so you don’t miss any future episodes until the next time. I’m Bart Blair. Thanks again for tuning in to the Missional Marketing Podcast.