The Church Digital Podcast

It’s 2020. Do churches really need a mobile app? Isn’t my website good enough on mobile devices? The answer for many churches today is, unfortunately, yes. Many churches don’t have an effective strategy for how to utilize mobile app, as well as, mobile web, more effectively. Enter Jon Crabtree into the conversation. Jon works with Subsplash, a company who has helped thousands of churches move thei...

Can a mobile app create community? Most people would accuse the mobile app of tearing down community, at least physical community. But can the mobile app create community? Maybe the better question is how can the Church of 2020 leverage mobile to complement their already existing strategy? Enter Matt Welty, Pastor of Technology at Crossroads Church based in Cincinnati. A large multi-state multisit...

Sometimes innovation is overly complicated and very costly. Sometimes innovation is just looking at what you have differently. What you’ll discover here in this episode of The Church Digital Podcast is two churches that have done some incredibly innovative things with what they had. So much effort goes into creating the musical worship portion of the worship service each week, what if we did music...

This Episode of The Church Digital Podcast may challenge some established norms. If so, that’s cool. They probably need to be challenged. A small, but growing number of physical churches are finally seeing that community can be created in virtual spaces, and now more than ever churches are currently operating small groups online. However, church today views these small groups as complementary to t...

One of the greatest untapped resources in Church Online, I believe, is the Kids Church Online. There’s huge potential here to reach kids in unique ways. Several years ago, while I was Online Pastor, we briefly experimented with the idea of Kids Church Online. Here’s what I know. My kids are digital. I’ve got an 11 year old and a 9 year old. I cut cable almost a decade ago at this point, so any of...

One of the things that I (Jeff) love about Church Online is that we are basically learning about all of this, together. Big churches, small churches, traditional churches, charismatic churches… we’re all exploring this same space of being church, digitally. The best part is instead of being territorial, we work together and learn together. Some of the happiest times I’ve had in the past year is si...

2019 has come and gone, and with it, 40 podcasts recorded on the many different facets of Church Online. Each podcast offering many lessons and insights into how to utilize Church Online more effectively for your church. With so many lessons, Rey and Jeff figured this was a great chance to review the year and pick out our highlights! Did you miss some of these podcasts? Go back and catch some of t...

I (Jeff) used to consider myself innovative. Then I met Daniel. While most kids were running away from church, Daniel at age 11 was trying to figure out how to plant a church in a video game platform known as Roblox, and over eight years later his church has impacted over 24,000 lives. Even today, as a 19 year old college student, Daniel is still making strides with how to grow and stabilize his R...

Hey Church! This is your podcast. Two incredible organizations… Living As One and Leadership Network… got together and created a survey to discover how churches like yours are utilizing Church Online. For churches already doing Church Online, this is a great way to see how churches your size are utilizing the technology. For churches not yet taking advantage of a strategy utilizing Church Online,...

One of the pioneers of Church Online jumps on the podcast here, Jay Kranda, from a small little SoCal Church called Saddleback. No stranger to the podcast, Jay goes into detail here talking about Saddleback’s relaunch of their micro-model… Saddleback “Home Gatherings”. As always, there’s a ton of value and insight in any of Jay’s podcast so enjoy this one (and go check out EP004 with Jay Kranda as...

Stat time, are you ready? Here we go. The average church in America has 73 people attending a week. 80% of churches in America today are under 200 in weekly attendance. These are shocking stats for me. As a guy who spends so much time working with multisite churches, megachurches, even gigachurches… I don’t think I had completely realized how small churches are in America. Joe Radosevich understan...

I’m (Jeff) going to be honest here. I’ve never really enjoyed chat hosting. Maybe I never did it right. Recently, I had a conversation with Evan Connelly, where he went into detail about how the systems he was rolling out through his Church Online for Chat Hosts and I realized it was true… I never did do chat hosts right. So, we invited Evan on the podcast for a fresh perspective on how to do Chat...

I’ve been hearing whispers of this new concept in church. Jeff, you got to talk to these guys. They’re doing Pop-Up Church. Honestly, I had no idea what Pop-Up Church was? My best imagination was something involving Ego Waffles. So, I called a friend of a friend of a friend, and eventually got in touch with Brandon Catoe, Pop-Up Pastor at Christ Fellowship West Palm Beach. To my disappointment, Eg...

The idea of the multisite church was born in the 1990s as church attendance was growing faster than the church buildings could sustain. Even in those early days, there were questions about the validity of the Multisite Church Model, Time has worked in multisite’s favor, though, as a “radical” idea 20 years ago has turned into a “cool” idea 10 years ago, transitioning into a widely accepted “mainst...

I (Jeff) believe this to be true: In the future, bigger churches will continue to get bigger; but smaller churches will continue to get smaller. And that may not be a bad thing. The mega churches will find a way to succeed. Despite recent attendance trends, the church-growth formulas will continue to succeed. There are people who will continue to connect with these larger, physical expressions of...

Why do we do Church Online? I’m willing to bet that you’ve asked this question of yourself, and of your church’s leadership… maybe even asking some of your high-level volunteers. I’m also willing to bet that there’s some discrepancy among the three groups. Ten years ago, Church Online was defined as the broadcasting of our church services on online platforms. Arguably, that is no longer a holistic...

How do you market Church Online? I used to think SEO, SEM, SMM. Gotta love acronyms! All of these are valid, and helpful in ministry, but at the end of the day I could never shake the idea that God’s called us to something other than writing a check to Google or Facebook! So how do you market Church Online? Or even Church? What are ways to draw attention to this? Let’s dig in with Communications S...

I love a church that takes a risk. That’s what Bay Hope Church has done. Evidently, there’s this thing called TikTok. It’s currently the #1 app downloaded from the iOS App Store, and with over 80% of teens currently owning an iPhone, it’s quite obvious there’s a digital mission field in front of us. Enter Andy Mage and Jessica Spivey from Bay Hope Church in Tampa, Florida. They’ve been experimenti...

One of my favorite podcasts to date, Mark Venti from Churchome lays it out. “We’re experimenting…” “We’re following the Holy Spirit, but learning from Silicon Valley…” Mark and Churchome are on a mission to impact people in their homes as much as in their church buildings. After all, churches didn’t have buildings for the first 300 years they existed. Churchome has received some notoriety, and my...

Engagement is one of those words that no longer has meaning. It’s been used and misused so often in recent years that the heart of the word has been lost. However, engagement is the heart of Church Online… it should be the heart of anyone who does ministry online. Enter Seth Muse into the conversation. Seth is Communications Director at Hope Fellowship Church and created a social media post a coup...

Working on a Church Staff has been one of the greatest joys and greatest burdens in my life. Confession: I spent many years on staff feeling alone and frustrated. While I was friends with the people I worked with, my ideas in ministry really separated me from those around me. I just thought differently. I’m not saying I’m right or they’re wrong. Fact here is, it’s a lonely place to think different...

Remember when Apple was an innovative company? Steve Jobs would be speaking at a keynote, flash that sly grin, and then say to the audience: “Oh, one more thing…” Those days are sadly behind us it would seem. For the entirety of my life, I’ve been Apple Fanboy #1, but after the presentation this September, I am willingly relinquishing my Fanboy status. I will no longer claim to be an Apple Apologi...

This episode we’re honored to talk with the organization who essentially created Church Online. Life. Church is one of the pioneering churches out there creating a movement in digital church. Having watched the Life. Church movement grow over the years, I was almost closet fanboy in this conversation, geeking out over methods and systems that Life. Church utilizes. That being said, the thing that...

Church Online definitely has strengths and weaknesses, but the power to train and to equip someone is unparalleled. But why do we struggle with the concept of equipping and discipling someone using Online Technologies? Enter personal friend, Ken Schafer, into the conversation. Ken works with churches around the country helping create equipping scenarios in physical environments, as well as, online...

Before my wife and I got married, we were praying about becoming missionaries. Challenges like learning new languages, adapting to new cultures and new food came to mind. We quickly realized that we would be on separate hemispheres from our collective families. And while God didn’t call my wife and I to move to another continent 20+ years ago, we’ve eventually become a missionary in a different co...