Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 So you've put your services online. You've built out an entire online church campus. Things are really going great, but how are you connecting those people that have been watching your services online? In today's episode, we go through the tips and tricks. We've picked up on how to help assimilate people that have only been attending your church online. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the read-write podcast. You're listening to the read-write podcast. The show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow
Speaker 2 00:00:56 Dope. Dope, dope, ready to get food
Speaker 0 00:01:03 Fees. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost
Speaker 4 00:01:08 Ian Hyatt. What's up Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:10 Hey Ian, not much man. Excited to chat today. Last week, we talked about how churches can build a online campus for their church. So something that we keep hearing over and over, people are curious about this and we're able to help them do some of those kinds of things. So we did a whole episode dedicated to how we would build an online campus, but we came back and we thought that one of the biggest challenges with an online campus is how do we make someone Mo help them become more than just an online viewer and actually help them become an online member of the church. Uh, and we talked last week about how we have some confliction about this. You know, I is online membership equally valuable as in-person membership. You know, that the jury is still out on some of those things. I'm a little bit suspect of that, but all that being said, I think this is something that is still valuable if someone, yeah, I I'd rather someone be more than just a viewer of my online service and be a committed, uh, part of what we are doing online and being part of the mission and giving and, and being part of serving and having their own discipleship pathways.
Speaker 0 00:02:19 And so that's what this episode is all about today is we want to talk with people about how we would recommend and the best ways to build an assimilation process, to take someone from viewer to fully committed online member. And that's something that I think is a worthwhile endeavor. Agreed,
Speaker 4 00:02:36 Agreed, agreed. Let's dig in.
Speaker 0 00:02:39 Yeah, that's good. So, um, so let's start, I guess, first about what is an online, uh, assimilation process and, you know, it's, I think what, what that's all about is for us, it's building again, these, these on-ramps so that people, and we find ways to capture their attention enough that they say that they want to be more than just someone that, that watches when they remember, they want to be more than someone that just hits subscribe on YouTube, which we encourage you to do right now. Right? You're part of this retried family hit like, and subscribe to those things down below, but we want for your church. We want it to be even more than that. It's someone that like subscription is for a lot of churches. That's the closest thing we have to online membership. They've they've liked us on Facebook. They hit subscribe on YouTube. Uh, and I really think that there's more that the Lord would have for people then clicking subscribe so that they get notified each time you have new content, because if we reduce the function of the church to just delivering content, we're really missing the vast majority of what we're called to do in the church there. So we think that what this is all about is having an assimilation process. Uh, your church probably has one already out there. You probably do something like a, um, a
Speaker 4 00:03:56 Class starting membership class,
Speaker 0 00:03:59 All those different, there's so many different names for it. But even if you don't use the term member, you call it a partner or something like that. You probably have some kind of a class or steps to take people through to help them fully engage in the life of the church. You need that online as well. So, correct. The way that starts usually is that we, we have to start our, you could probably tell us next year, we have to start by building an online campus. Um, so maybe you can, we did a whole podcast episode last week about this. Maybe you could hit the high points for us though, of what, what kind of, that is in a nutshell of what that looks like.
Speaker 4 00:04:33 Yeah. So first of all, we, we, we did hit it last week and we would encourage people to go back and listen to that one too, because it ties in really closely to this, but you definitely need a landing page on your website, an online campus landing page specifically. Uh, so not good enough to be on shared real estate on another page. It needs its own page, uh, with it being on your website, there's a lot more control more you can do, um, with how people respond and connect and engage compared to just social media. Again, we had that whole conversation definitely continue to be online on social media, but you need a specific page. So you need also a for the online campus, an assimilation within this kind of campus page, you need assimilation pieces. Um, so there's going to be a lot of infrastructure stuff that gets set up there like forms, um, you know, making sure that when people do respond from this page, it connects with your whatever CMS or database you're using for church management software. Um, so there needs to be those steps taken and it needs to be on an actual page for sure.
Speaker 0 00:05:41 Yeah. Again, we, we did a whole detailed, like 30 minute episode dedicated to from start to finish how you build an online campus. If that's something you are doing. I think one of the highlights for me in that conversation last week was about, you need to have an online campus pastor or at least, uh, a person. I don't know if you get stuck out are hung up on the word pastor, but a person who is the champion for your online ministry, who is the face of it, who is engaging with people because really that's one of the things that so many churches misses the engagement in your online campus. That's what takes it from being an online survey, like an online video to being an online campus is the engagement that you would have on there. So, um, so really you have to have that infrastructure, like you were saying, that all needs to be, to be dialed in.
Speaker 0 00:06:26 Uh, you need to make sure you have those things kind of ready to go. I think for an online assimilation process, you need to figure things out for how you're going to deliver the, the classes for instance, cause you're going to be part of that is going to be doing classes. Like whether you call them again, starting point or your one-on-one or grad track, you need to have, you're probably gonna use something like zoom or maybe you prerecord them, but having all those things kind of dialed in is really important there. So yeah, I think secondly, it's important that you define what we mean when we say online membership, what is online church membership? Because I think that, you know, we, we usually have definitions for in-person church membership and I think a lot of the online definitions can be very similar. So for most churches, we do this all the time and we talk about what does membership mean at your church?
Speaker 0 00:07:16 And usually it's people will commit to being there on Sundays or whatever worship is taking place. They commit to being part of some kind of a small group. They commit to some place of service and they give towards the work of the ministry that's happening there. And I think having those definitions really outlined and talking about what you expect of someone who is not just a viewer, but a member getting that all dialed in online, I think is really important. And so I think it's probably going to be pretty similar. I think that you can find ways that we've talked about how you can do, uh, engagement and how you can do small groups online there's tools for that. Now there's tools for serving online. This is something that a lot of churches get hung up on is, well, what does that look like? I'm not going to, they can't be a part of our worship team online, probably that would be hard. And they can't really usher people on Sunday morning. That's going to be hard, but you know what? We need a lot of those things on you need people that are ushering online. A lot of times it looks like it's stuff happening in a, in a chat room and getting chest
Speaker 4 00:08:17 Responding to live chat messages and or people writing in, um, you know, from the site. Yeah. It takes manpower for sure.
Speaker 0 00:08:26 Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. Good. And then from there, I guess you're just digging in and you're, you're building your assimilation process. I think that that's something that, um, we'll kinda, we'll spend some time kind of camped out here about maybe a recommended assimilation process. Yeah. I think that one of the rules of thumb is we try to pull everything that churches should be doing in person pulling that online. And we have done podcast episodes that walk through the ideal assimilation process that we recommend that exists, we that out there. So yeah. Please do go check that out. We'll have a link in the description down below, so you can kind of see what we recommend for that. And really this is going to be, there's going to be a lot of similarities that you see here. Uh, so maybe you and I can just kind of go back and forth with what those those are. Do you want to kind of start us off with how long
Speaker 4 00:09:11 And kick us off first is an initial contact. So, you know, they find when they find you online for the first time, you know, obviously there's, that's the starting point is that, you know, getting there, knowing who they are, getting their information, making that initial, you know, handshake online, if you will.
Speaker 0 00:09:30 Yeah. Yeah. So I think this usually looks just like encouraging people to chat, doing that kind of stuff. So having some kind of thing where they, well that's number two actually. So I've got is they fill out a, a welcome form. Uh, so we recommend on every online campus that you would have a, uh, a get connected section where people can put in their information and you could start some conversations with them. Uh, if you have a more sophisticated system that can create an account on there for you using a third party system, but in most cases, it's going to be filling out a form so you can follow up with them. I would suspect most churches do that in person too. You ask people to maybe text in their information or fill out a physical form there, and then they have a follow-up process. So you have to ask them to do that the same way it's just online.
Speaker 4 00:10:14 Yeah. Another one we've talked about this, we've had actually a whole podcast episode dedicated to this, but getting them on an email sequence, uh, obviously when you get their email information, have a sequence of emails that are going to be connecting with them, getting them information and maybe even giving them a digital gift, if you will. Uh, could it be a physical gift if you get their address information, maybe sending them something physical to their address or digital. So, but getting them on an email sequence, which is a series of different emails and making sure you're communicating them and updating them there that way and connecting with them and allowing them to respond.
Speaker 0 00:10:51 No, that's perfect. Uh, next one is similar. It's giving people, um, resources, if they're new to Christ, they're new to the faith. So giving them new believer packets or yes, packets as we call them at our church here, uh, people could have that information on baptism. That's something that is only like a, if it's applicable. Um, it's something that not everybody is going to need, something like that. But you know, having a step in there to, for people that are making that step for the first time, giving them something unique and tailoring it to them.
Speaker 4 00:11:20 Yeah. Next one had be invited them to join a virtual group. If you obviously, if they're going to be online, um, you know, hopefully you have a few or a handful of, or more virtual groups in place, so inviting them to join one of those.
Speaker 0 00:11:32 Yep. Absolutely. I think in the pandemic, a lot of us started those. I personally can't stand the virtual groups, but there's there. I, I fell asleep in, so
Speaker 4 00:11:42 Finally this disbanded and we said, you know what, we're just going to go meet. And, and the leader's driveway, let's just go to John's driveway. That's it. We're just, we're we're done. We're done with zoom. We're going to the driveway.
Speaker 0 00:11:52 Yeah. Here where we are. We were just shut down for so long and unable to meet in small groups that even in those times, so it was, we were stuck on zoom for a long, long time, but it's in the past, God-willing now that's not the case, but all that to say, we shouldn't be just, uh, just dumping on, uh, virtual groups. I think that they, there are people that are more comfortable in those are people that like them. Uh, and I think that it's important that you have those kinds of opportunities for someone that's online and 2000 miles away from your church. They're not going to come to small group every Wednesday night and actually be in someone's home and your community there. So building virtual opportunities are really important there. Right.
Speaker 4 00:12:31 That's good. That's good. Next one.
Speaker 0 00:12:33 Next one is invite them to a new members class or your assimilation class, whatever that would be. Uh, so that's kind of the crux of any assimilation process is helping them make that next step. They're taking that leap.
Speaker 4 00:12:46 Yep.
Speaker 0 00:12:46 Yeah. You're the next one.
Speaker 4 00:12:47 Next one's complete a membership agreement or commitment. If your church has that to where they, they kind of, you know, they sign an agreement or are, make some sort of a commitment there, allow them to do the same thing online.
Speaker 0 00:12:58 Yeah. This is where you highlight those, those things we talked about before coming on Sunday, or coming online, being a part of a small group, finding a place to serve, giving you, ask them to respond and jump in on that. So next is a, is join a serving team. We talked about that, uh, but giving them an opportunity to serve one of the best places to do that is in your online service. So giving people an opportunity to be part of the chat team, uh, to break out with people in pray, if people need prayer online, lots of opportunities to serve, but giving them a, an on-ramp to do that, an invitation to do that is really important.
Speaker 4 00:13:34 Yeah. Next would be virtual meeting or online meeting with a pastor or the senior pastor or a pastor there, obviously physical, um, a lot of physical assimilation processes. They meet the pastor. Uh, one church we saw had pizza with the pastor. So I don't know if you'd want to eat pizza and smack on online with virtual yours. It is. I don't like smacking. Please know that about me, our audience out there. Um, but, uh, other than that, um, why don't you bring us home with the last one there?
Speaker 0 00:14:05 Yeah. I think this is one that a lot of times we miss, even in person is having followup checkpoints beyond that. So assimilation is not a, you know, it's not a three month process and then check them off your list. They're done. They're, you know, they're fully discipled and God isn't totally done with them. They have nothing less left to do in their lives. Yeah. I think we miss this a lot. And so building into your follow-up process or your, your assimilation process, ongoing checkpoints, where people are being followed up with, or they get a call from that, you know, you have a virtual, uh, virtual pastor online campus, pastor having places for them to, uh, to check in and follow up and say, Hey, how are things going? You know, you don't have the luxury in the online world of, Hey, I haven't seen so-and-so for three weeks or so. I wonder if they're doing okay. Right. Because if someone's not on the chat, it's not like you're like, there's something about seeing someone's face not seeing their name on there three weeks in a row. It's going to be really easy to miss those kinds of people when that happens there. So finding ways to follow up with that way, I think is going to be really good.
Speaker 4 00:15:15 Yep. Awesome. So, well, we've covered, uh, things to do and, uh, we want to close the back half of this with things that you don't need to do for online simulation. So why don't I kick us off there? Um, so you don't need to have an identical, uh, experience to in-person meeting, right? So w w th these two, there are similarities like we've talked about, but these are two different things in person, people, uh, in the assimilation process with people is different than what you do online. So don't go into it thinking that it has to be identical. Again, there might be some similarities, like if you have a specific like class and order of things, they may take that same order online, but it doesn't, it doesn't have to be exactly the same thing. So,
Speaker 0 00:16:02 Yeah, I think like you can have a lot of the same elements, but the elements themselves need to be tailored for an online audience. Like, so here's what we were talking before about zoom meetings. And honestly, I don't mind zoom meetings. I just, don't like two and a half hours zoom meetings. Right? So it's like, if we're used to doing small groups, you know, in person, the small group that I'm a part of, we go from like six 30 until this last time it was close to 10 o'clock. We wrapped up because we got praying for somebody. And, uh, really feel like the holy spirit was, there was a moment there where God was doing something with this person. And it was great, but three and a half hours on a zoom call, it's just not the same thing. So you cannot just say, Hey, well, we, we do our normal community groups.
Speaker 0 00:16:47 Normally they're going to be three hours or two and a half hours. Let's do that same thing on zoom. That just doesn't work. So in all of these things, that's just, it's always going to be that way that the online audience is not going to have the same level of engagement. That's not as personal, right. It's try as we might. It's not going to be as personal as if someone is face to face with someone crying. Like for instance, if someone types into chat, I'm literally crying, which in most cases means they're figuratively crying and they're not actually crying, but they say they're literally crying like an
Speaker 4 00:17:21 LOL,
Speaker 0 00:17:24 LOL. They're not actually laughing out loud, right? It's, it's not the way that works. So online. We need to, you cannot have that same kind of engagement. If someone's crying in front of me, you run up there and you give them a hug, you pray over them and do those things. If someone says I'm literally crying online, it's a different thing. So you have to be sensitive to the fact that online is different from in-person and just tailor it to, to kind of work with that. It can't be the same.
Speaker 4 00:17:50 That's good.
Speaker 0 00:17:51 Yeah. I'll get the next one you want to avoid, uh, or I guess maybe you don't avoid, but you want to, don't feel obligated to make a perfectly polished production before you get started. Right. So a lot of times that's going to be this paralyzing fear is that man, I've seen what they do over at elevation church and how good their assimilation process is. And, you know, and we did a whole podcast episode a couple of weeks ago about how will we love about what elevation is doing? They do this stuff really well. They're good inspiration, but don't let that paralyze you into thinking that until we're up to their level, that we're not going to be able to do this. We have to have perfect production. I have to, um, you know, our, our online encounters need to be that, that same kind of quality.
Speaker 0 00:18:34 That's just not going to happen. So we think for most churches, you can do this for a couple of thousand dollars. You can build a whole online campus, you can get your website set up, you can have the cameras and lighting and all those things that you need. And this is just something where it's better to say yes, and start engaging people then to try and make it perfect and slick. I think that would like really the biggest thing of value here is connection with a real, other person that doesn't have to be slick. You don't have to be just like on Sunday morning at a church, a connection with someone who, you know, maybe isn't dressed the, the, or they look different from me that can still have a lot of value. That same thing happens online, whether it's really pretty or not. So, yeah, don't let it paralyze. You I'd say that.
Speaker 4 00:19:19 And one last thing I would say to that too, is we're all for excellence. We know God has a got of excellence and all of that. So we're not saying do a crummy job. And like we said, for a couple of thousand dollars or so, you know, you can do a really good job of this. So, uh, definitely go for excellence, but don't be paralyzed. Like you said, don't let it, it does not have to be perfect for you to get the results. So good. Well, I'll, I'll bring us home with the last one. And, um, one of the things that you don't want to do is have a cookie cutter experience either. So we want this to be authentic. Uh, you know, you want this to be tailored to the people that you're reaching online and tailored to who your church is. Um, so it's, you know, I think the temptation when we're thinking digital is to think that everything is automated or, or, um, you know, and again, we're not paid, we love the church online platform, many churches we work with use it.
Speaker 4 00:20:09 Um, but you don't have to just fit within that. Like, so that is a very templated system, um, you know, and what it does. And it does some great things that worked for many churches, for sure. But, um, you know, you don't, and we're not just saying that even on a page on your website, a landing page, it does not have to be cookie cutter and have check off all of the boxes that this church down the road did. Um, so make sure, you know, what are your goals, what your, every churches, even though there's similarities with their assimilation processes, a lot of them are different. So what's different about your assimilation process will make that different online as, as much as you can.
Speaker 0 00:20:48 We had a, a two and a half hour coaching call yesterday, you and I, and that we were on. And we asked that question of like, kind of tell me about your online assimilation process and our not your, just your, your regular, your in-person assimilation process they were talking about. And I got a unique answer when they started talking about how, uh, what they do at their churches. They recognize that everybody is different. And so, you know, we asked, so, so do you encourage people next to get into a community group or to get into serving, or what's the next step for people? And they told me that it is different for everybody that they, they want to, you know, be there and meet them and help them take the right step for them. And I think that's something that is easier to do in person than it is for us to do it online.
Speaker 0 00:21:33 Because online, you know, in person, you can read the room, right? You can see this person, you can say, Hey, this guy would really fit in with this other person here, actually connect them and make sure they get into that community group. And this person seems like they'd be great on the setup team, because, you know, they, you, it looks like he's bench presses about 250 pounds. So let's get him over there. You can help people make those decisions online. A lot of times we think that because it's digital, all we can do is just one thing. And that's it. And that's the only option. That's the only step that can take. That's where kind of that online campus pastor position really shines is people need to have real human interaction so that you can help them make those next steps that make the most sense for where they are in their walk with the Lord, where they'd be best able to serve who they get along with most, if they got involved in a community group, those kinds of things. So I think that's really important to, to not just think that it's just a stamp and cutter experience, but something that really is unique each time.
Speaker 4 00:22:32 That's good.
Speaker 0 00:22:33 Yeah. Awesome. Anything to add as we close up here today?
Speaker 4 00:22:36 No, no, just you can do this. You pastors and ministry leaders out there, um, this is attainable and, uh, and w and if you need any further advice, you let us know and we'll give you resources and help with that. And, uh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 0 00:22:49 Yeah. We eat, breathe and sleep this stuff. So what Ian says is so true, we'd love to chat with you. If it's something that you're just looking, it's not even, there's not a product here that we sell at reach, right. That, that does these kinds of things, that online assimilation process, just count on. It's going to take you some real work. It will take a lot of man hours and stuff to think through these things. But we think, um, that this is a huge opportunity that we said, we say this a lot is that people are, you're actually able to reach more people online today, and for most churches than you are on Sunday morning. And I think if you really look at your numbers, you count up all of your views on YouTube and Facebook, all of your downloads on the podcast, you put out there for your, your sermons, that you have a bigger reach online than you do in person.
Speaker 0 00:23:33 Well, we want to make sure that we treat because we treat every visitor on Sunday as a, as a gift from God. We want to treat every view that someone has of one of our online services are part of our online campus. Treat that as well as a gift from God it's worth investing in. I think you're exactly right. You can do it. And, uh, we hope this has been helpful in making that happen. So if it has let us know in the comments below, that would mean a lot to us, uh, rate review subscribe. Also, we've been getting more and more feedback about ideas of things that we would like to see us cover here on the right podcast. We are all for that. A lot of these episodes have been, uh, listener inspired. So thank you guys, comment down below, if there's something pressing or about reaching people that you want us to spend some more time talking about. We'd love to tackle that in one of our future episodes. So thank you guys for being a part of our retried family, and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online and reach right studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 00:24:53 Dope. Dope, dope. Ready to get. Boom.
