What Online Only Student Ministry Looks Like

What does online only student ministry look like? Are you ready to find out? Because it's time.

You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network.

Hey heroes, my name is Tom Pounder and this is the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. This is the podcast where I talk to ministry leaders and we talk about how you can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. And today I'm really excited because I have Taylor Terpstra on. And again, I've said I'm really excited about these interviews before, but this one got me super, super excited. Because Taylor, to my knowledge... the first ever online only student minister that's right online only student minister what is he doing how did he get this job we talked about all this stuff today in the podcast so I'm really excited to have Taylor on and for him to share his encouragement what he's discovered about online ministry to students what that looks like and how that could look like for you and your church is it even possible for you and your church We're going to talk about all that in today's interview. But before we do that, I do want to highlight The Church Digital real quick. At The Church Digital, we have a ton of different podcasts in our podcast network, and we also have a lot of coaching and cohorts starting up. So if you want to learn how to do digital or physical or even metaverse ministry, go to The Church Digital right now, hit on the equipping page to get in one of the cohorts or get some coaching, but also go to the podcast page where you can see about all the different podcasts that are happening to encourage you in your online and digital ministry. Actually, even in your whole ministry, because we've got a lot of different voices encouraging people in ministry in general. So I want to encourage you to check out the church.digital in our equipment page and the podcast page today. All right, so let's get an interview right now talking to Taylor about how he's doing online ministry and what that might look like for you in your ministry. right with me right now is taylor terpstrom taylor how are you man i'm doing good doing good good to be here i'm glad you're here you're out in california right yes california that is awesome see we're on opposite coast because i'm out in dc and you're out in california so so to to get us started on this uh let's just go through about what you do and how you got started in that

yeah so i am the online youth lead at sandals church which already sounds interesting as a title for sure um i got there during the pandemic so i was hired right at the end of 2020 um in december was like my first start date so i started right before christmas um yeah i basically was at another church um called river valley church in minnesota that's where i was living previously and during during covid i was helping with like social media and online services as everyone transitioned to online only we did as well and i had been on that team in some various roles but i at that time was specifically doing like social media work um trying to grow those channels and that was something i was passionate about so when online hit it was like they basically were like tapped me on the shoulder and were like hey can you help out with this we don't really know like what we're doing and we think you might have like a good gauge on it and i was like yeah i'll take a crack at it and so it came up with like an online service started doing stuff on youtube and um realized that everyone doesn't necessarily have the gifts and talents or likes to do that type of stuff but i really loved it so for some covid was really draining really hard and really challenging but i would say the opposite the pandemic was awesome and like not the pandemic side but in the way that it forced churches to work differently to think differently doing ministry online was something that i found was like this this is like my lane and i wish that this was happened sooner and um so grew a youtube channel um we had at that church at the time like i think 300 subscribers before um before covid and then by the end of my time there we were at like 1800 subscribers on youtube which was more yeah it's crazy which was more than what our audience was in person for students like the church ran around 800 students on a Wednesday night across multiple campuses. So we grew our youth audience by quite a bit. And so that was like kind of where I knew I wanted to do something different in ministry. And I came across a post, I knew Justin Knowles from afar. He's a legend in the youth ministry world and he's now my boss. He posted something, I think like on his Facebook about, were thinking about hiring someone to do online stuff for youth and i remember seeing that and being like that's interesting um that could be cool and not really like thinking too deeply into it but i remember like a flag in my mind popped up like i remember clearly seeing it reading it being interested in it And but not like pursuing it or anything like that, and then you posted another post and I was like guys remember when I posted about that online like thing we were thinking about it's a position it's real there's a job description like come work with us and I. I basically like I messaged him and I was like dude like I don't know really much about this, but I know that I think this is something that I want to do i'm really passionate about it, and I think that this could be cool, and so we talked chatted several interviews down the road all. All remote, by the way, all remote interviews and then I ended up at st louis church is the right fit for sure. is super cool like even like the job description has changed so much since i've gotten here obviously um but right now i do i i work for the online campus so we we treat our online audience like a campus and we have um we have sermons on the weekend that are live streamed specifically for online with online chat hosts all that so i help with some of the some of the weekend stuff so that's some of my responsibility and then I produce and edit the service for Wednesday nights for youth online. And then so the produce and editing side is part of my job. And then also extra content as well to engage our online audience. And we can talk more about it later, but it's more so like... we're we're really finding that online is very different than in person so you can't really just like regurgitate what uh church has looked like for the last 20 years you really have to adapt and and change quite a bit of things to make make it make sense on youtube and and really reach people so

This is awesome. This is better than I even anticipated it to be. So this is, this is fantastic. So, okay. So were you doing in, were you doing student ministry before you got, okay. I will say sucked into online. Okay. So that's, that's a typical story. That seems like a lot of student ministers get, get put into that. Did you have any reservations about going from in-person hands-on student ministry to doing online stuff?

um it's actually crazy so i at the time had stepped down from being like a traditional like youth pastor i i led a campus had like in-person ministry did the whole like weekly gathering big events all of that stuff for a little while and was like feeling not like i don't know it was more so like just really like is this really like what i'm supposed to do kind of but knowing that i was really passionate about student ministry but not necessarily knowing if like the role didn't feel right basically it didn't like it didn't like fit in every essence and i uh i remember really like praying about it and being like god like what like, what's next for me? Like, this is like what I've banked most of my life on and like have pursued quite a bit. And like, what's next? Cause like, if I can't be this, then like, what does that mean for me? And it's crazy because I watched, I like always go back to this, but I watched a Gary Vee video just on social media. yeah yeah he's a pretty cool dude um so watch the garyvee video and it was someone that had like called in and asked about specifically about church and social media and they were asking him like um if all of these businesses are like doing all of these things to market their product to people and like get this in front of people like social media and all of these it was like about advertising and sending all these like paid ads on facebook and all this stuff he's like and churches are still handing out like flyers it's like why like he's like have they fallen behind is there any chance that the church can catch up and like do what businesses do in terms of reaching people and he's like he said something that was really interesting and it really struck me like he said along the lines of it is possible but they have to put in the work in order to advance themselves to the place of realizing that the world like he didn't say the world but i would say the world is doing everything to reach people and so like the church isn't basically and so uh that like struck me and was like a very like convicting thing and so i spent about like i stepped down i spent about like seven or eight months teaching myself like um I like went to YouTube university in terms of like video editing Photoshop learned about like I took like a Facebook advertising class like all these like weird things that I felt like would matter. in the long run and i just like was passionate about absorbing as much information in terms of how do businesses operate in terms of marketing to people in terms of getting the word out in terms of being in front of people and then like how do we translate that not in a way of like we want to be gimmicky or we want to sell things but like because we have the best like we have the best product we have we have the answer for people and so like if we're not trying to put that in front and using every tool that's available to us then we're missing it and so um that's what got me in so i never had any reservation i would say about like transitioning from in-person ministry to online ministry in fact i'd say i'm probably more comfortable in online ministry because it truly feels like this is like what god has had planned all along um and so yeah i'm really excited for just like being where i am in terms of the growth and even like, I think post COVID is kind of like the term that's being thrown around, but in the online world, COVID really shaped like how people interacted with the internet and even specifically with church. And so now that we're post COVID, I think that we're gonna see another like big shift. in terms of how people interact online and so i'm just glad that i'm in this space that i get to explore and learn and innovate and i think that that's what's cool is that every day is different every week something changes so yeah man

That's awesome. I'm very similar to you in the sense that when I took over and did some online ministry, I was doing, I wasn't doing online student ministry, but I was doing online ministry. I had no training whatsoever. I went to school to be a youth pastor. And so I wanted to do student ministry. And then this opportunity came about years ago and I had to self... taught myself to self-teach myself and i love how you just went on youtube and and did all those classes and you learned about facebook ads it's i mean i'm not gonna say it's not rocket science but it's accessible it's really there if you want to learn you'll be able to learn because there's lots of tools out there for you uh to learn i i i love what you're doing this just gets me all excited

are you is there some element of your job right now that you do that you're just loving like what is something that you're just loving to do right now yeah so for there's a couple things i would say but i'd say the top two things are one i manage our twitch team so we have uh we have a team of youth lead volunteers that are youth leads in person at a campus but they volunteer some of their hours of the week to actually play video games i know it's so sacrificial but um they they will they stream live so right now we stream live twice a week on twitch and we do it for mostly our both in person and online whoever wants to join can join and hang out And the whole premise of it is to create a safe place for our students to game and have community, even like in a niche environment like gaming. We just want to provide like all the access that's possible. Something that's a word that's thrown around a lot specifically at Sandals is omnichannel. So like we want to be like. we want to be on every channel we want to be very accessible by people and that goes for students too so there's students on twitch so we're creating a community on twitch and discord growing that that's been something that i really loved because i love video games personally i think it's a cool community and i think um I see a really great future in that for our student ministry and even for we've already seen students come to physical locations, because of twitch we've seen students. give their life to Jesus because of twitch because they've gotten plugged into Community by that, and I think that that's just the easy primer and example that like that's something that can continue to grow and be big. the other thing that i really am passionate about is something that hasn't even released yet but um we're we're starting this year to do a youtube show so um right now just on youtube is our sermons and a few extra content that goes up every now and then but now every single week starting in february we're gonna have uh gonna have a youtube show basically a podcast like this kind of um that is that is dedicated to students questions um it's called the for real show and um we're gonna bring on experts and guests and students and all that stuff and i'll be interviewing them talking to them about whatever topic we're talking about that day but whole premise of the show is to create an environment where people can ask questions they don't have to have the answers and they can sit in a questioning environment and be really comfortable in it because we're finding that sermons sermons specifically sometimes are too deep for people right away when someone goes to church in person they choose and they kind of know what they're getting themselves into not that they know what church is like or gonna have the but they're gonna have some preconceived notions of what they're getting themselves into and they're kind of accepting it by going there when you're online the church is actually stepping into someone else's space. And so we can't expect them to follow our rules, our set standard of what a service runtime is, service looks like, all of these things. And so this show is trying to like step into that space and say like, we know we're in your space, but we have We have some thoughts, we have some opinions, we have some things we'd like to talk about with you, but we want to hold it in a place that's very open and receiving to any question and whatever. So we want to talk about the hard stuff, the real stuff. And we want to hear from students, we want to hear questions. So there's always going to be an option for students to text in questions. So that's something that I'm really excited about. It's my brainchild, something that... um we're gonna have releasing every single week it's to widen our funnel so that there's more people that can access our content and then from there if those questions don't get resolved in the conversation then maybe they check out a sermon and they can get those questions further resolved by hearing some more from the word of god and things like that so

Dude, this is awesome. I love this because again, people go to YouTube to get questions answered. And if you're answering the questions that you've got a great audience there, are you going to do the show live or is it prerecorded?

All of our stuff is prerecorded right now, except for some of our Twitch. So the show will definitely be prerecorded. The reason for that is also like quality for one and two, like we, I would say like, We try to pre record a lot of stuff so that it saves time and so we're a pretty big church and so there's a lot of people that need to use the. the facilities we have a studio at the church and so like we record in studio we have some days reserved of the month and so we'll record all four episodes that will release that month in one day um because efficiency right so and i edit everything so then it gives me a nice long runway to edit and do all the post-production stuff so

That's cool. Do you have a separate Sandals Youth channel or is it all under the Sandals Church channel and then you have a separate playlist or something like that?

No, so we do have our own youth YouTube channel. Sandals Church has the main YouTube channel. And then I think we're... we're under there as like followed channels so like they will see like if they go to sandals church's youtube channel they'll see like we have a youth youtube channel we have a worship youtube channel and we have a kids youtube channel and those are like our big categories right now who knows what they'll be in the future but that's what it is right now and then if you go to our youtube channel there's playlists of like all of our sermon series, different things like that. It's pretty organized. It looks pretty good, but it's cool that you asked this because yesterday I actually met with a pretty large YouTube producer for a YouTube channel that has ridiculous amount of following that i don't even want to say because it's embarrassing but um they they're a volunteer for sandals church and so they're gonna be um they're gonna be helping like analyze our videos so i'm actually sending them our analytics every single week after a video and they just give us advice and they're like whether you take the advice or not is up to you but like here's my opinion on it and so i'm excited to get some of our first reports back to start changing and tweaking some things to help um fit the youtube model a little bit better because um there has been a lot of shifting and like i said we're trying to really fit like not the church model but more so like a youtube model that has church stuff in it so

That's great. I love, again, your omnichannel approach on the sense that you've got YouTube stuff, you're doing specific things here on YouTube, you've got stuff on Twitch, you've got Discord. Where have you found, if it's possible, I mean, where have you found the most engagement? Is there something that you're doing? I'm sure it's not like, you know, Twitter or something like that. Are you doing TikTok, you know?

yeah so we're doing tick tock for sure so we're our main channels for we i would say ah this is tough so we do we do i would divide it by like social media and then there's video content so our video content would be youtube and twitch like that's strictly like longer form video whether it's live streamed or like pre-recorded that's YouTube Twitch and then social media which would be really short form like everything under two minutes video photo whatever that's Instagram TikTok and then we also have Snapchat as well so Yeah, so those are our three channels. I don't personally manage the social media channels. That would be way too much for me to do, but I am in charge of the video side. So Twitch and YouTube, that's like my oversight. And then social media has someone else that's on the youth team. They run that stuff, but we partner together and collaborate pretty much on everything that goes across all channels. um because it plays into online it also plays into like in person as well so the way that i view it is like if it's a win for online usually it's a win for in person as well because it's getting the word out to people so that's kind of how we have that's kind of how we've ran things for the last year i've only been on staff for a little over a year now so yeah

Yeah, this is awesome. Okay. So, dude, I could probably talk to you for a really long time. We might have to have follow-up conversations on this, but as great as things have been going, have there been any challenges that you've encountered while doing this?

Yeah. I would say the number one challenge is groups um we have been so sandals is really like groups and community oriented like if there's an end game for somebody like at our church it's getting them plugged into a group and so when i came on staff as the online youth lead they were like they're like we need digital groups we don't we want to see students going into digital groups But as that mandate was given, as the work started happening, and as we were fleshing out, what does this look like? How do we get this happening? We ran some groups for the year. And we realized that getting a student to go from an anonymous username on YouTube to a known face in a Google Meet or a Zoom call whether it's with other students or just you the leader like that is a challenge because most students if they're in person have no problem doing that but if they're coming for the first time or checking it out like they're not going to do that and so most of our groups that were digital were meeting digital because of the pandemic so They either weren't comfortable coming back to church yet or there was some other reasons. And so like they were tuning in digitally to small group. Totally cool. Totally fine. But as the pandemic lined up, as things started getting better, we have seen like that decrease in our groups. And so. my challenge has been how do we operate how do we do groups and like what's that going to look like in the year 2022 how do we how do we not even necessarily do groups but how do we facilitate the same feeling of community um where it's not just like content driven it's not just um it's not just like hey check out this video we're gonna talk in the chat during the premiere and hang out like whatever I genuinely am trying to create what would be considered digital community, where students are engaging not just in the content, but also with each other, with the leaders, all of that stuff. And so I've tried a couple of things. We've landed on a couple of things for the year. Whether they work or not, I'll let you know later. But what we're going to be doing for this next year is we're doing a bible study open house is kind of what i'm calling it so um what that looks like is three times a week i'm going to be live streaming a daily reading plan from our app so basically that's three different platforms at three different times and i'm calling it an open house because it's come and go like whatever you want to do come check it out come don't hang out at all like whatever you want to do and the premise of this is during those times and places that were live because making it live makes people want to show up hopefully and then it's unique it's special it's different every time but those open houses will facilitate conversation in the chat. And as that chat moves into greater conversation, people moving from, oh, I'm checking this open house out to, I want to buy the house. Well, if they want to buy the house, then we're going to move them into a different place, a different platform and conversation. But we're going to start on a very accessible place, a platform where they don't have to show their face. platform where they can just like be themselves do their thing and so like we're going to do that on twitch so we're going to do a live bible study on twitch from the phone not even from a big gaming computer setup like just from the phone hanging out physical bible open chilling reading answering questions whatever that looks like 10-15 minutes knock it out we're done then on another day we're going to live stream on youtube same thing super casual from the phone chilling hanging out whatever reading the bible and then as those conversations and the same people keep showing up we're going to invite those people into a next step right and that next step will be a group so what it's been is online has been Jason Perez, Church has these building blocks there's like these things that that mean discipleship to a church right and you take those steps, and you want every single person to take that step. Jason Perez, Online has been we have the steps we know people we want people to take, and we know that, like we'll get them there, but we've had to make like half steps between the steps to. make it more accessible for people online because those steps are too big of a step for digital and so that's kind of been where we're at and i'm i'm excited that we figured it out it's taken us some time but um i'm really excited about these half steps and and how that will how that will change how many people get from a to b and then b to c so

that's awesome yeah um i'm glad to hear that i'm not the only one who's when we've done online bible studies with students that they don't like to show up and they don't like to show their face because of all the demo age demographics i work with teenagers just hate to be on zoom or hate to be on that thing it's in you know but i love that that new thing that you're doing and i'm i love how you're doing it three different times and on different platforms i think that's a really cool thing you're you're definitely gonna have to let me know how it goes i think that's awesome okay so what gets you as we're kind of wrapping up here what what gets you the most excited as we're moving in as you've been doing it for over a year now you know what what gets you the most excited yeah i would say like ah the metaverse man the metaverse i'm glad you said that i'm glad you said that

um i think like i don't know man i just think that as as the church is figuring out like what digital ministry you're gonna see some churches that are willing to do whatever it takes and then you're gonna see some churches that are a little scared to take those next steps because they're like is it worth it like whatever but i think i think the future whether we like it or not we have to rationalize that like it's okay if we don't like the direction that the world is headed or that the country is headed, but technology is continuing to move faster and faster and faster. And if we don't try to keep up and use the tools that are being created to reach people, we're crazy like we're absolutely nuts and so the metaverse might seem like what's the metaverse what is it is it even real no it's not real but it is real to some people yeah and so so like that person that thinks the metaverse is real needs to find out that god is real as well and so like if you're not going there and you're not talking to people in the metaverse even though it's really uncomfortable like god calls us to not be in our comfort zone we need to be like we need to be reaching people and so yeah so i i want to see us as churches all across the world move into those territories like metaverse pops up and we start seeing people talk about it let's plant some churches in the metaverse you know like let's do some stuff some crazy stuff and um put resources into it and not just like expect things to happen but like put money where your mouth is like let's let's invest in it so i'm definitely i'm definitely thinking through looking through excited about what the metaverse means for ministry um i don't know if you you probably have seen like the life church person that got saved um in the metaverse with one of their first services there i think like that challenges me that that definitely like is like okay so what does that mean and i'm just out here like we're trying to figure out what weekend services look like still. And I think that we have to do both, right? Simultaneously, let's tweak and configure things we're already doing, but also let's continue to innovate. Let's continue to try new things. Even if everything we do isn't perfect, God can still move in that. And I think that's a word for every church. If it's not perfect, God can still move in it, right? So we have to keep trying.

This is so encouraging to hear because I think the same way about the metaverse. Again, the metaverse may not be for me, but it's for people. And there are some people in there and they are searching for God, even in the metaverse. And I think it's an opportunity right now for us to explore and figure it out. I mean, we are called to be missionaries, even digital missionaries. And that means going where people are. And if that's the metaverse, then that's an opportunity for us. uh to grow dude this has been so encouraging i am like super stoked i i do believe like you're like the first ever online student minister i i think the the vision that sandals church had to have this position but then they hear your vision they hear what you're doing you seem like the perfect person to be leading this way and man it's so encouraging talking to you

Thanks, man. Yeah, it's it's been like a crazy journey to get here for sure. And like God has done a lot in my life personally to help me realize that this is like what he's called me to do. And also, like, I just. I could be someone on the outside that is pointing fingers at the church, disappointed in what they're doing. But I decided a long time ago to be the change that I want to see in the church. And that's what's led me to where I am today. Like, instead of being broken and bitter, I decided to like, okay, like God used me in that. And let's see, let's see the ship steered in a different direction that helps. helps reach more people so i mean i'm just about reaching people man

Dude, your humility is infectious. It is amazing. And God is using you. And I just can't wait to see what your ministry looks like six months from now, a year from now. And so you and I will be in touch some more because I'm going to want to pick your brain about a lot of different things. But Taylor, as we kind of wrap up, how can someone connect with you? If they're looking for you and have questions for you, what's a good way for them to connect with you?

yeah you can email me as always that's a good one so taylorturpstra sandalschurch.com that's my email i'll always answer and then my instagram handle is taylorturpstra at instagram so yeah that's pretty much it super simple um i i'm mostly updated on instagram i have a tick tock but it's more so to observe not as much to post so

That's great. Well, I will definitely include all those links on the show notes so that people can connect with you. I hope they do. This is fascinating. Well, Taylor, thanks so much for being on the podcast with me today. I really appreciate it.

Sweet. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. It's been awesome.

All right, so what did you think? What encouraged you from that interview with Taylor? I mean, my mind was blown. My mind was going like a mile a minute after that interview because I thought, what can I do? What can my church do to reach students more in an online format? How is that possible for us? Listen, it looks different than online ministry, but students are hanging out there. So what can we do to encourage people in our online ministry? How can we encourage students? They're there. Let's encourage them. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. So hit me up on Twitter at TAPounder. And I've also included Taylor's contact information. If you have questions for him, he would love to talk to you and encourage you as well. So there you have it. That wraps it up for this awesome edition of the Church Digital Sidekick podcast. Again, as always, if you enjoy the podcast, subscribe to it. Go to thechurch.digital and you can check out all my blog posts and podcasts as well, as long as the other voice is in there as well. But you can also subscribe to this YouTube version or the audio version on iTunes and Spotify. Again, the Church Digital Sidekick podcast. I would love for you to subscribe to it today. All right, heroes, well, thanks so much for being with me today. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Until next time, have a great one.