How to Help People Know and Care about Your Church

today we're going to talk about how you can get people to know and care about your church are you ready 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 this is the church digital sidekick podcast this is the podcast where i bring on ministry leaders and we talk about how you can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world and i think a common theme that all churches all over the world are experiencing right now is that attendance is decreasing mostly rather than increasing. We're all trying to figure out how we can get attendance at church to increase or how we can get people to actually know about our church. Again, since the pandemic hit, fewer and fewer people are checking out church in person. They are checking it out online still. But again, the attendance overall is down. So how do you get people to know about what your church is about and care about it? You know, how do they get to know that there is a church in their community, whether it's an online community or an in-person community? How can we get them to know about your church and care about it? Because if you just make the assumption that our church is there and people know about it, it's a false assumption. And so to talk about this today, I have Justin Nava on. And Justin's a great guy and has been in the marketing world for a really long time. And he loves to help churches get their message out to people about how they can make their church known. into their community and how they can reach them effectively. So I'm really excited to have Justin on our podcast, and we're going to be talking all about that. But before we do that, I want to share with you about the church.digital. At the church.digital, we have so many great resources, great blogs, great podcasts that are going to help you in your online, digital, or even in-person ministry. If you have metaverse ministry that you're looking to, the church.digital is a great place to go. We've got, again, blog posts, podcasts, coaching and cohorts as well. So if you want to check out all the information there, go to thechurch.digital today and really learn how to do ministry effectively in this very digital and online world. All right, so again, today we're talking about how you can make your church known in your community, again, whether it's an online community or an in-person community, and Justin Nava and I are going to be talking about that right now.

all right with me right now is justin nava the one and only justin nava are there other justin navas out there you think i wish i was the one and only let me tell you this justin if you i i think i finally to the purpose of what i need to be because i'm only ahead of the jazz trombonist justin nava which ironically i did play trombone in jazz band as well so that was very confusing

uh so yeah so i i wish i was the one and only i'll just have to go become the best known justin nava there you go the the best known justin nava i will say this i every now and then i think i'm the only tom pounder in the world and i just google search me and again thankfully i i pop up mostly on the top of the google um stuff

uh but there are other tom pounders in the world as well so hey as long as it doesn't show up any news reports you know i think everyone's better at that we're okay yes but to me you are the only tom pounder at least that's worth you know knowing and and and doing life with i think that's fantastic so yes i am not the one and only but i am hopefully going to be the best known because what i what i want to share today and the whole reason i do what i do is to help churches make a greater impact in their community make more disciples and better serve the people they're called to uh and tommy if you don't you got to stop me okay otherwise i'm just going to keep going uh you know i'm excited to be here first of all thank you for for having me here and and listen more your church whether you're listening to this as a pastor church leader lay person lay leader whatever you want to call yourself Your church could be making a greater impact if more people knew about you. And so I want, in the same way we're kind of joking about the best known Tom Bounder and the best known Justin Nava, I want to help make your church become the best known organization in your city. Not just the best known church, but the best known organization. And that's, there's no point in making yourself the best known if you don't even know who you are or how to communicate who you are. So that's kind of, I'm just jumping in here because I'm just excited to be here, Tom.

okay so this is great i'm i'm pumped that you're you're here but let's just backtrack one little thing real quick is uh before we get into that tell people again just give us a little bit of background in case you've been on my podcast numerous times so if you're listening if you're a regular on the podcast you know that justin's been on the podcast a bunch of times but give people a quick little history about uh what you do and and how you got here

Yeah, so I basically help churches become better known in their communities. I've been doing this for 11 years. I had to do the math yesterday. I was like, man, 11 years. I can't say 10 anymore. Now it's 11. And started as a freelancer, moved into some part-time agency work, did some work with other agencies, and then launched my own agency, kind of bringing on my freelance contract clients onto the agency platform, using everything I've learned in the last 11 years to help churches figure out who they are. then maximize their discoverability and then increase attention on the church their services their ministries their missions and really just help them make a greater impact and so that's kind of where we are right now it's not enough just to have a website that's what i figured out i got my start building websites you got to be able to drive people to your website and then you have to be able to convert them and follow up with them afterwards and then you there's no point in having a website if you just have a generic content on your site. You've got to actually put some intentionality and some accuracy into your website about who you are and why you are and how you are. So, you know, this is all culminating into this just full-fledged agency now where we really focus on getting your church out into the community. Yes, you're doing outreach. Yes, you're doing missions. Yes, you're doing discipleship. Yes, you're doing service. There is only so much impact you can make if we don't use the tools that God's given us. to really make you known in the community so when people think i need food i need prayer i need healing i need support i need i need marital advice they go to who they know first they can't think of anyone they go to their friends and family if they can't think anyone they go to google you should be on the lips of every one of those people you they should know who you are if they don't know their family should know and friends should know and if they don't know google should know yeah and then google should be recommending a church so that's really what we're really striving to do this year in 2022. yeah no that's awesome and listen again you and i again we got connected because you were doing website stuff and you know i would always hit you up with website questions and you were great about that but yeah you're right

you've changed and changed over the years. And it's been exciting to see how you are just a healthy contributor to helping churches. Your heart and your passion for churches is true in just everything that you do. Anything I see you on Twitter or TikTok or whatever you're doing, it's just your heart for churches is great. And so let's get this started then. I will just say the statement of saying, no one in your community cares about your church how do you get them to care about your just how do you get your church to be known like like i think we make the assumption that our church is just known in the community and i i think my church would make that assumption that but all the time we find out people don't know about us we don't know about us and so let's start off with just that to begin with um people don't know about your church right i mean that's a false assumption to have correct

Yeah, and they may even know of you, but they don't know you, right? I know someone exists. I don't know anything about them or why it would be beneficial to have a relationship with that person, friendship, acquaintance, whatever it might be, accomplice. And so you really need to be known. in the community for what you do right mark mcdonald says it says it best be known for something you got to be known for something you have to know what that something is otherwise people will just make assumptions about who who you are and what you what you believe so you have to really understand that you have to be known for something in fact i can use mark's term there but you need to be known for who you are because even if people see your church and know where you are even if they know what service times you have because you got them plastered and they drive past it every day they don't know anything about you they'll assume that you're just like every church that they've experienced in the past bible thumping old school wear a dress wear a suit uh get my hand slapped you know grandma gave me change to put in the tithing bucket and that was always awkward and you know they don't understand because they haven't been in church for a while or Like in my dad's case, he's always saying, I want to find a church that's just like where I grew up, nice small chapel, small choir in the back, passionate preacher, and lots of local outreach. And everything around us just portrays themselves as, hey, come look at us. We're a big church. Come be a part of this big church with lots of activity. The churches that are around us, that would be a great fit for him. they aren't known or they just look like a church that might not be able to cater to, you know, his needs and serve him and minister him in the way he needs to in his later years. And so we have to really figure out kind of who we are and then position ourselves to be known for that thing because Here's the honest truth, Tom, and this is kind of getting into the chunk of this, is your church is uniquely equipped to uniquely serve a unique group of people. Hear me say that a lot, if you ever follow me. The reason is because if every church was supposed to be the same, every city would just have one church with multiple campuses. God is calling tens of thousands of church plants every year because there are people he is calling to him, and church bodies are not equipped to serve those people. right that's why we have english-speaking churches spanish-speaking churches korean-speaking churches uh all different types of churches for all different types of people and that's not a bad thing right there are some churches that are boomer focused and they don't have a nursery ministry that's okay they're not supposed to reach everyone i think a lot of people think that paul says he needs to be all things to all people and i think the big c church should be all things to all people but the little c church you're just not equipped there is no way you can be equipped to serve everyone in your city that's why i say your community i want to make you the best known organization in your community your community might be a certain subsect of people in your city while those other people that don't fall into who you're equipped to serve are rightfully to be able to go and be served somewhere else i would never invite someone who speaks spanish only to come to my church i can invite them in spanish i can speak spanish sure maybe But they come to our church, they're going to be out of place, they're not going to be fed, they're going to be awkward, and they're going to probably be frustrated, right? So I would invite them to a different kind of church that can best serve them. And we can just dive deeper into all of these unique abilities that everyone has. But once you embrace that, hey, you know, my church... While the gospel is for everyone, our church is equipped to minister. We are gifted spiritually to minister and serve a specific group of people. And that's not a bad thing. That's not competition. That's not us versus them. This is who are we best equipped to serve. And we can serve those people to the best of our capability in the way that no other church can. And this is who God's calling to us. We're going to serve them with the best of our ability. It's hard to serve them. And it's hard for them to come to you if they don't know you. And that's kind of what this is about is getting people to know you, raise awareness of your church. And again, even if they're not comfortable coming to your church, when someone else needs church, you're on their lips so they can recommend you. And then the same thing too, you got to do it with all the internet too, because people go to the internet for a lot of things.

yes well 100 and i think again i like what you said you're not gonna be able to reach every person you you should reach as many people as you can you're not gonna be able to not even mega churches are able to reach every person uh they're gonna miss people um and so and that's okay that's why we have lots of different churches the baptist church on this corner can look dramatically different from the baptist church on that corner uh and so you are unique and i like again uh drawing out from mark uh just been about being known for something so how do you get that let's start it off how do you get to be uniquely known how how how can you get that word out what what would you recommend yeah so the first thing you got to do is you got to start asking yourself some questions and looking at what you're doing right now

I think a lot of churches, they do the same thing and they get what they've always done. And if they want something new, they have to do things they've never done. And if you want to reach people you've never reached before, you have to ask yourself questions you've never asked yourself before. Look at who you're effectively ministering to and serving. And then... focus on communicating to those kinds of people in your community focus on that community so if you're doing really well with families hey go after more families that's great a lot of churches are doing that a lot of churches are doing that that aren't effectively ministering to families if you've got a lot of uh of military folk in your in your church you know focus on that you really need to look at who you're who you're effectively reaching and like who you're actually like getting to stay retained serve they're taking action they're serving but also look at who you're equipped with. Who has God gifted you to help disciple others and be a part of that body of Christ? But then also you need to figure out kind of what gives you the authority to go after, to reach out to those people. We live in a world where a lot of people's assumption about your church is based on what they've seen from other churches. And it's no longer, or I should say it's becoming less and less about their own experience, but what other people are experiencing that then gets shared on social media and goes viral. I've seen a lot of videos about pastors preaching about beards, Democrats, things that I was like, I hear that and I'm like, how do you even pull that from scripture? And of course, there is no scripture in the post. But people hear that and they just make the assumption that your church, who just wants to love people and equip them to love better, live better, give better, serve better. they will judge your church based on the actions of others if you do not figure out what gives me the authority to say as a church as a body of christ we can serve you we can minister you we have the good news forget what the false teachers are saying forget what the other churches that aren't equipped to serve you right we are here for you and you have to ask those questions what gives me the authority what are they struggling with right now that our church helps answer you know we talk a lot about felt needs and things that people desire and people really want those those big things hope purpose passion healing is becoming a big part of that mental health physical health as well i think it's a big part that the church has kind of just forgotten about and demonized uh healing is a big part of that and so they don't know that they think the church is just for christians to come and praise each other about how high and mighty we are and so you really need to figure out kind of what gives us the authority how can we empathize with folks and then what are their specific needs that we come along and say i know you're struggling with this we've been there too here's what we do and here's what you can expect yeah and i don't know if you've ever if this sounds familiar to you tom or any of your audience this is really following the story brand formula um when we when we start on projects getting churches ready to build their foundation to go scale and reach more people scale their marketing efforts we start with the story brand foundation we we start with the story brand framework to figure out who they are called to reach who they are effectively communicating to how they can relate from one to another and then how can we communicate what does life look like after interacting with the church after seeing jesus after meeting jesus after becoming a part of this body how do we effectively communicate that because just saying Go to church because your life will be better. It's not going to do the job. And especially if you just communicate, come to church at 930, it's going to sound like, well, come to church at 930. Why? Well, because it's at 930. That's right. We need to communicate ourselves better than the trailers we grew up watching and the teasers we see coming out of, you know, we just had SDC. uh the uh san diego comic-con we got all the trailers to get excited for marvel stuff you know we see that and we know what to expect we're excited to see what to expect but when it comes to our churches we just say you know imagine marvel just said hey we got a movie coming out coming out may 17th right i mean people don't know what that movie is they don't know what to expect they're going to be a little bit more hesitant and you're kind of leaving it up to them rather than taking control and saying this is what you can expect this is what you're going to come out seeing and i think unlike the marvel movies you don't got to do a lot of research to go to church and fully appreciate and understand it nor do you feel like you got to put a bunch of puzzle pieces together in the theater and you're like i hope nobody asked me who this character was because i don't know who that was yeah

Well, and see, I think that's really interesting, the great points that you're making, because I look at my church in particular at the moment. We wanted to be known for helping our community and serving our community. So we would go out to the community fairs, especially over the summertime. and serve them and to be a part of those and to engage with our community that way but we also when when we built our building we were in the school for a long time and when we built our building we did a survey community survey and just said what can we help with how can we serve you all uh in in this community and they gave us a variety of different options but one of the things they said was hey we we want more indoor uh uh sports fields or fitness centers because sports and health are really important in in my area as i as i assume a lot of different areas and so what we did was we didn't just build a regular church building we built a community center and we built a community center with turf fields basketball courts a fitness center And then it's essentially a portable church. And we wanted to help with that. And we have our church on Sunday, but seven days a week, it's used as a sports facility, serving our community and meeting needs there. But we also do serve our community. We have this thing called Passion for Community, where again, we're helping people get started out. Again, our area, which it seems like a lot of areas in America these days, are high priced and so not everyone can afford things and so we want to help families especially those who are getting out of tough life situations get started in life and so we we created this group called passion for community and we serve our community that's what we want to be known for we don't we don't want to have the bet like there's other churches in there that are known for big events and great concerts and all those we're not known for that but we're known for wanting to serve our community

That's perfect. I love that. That's fantastic. My next question to you, Tom, and hey, let me ask you some questions now. Oh, great. This is my podcast. This is my podcast. But this is a good exercise because this is kind of the questions that we ask our clients. This is the kind of question I ask my own church. And just I think seeing this, if I can put your feet to the fire a little bit. Let me ask you this. Why is it important for your church to serve the community? Why is it the community and not something else?

Well, again, I didn't start the church, but I came on staff here. But again, we felt like we wanted to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We wanted to go out there and serve our community. And again, just be known that we're a helping hand, that we're not expecting you guys to come to us, but that we want to go to you and help out and love on people and serve people. Again, we're trying to raise disciples that make disciples. And we feel like by us going in the community, we're really doing that.

Absolutely. That's perfect. And there are, you mentioned disciples who make disciples, helping the community, being the hands for the needy. You know, that is a mission that a lot of churches have. Not a lot of churches are equipped to go out in the community in the way that you do. There are other churches that serve their community by focusing on kids, right? They want to make disciples who make disciples and they want to start at a young age. There are other members of the churches that are focusing on education. They provide lots of education opportunities to meet the failings of the public school or whatever is going on in the area, or even extracurriculars, right? I got a client that's doing finance classes for high schoolers because the schools aren't teaching high schoolers. And they're teaching them how to become better stewards. And then through that, they teach, well, who is actually ultimately responsible of the blessings that we have and the gifts we have and kind of where that family unit comes in part of the finance management part of it. I think it's fantastic at every church. while our mission can ultimately be boiled down to disciples make disciples we each carry it out in a different way and so that's that's kind of you know what we need to double down on is yes we're trying to make disciples but the way that one church does it is not necessarily going to mean it works for us and this is why we get a lot of clients coming to me that say well we tried this because it worked at this last church this works great at my last church right or this worked great at the church across the street it doesn't match who you are it's like if i go to your house tom and i start cooking dinner for your wife she's gonna be like this isn't my husband get out of my house and i'll say this tom does this every night why won't you let me know it's it's awkward it's weird it doesn't fit and so we got to figure out who we are and why we are and then again how we are going to do that and so i think that's fantastic that you have that because you didn't go into just we're disciples and make disciples and we want to serve the community you went into exactly how you're equipped You've got volunteers with a passion for sports. You've got volunteers with a passion of community. You've got volunteers that have a passion to minister to people through that. Whereas another church, have a lot of intellectuals might have a lot of introverts one of my favorite churches in arkansas is a church full of introverts they don't do stuff like that they make disciples in smaller environments uh and so i think that's fantastic to figure out who you are what gives you again the the authority to speak your church can say we care about a community we care about team sports we care about you know raising people up in that disciplined environment i think that's great that makes the community better you've got another church across the country that says we get it life is anxious so we're going to have small group environments we're not going to try to shake your hand or have all the greeters shake your hands we're not going to we're going to do very small small small steps to get you to commit to the church and be discipled and what works for them won't work for you what works for you definitely won't work for them and that's kind of what we have to dig out dig into so that way when someone says you know i wish there was a boys and girls club around here someone can say oh well tom's church is even better right or you know i really go to church but everyone wants to shake my hand i don't know anyone they blow up my phone afterwards and they won't stop calling me and they showed up to my house on tuesday night i don't want that okay we'll go to sunny church because they don't do any of that and you're going to feel much more comfortable there so you got to figure out who you are and then from there you got to communicate who you are you've got to make sure that people finding you can understand who you are and then also that people that don't know about you can have a way to know you yeah so let's break that down how how do people get how do we get the word out about that sure so we kind of went over step one which we call the branding foundation that's knowing your message who you're called to serve how you're going to serve them what actions you want them to do what gives you the authority and empathy to speak into their life what are they going to experience when they come in what is the kind of the process of them engaging with your church it's not always just plan a visit right we want them to plan a visit but there's going to be some stuff afterwards we want to make that known you you should be able to promote your visitor process, okay? If you don't feel comfortable promoting your guest assimilation, onboarding, welcome system, whatever it is, you're probably not doing well, or you're not doing it right, or you're trying to trick people to come back to church. We should not be tricking people to come back to church. So all of that is the branding foundation, knowing all of that.

Yeah.

OK, then you've got a little bit of your logo, your identity, how you're going to represent yourself. So step two really is to maximize your discoverability. This is people that are searching for for you or something that you offer. OK, so this might come in. This is obviously your website. People are going to land on your website. Your social media can be a part of that. I don't focus a lot on social media unless it's paid advertising because that's where the real results are. Your local SEO does your search engine optimization. Tom, that's what I always seem to talk about with you. which is getting you to rank higher in google when people are searching for churches they're searching for questions that your sermons answer or your blog posts answer or events right anytime i got two kids now i search for family friendly events because we want to get out of the house your church events should be showing up when people are searching for kids activities this summer right something like that uh and then also your reputation this is something new that we've been focusing on because we've seen a lot of a very big difference when people are searching and taking looking for a church to join or even just something to take action on your stories and your online reviews are a huge huge factor in people deciding whether or not they trust you because they will hear what you say about yourself they will listen to what others say about yourself and so you really need to focus on how are we going to get people to not only just leave a good review like great worship love the pastor hey great like i felt welcome but really leave a review that's more like hey we were on the verge of divorce i didn't know what to do as a man i went to this church pastor counseling he put me in connection with a group of men my wife came and felt welcomed we brought our kids and now our whole family is living with a new purpose a new passion a new outlook in life and our marriage hasn't been any better five stars right god forbid that person's like two stars like oh and i think you accidentally hit a button so you need to get some actual stories like that reviews like that and actually manage that so that way when people are searching for churches searching for kids activities searching for food pantries uh searching for benevolence right i need gas to get to my interview or something like that you know you're going to get the people that are just looking for handouts that's just part of the business we know that um but then also people that are looking searching for questions of your sermons right if you do your work and you actually preach a sermon that is meant for your body but is good for anyone to consume then when they search for something like um marriage counseling in denver you know your sermon might come up and says hey you know we're talking about divorce here and you know yes they're getting marriage counseling results but google might also serve up your sermon on divorce or your sermon on marriage that they can then watch because that's more content and so that's just something if you do blog posts hey great you know if you do clips or something like that your website has a better chance of showing up because you can properly seo it versus a random facebook video those live for a couple days and then they're never watched again so You really got to focus on maximizing your discoverability. But again, you have to clean your house first. You have to figure out who you are and what actions do you want people to take and what gives you the authority to speak into their lives and what they can expect. You have to figure all that out before you bring them over. for the people that are looking for you. So once you figure all that out, you'll actually get some data to learn what is attracting people, what is working that we can double down on, what's not really working that we can kind of leave behind because churches are limited on resources. The last thing I want you to do is be spinning your wheels, trying to make something work when you've got something that is working that you can focus your attention on and scale.

So this is great. And just a quick question, like because YouTube is tied into Google because Google owns YouTube, would you recommend if you're gonna throw a video out there, again, you can throw it up on Facebook, you can throw it up on Instagram and all those other places, but would you recommend that you would probably number one should be throw it up on YouTube because of the SEO purposes and what Google will give you based on that?

Yeah, if you properly, when I say properly SEO, we're talking about, you know, properly tagging and filling all the information about your videos so it shows up when people search. Okay, so it takes literally five minutes. Now, your first time doing it, it might take an hour. But after a few weeks of... doing the same thing over and over again. It'll take you five minutes. Yes, absolutely. YouTube is great. Throw your whole sermon up there. There are some people out there, Tom, that say never put your whole sermon on YouTube. I say, why not? It doesn't cost you anything. It doesn't hurt you. If anything, you're putting something out there that might not work, but it could work tremendously. And it's going to give you the data of what's not working. so yeah you don't want to just you don't want to just say uh you know here's my uh sermon uh july 19th right you don't want to put that up there you also don't want to put pastor's title i'm sorry i'm picking on pastors here pastors they make great sermon titles for the congregation not for youtube so um thank you thank you for saying that yeah yeah if you're a creative out there just ask your pastor say hey can i update the sermon title just for youtube and get their blessing and name it something catchy uh because the sermon title like um you know stumbling over god is is pretty cool but another a youtube title i might use is like when god causes you to stumble or why is god against me or why does god hate me you know things like that you can put that in the description that way when people type that into google or youtube your youtube video could show up and not many people are typing that so the ones that do your video has an even higher chance of showing up so yeah absolutely youtube is my one of my favorite platforms uh and so definitely youtube should be a place and i would always recommend that is not the end point putting your sermons on youtube is start point. Then you want to actually clip out stories, clip out points, messages, SEO those. You can spend as much time as you want. Really, it just depends on, again, is your ministry equipped to go out and reach all these people in this way? And if it is, then yeah, that's a great platform to go into.

maybe maybe our next conversation will be about youtube because we we've spent the whole summer uh doing new things with youtube and we've seen really great results um for our church and so i'm excited about talking about youtube but for the sake of this one we'll show that for the next conversation we have justin okay so you've talked about the first two ones what else would you how else would you encourage us

So from there, once you've got it, and I lay this out in a roadmap, and this is why I kind of like say, first, you got to figure out who you are. Then you've got to maximize for the people that are looking for you. Once you have those two things, you know who you are, you've got people coming to you, and you know why they're coming to you, either because they tell you in church, or you can look at the data and say, oh, a lot of people are coming from this search result, whatever it is. then you can go out and increase attention. There's three ways that I recommend you increase the attention on your church. This is reaching new communities and new ways on new platforms. They haven't heard about you because you've been doing the same thing over again. Stop doing A, B, and C. If you want to reach people A through Z, you've got to start doing D through Z, right? Hope that made sense as much as it did in my head. So you've got to go out and start doing new things, right? I love, love, love. If your church is a nonprofit and has proper documentation, you can get free advertising from Google. I love this. You can get up to $10,000 a month. You can reach people in your community, be top of the search results when people are searching for churches, when people are searching for Bible questions or anything like that, you know, kids activities. Again, you can be right at the top. But then also Facebook ads are great. You know, you can appear in the timeline. There's a certain way to do it. That way is not how most churches do it. So whenever someone says, oh, we tried Facebook ads and it didn't work. No, the way you did it didn't work. Right. Facebook ads is doing fantastic for our clients. We're getting new connections for less than a dollar. We're getting we had one event where more people at my own church, more people showed up because of a Facebook ad than our word of mouth. You know, hey, invite people and. organic posting and all that and we have documentation that proves that the last thing is really focusing on public relations and that is basically getting on your platforms pastor you're the spokesperson of the church and like it or not and so having yourself on there or other representatives that you trust You know, make podcast appearances, make, do guest blog posts. Every community has a local foodie group, right? You should do something in there to help just get the word out, right? Tom, you'd be fantastic. Your church can do something sports related. You've got the community events. You should be putting out press releases. Hey, we've got a sweet 16 tournament this March, you know, if you're doing something like that, or, hey, we've got a new kickball league starting up. can't tell you how many times i've looked personally for softball leagues and i would love to get back into softball and give me something to train for get some good community action i just can't find any softball leagues where i'm at uh in north houston's you know stuff like that where you're putting out press releases you know anyone that comes and speaks up the church right we've got a great fantastic new guest he wrote this book in this book and he's coming to this church put out a press release um if anything even if no one sees it, Google sees it and realizes that your church has this specialty. And so anyone that is interested in that, because Google knows us deep, right, deeper than our spouses, and it will give us custom search results. So people that are naturally inclined towards community service or naturally inclined towards sports, when they search for churches, Google knows your church likes sports and has a lot of sports events and is focused on the community. It will boost your church. in the ranking results and so it the things have gotten incredibly more complicated things are changing every day but if you do that go on new make new appearances to new audiences using google ads using facebook ads using uh just you know trying to get on new platforms uh with your church uh you're gonna increase attention and get more people knowing you and so even if they say that's a great church i'm already connected to a church or that's a great church but it's not for me yeah Whenever someone says, gosh, my life is falling apart and I don't know what to do and everything sucks. Let's say, okay, I get it. You know, hey, for me, but maybe you want to check out and they're going to say, they should say your name, right? It's just like when someone's like, I got a crazy craving for tapas. Well, I've never had a tapa in my life, but I know there's a place down the street from my house. So, hey, if you, there's a place down there I pass every day. That's a recognition. That's a touch point. You want as many of those as possible.

that's awesome i i love everything that you just said there and i will just again say With Facebook ads over Christmas, last Christmas, I went all in on Facebook ads. I asked for more money than I've ever asked for for Facebook ads. And again, I can't directly say, hey, we saw these people identified Facebook ads as the reason why they came. But our attendance was significantly higher, especially with our online attendance, than it has been in the past few years. And I can attribute, I firmly believe that it's because of Facebook ads. And I think I tried five different ad sets. And it was fun to experiment. They were cheap overall. And it was just a good way to get that word out.

yeah i love love facebook ads i love google ads um especially because google ads are free uh yes the ad spend is free and uh yeah it's you know if you really know what you're doing or if you hire someone that knows what they're doing uh you can see tremendous result and we've got churches that are having streets named after them neighborhoods named after them uh churches that are being pastors that are being asked to go and speak at certain events that they're like i don't have i've never thought i could be a speaker um you know and that's because they are making such a large impact because everyone in the community is talking about this church and let me just address this too uh some pastors and and these might not be the pastors that i'm equipped to serve right my agency is We only work with a specific set of churches because you have to be growth-minded. You have to be willing to make a commitment. You have to be willing to stick through the roadmap. And even though you want to jump to the next shiny object, you've got to say, we can't do that unless we clean up our house. We can't list our house for sale unless we clean it up first. Sometimes you got to change the roof, right? No one's going to buy a 20-year-old, 30-year-old roof, right? You've got to clean some things up. A lot of pastors have the concern that... Well, as we draw attention to ourselves, we're going to draw a certain ire, right? We're going to draw some heat because maybe something's happened in the past or, you know, people just don't like the gospel. You know, we live in a postmodern world. And if we say Jesus is the only way, you know, and then people aren't going to like us, maybe even someone will protest us because we support a pregnancy center. I don't know what the crazy climate we have today.

Yeah.

and to that i say unless you're getting some hate you're not promoting yourself enough i mean every church and just think about your favorite person that you like to follow socially right someone doesn't like that person there's always two sides and as unfortunately marketing groups get better at pr that's why everything seems split 50 50 because both sides are of any argument is getting really good at the pr and there's there's a middle line there that just no one seems to want to cross and so as you promote yourself you are going to draw some heat what i would say to that is don't let the hatred of 50 people impact you from changing the lives of 500 right i would rather get the hate from 50 people that are never going to interact with me anyways and have 500 new people to high five and 500 new parties in heaven because we're going out and making ourselves known and calling people to action and the last thing because i think we're running up on time here tom is I view inaction as a church. Our inaction is a stumbling block that we are placing in front of the people that God's calling to him. Okay. God may be calling someone and pushing on their heart saying, you've got to get back to church or you've got to check out church. I want to know you more. Maybe they bust out their Bible during a hard time and they have trouble reading it. And they remember. maybe the pastor can help maybe some someone helped me when she was going through a hard time and i can do this too and if they go to your church website if they search for you online and can't find you they will find someone else that maybe is not equipped to serve them and then when they go to that church they feel frustrated they feel unloved they feel like an outsider and they will again judge all of churches based on that experience Or they will just assume like, if you just have a generic message, if you are a church for the blue collar worker and it's, you know, we want you to come, we want you to love, we want you to feel community, we want you to feel connected because life is hard, but Jesus is easy. But if on your website, you just say Sunday's 11, they're going to think. this is just a church that you know is just like every other church except they meet at 11 right maybe i get to sleep in for an hour so you really have to focus on who you are and why you are and how to get involved because if you just look like every other church people are going to take just like every other action ever and say now just sleep in and try something else And so you have to present yourself in that unique way. It's called marketing. It's called promotion, communicating. That's the world we live in, right? It's not an assumption that people are going to go to church. And it's not an assumption that every church is the same. Every church is uniquely equipped, uniquely rich, unique group of people. Because of that, you need to communicate in a unique way that communicates the right message to the right people in a way that they'll understand in the right timing. And so that's what all this is about. It's clarifying who you are and putting yourself in front of as many people as possible because I want more parties in heaven and I don't want those 50 haters to stop it.

Dude, this is awesome. I'm pumped just listening to you. And again, like I said earlier, your passion for helping churches is really clear. It's really evident. And it's exciting to hear you share. So this has been awesome, Justin. I really appreciate you being with me. If people want to connect with you and learn more about what you do, where can they go?

So I'm going to give people one thing to do because this is a podcast, right? So you listen to podcasts. I know you listen to podcasts. I'm not going to ask you to go download something or go read something. I just want you to listen to something. So go to your favorite podcast player, YouTube, Anchor, Spotify. Anchor is owned by Spotify. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and just go search for The Best Known Church Show. If you want to do it old school, go to thebestknownchurchshow.com and just subscribe to our podcast. We do a live episode every Wednesday. It's published Wednesday afternoon on the podcast platform as fast as possible. We do clips on our YouTube channel. But wherever you like to listen to podcasts, go add our podcast to the rotation. We talk about everything we did. We drill in even deeper. Look at what growing churches are doing, what better known churches are doing. Because again, we want your church. If you are good, I mean, everyone knows a good God honoring church needs to be known more. And I want you to be above the noise of the false teachers and the churches that are making false promises. And even the other organizations that aren't churches that are making promises of a better life that only God can promise. I want you to rise above that noise and be known even more than them. And the way to do that, the way to get started is just to go listen to that podcast. So that's the best known church show.

and i subscribe to it and i enjoy listening to justin and his uh encouragement and uh i would encourage you to do that i will include the the that in the show notes so if you don't awesome you didn't write it all down just click on the show notes click on the link and you'll get with justin justin is active on twitter too so if you want to make sure you want to follow him on twitter he's great and he's on tick tock too i mean i you got all that man got to be the best known you got to be everywhere

It's work, man. It's work. But hey, I mean, you know, this is why we do what we do.

That is true. I will have all of Justin's links, including his TikTok for you to follow. So hopefully you'll do that. Justin, as always, it's great talking to you, man.

I appreciate you, Tom. Thanks for having me and God bless you all.

All right, so what did you think? What stood out to you? What encouraged you? What challenged you? What questions do you have? I would love for us to continue this conversation online. Again, Justin and I are both on Twitter. And again, you can go to the show notes, find out all his information. where he's at on Twitter, but you can also hit me up on Twitter at TAPounder. I would love for us to continue this conversation again because we want people to come to know Christ. We don't want just higher attendance, just to have higher attendance. We want people to come to know Christ so that they can experience eternity with us and with Christ. This conversation was really important, and we'd love to have it carry on online. So again, hit us up on Twitter. We'd love to talk to you. If you've got any questions, you can email me, tom at thechurch.digital. I would love to talk to you a little bit more about that today. All right, heroes, well, thanks so much for joining me. This wraps up another podcast. Again, I want to encourage you, if you enjoyed it, subscribe to it. I got these coming out regularly. I also got blogs and other content coming out at thechurch.digital, so you want to make sure you check that out. This is on YouTube. It's on iTunes. It's on Spotify. Just click the link so you can subscribe to it today. All right, heroes, well, I hope you have a great rest of your day. Until next time, have a great one.