How to Make the Transition from Traditional Ministry Role to Online Ministry

A lot of traditional ministry leaders are making the move to online ministry. So what does that transition look like? How do you go from a traditional ministry role to online ministry role? That's what we're talking about in today's podcast. So get ready because it's time.

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

Hello, heroes. My name is Tom Pounder and you are listening to the Church Digital Sidekick podcast. This is the podcast where I bring in ministry leaders and we talk about how you can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. And today we're going to talk about making the transition from a traditional ministry role into an online ministry role. What does that look like? How can you do that effectively? A lot of ministry leaders are doing that, but what does that really look like and how can you make sure you're doing it effectively? For this podcast episode, I brought in a friend, a new friend, actually, someone who I've been following on Twitter and gotten to know a lot over the COVID time, but he's never been on the podcast before. His name is Tyler Volkers, and he's an online minister. And we are going to be talking about how he made that transition. And I'll interject a little bit about how I made that transition as well. But then what does that look like for you and how you can do ministry more effectively? What are some challenges that you get as you're making that transition? And what are some great things that you experience as well? So I'm really excited to have Tyler on the podcast. So without any further ado, let's get an interview right now with Tyler. All right, with me right now is Tyler Volkers. Tyler, how are you, man?

I'm doing great. Hey, thanks for having me on, Tom. And thanks for the show. Your show's great.

Thanks, man. Well, I appreciate you coming on. This is the first time you've been on my podcast. And so, again, we've been kind of following each other on Twitter a little bit. And we have our mutual friend, Jeff Reed, the one and only Jeff Reed. The goat. The goat. yeah that's right so um so uh again i know who you are uh and i know what you do but i would love for you to just give uh the people listening a quick little description about what you do and how you got started in the ministry

Yeah, that's a great question. So, Tom, I actually serve at the Ridge Community Church. We are based out of Greenfield, Wisconsin, in the Milwaukee area. The Ridge is about 13 years old. I've been on staff since 2010. I came on as our student pastor. So I know you and I have a similar student ministry background. Then became like our next gen pastor and probably like many of the listeners here during the whole COVID pandemic. we knew we needed to make some shifts as far as putting more horsepower and leadership into our digital strategies and i was sitting on our leadership team at the time and so my lead pastor asked me to say i said hey uh would you consider transitioning your role into becoming a digital pastor online campus pastor however you want to call it and and began to check that out and prayed about it and said yes and i've been trying to figure out what that means um ever since and so sitting in that role for about the last year i currently serve as our online campus pastor as well as we call it the executive director of ministries so just kind of overseeing our core ministries at our church uh for um when it comes to our kids students groups missions and then everything digital as well

That's awesome. That's good because we're going to be talking about that transition today in this episode. But before we do that, though, I do have to ask you, like, are you a you know, are you a sports fan? Do you like the different teams from Milwaukee? Are you different sports team fans?

Oh, that's a great question. So actually, I grew up in northwest Illinois, and so I am everyone's favorite Bears fan in Wisconsin, meaning that whenever Aaron Rodgers and the team owns us, you know, I get my phone blown up with text messages and all of that. But I have transitioned to be a big Bucs fan. When the Bucs won the NBA championship this year, it was incredible. And so I hold on to the Bulls memories as a kid and celebrate the Bucs now. They're great.

Yeah, they are great. I was actually rooting for them as well. I'm based in D.C., so I root for all the sports teams of D.C. except for I'm a Cowboy fan. And so growing up in the 80s and the 90s, I mean, the rivalry was intense between the Washington football team and the Cowboys. It's not so much now. Cowboys pretty much own them a lot of times. But I get that. Whenever the Washington football team beats the Cowboys, I always get a bunch of text messages, Facebook posts. It's insane. become very popular yes there you go there you go so all right well today we are going to talk about uh transitioning because like you said uh we we had a lot of people who were starting off in one position before covid and now have been asked to do something else so let's walk through the process that you went through in that um again what was the position that you were in before uh covid hit

Yes, before COVID hit back in February 2020, I was serving in sort of a dual role. Our church then had two physical locations. For all of our locations, we called it the family ministry director. So I was leading our kids and our student staff and influencing the teams and the parents to help. We call kids and students our critical generation. So how do you help them follow Jesus? and then um with that that's probably about 60 of my role the other 40 i was serving at our newer location um in sort of a executive pastor type role uh just trying to execute the vision that our campus pastor had and i'd have to say that time was awesome i felt like i was in the sweet spot of my ministry our church was growing things were going really well and then march 2020 happened and Yeah. So we had to figure that out. What was interesting during that time, Tom, is Jeff talks about the cohorts. We were already signed up to be a part of the Futurist Group as a church. And sitting on the leadership team, it was kind of like a no-brainer decision. Like, hey, we want to be a part of that and leverage technology. So that was a part of our heart as a church.

Yeah.

um at the time we had church online broadcasting we were actually one of the first churches in the milwaukee area to actually utilize like church online platform and put services on online which then we thought it was an online campus i mean nowadays you would say yeah we were just streaming our services but we were kind of the pioneers in the area for that like the local news even talked about it was crazy cool yeah and we had a great great great volunteer team a lot of them are still serving on the volunteer team at that point too we just knew we needed to get more horsepower yeah i just never thought that was going to be me um During the middle, ours was safer at home. You know, when people were staying at home in quarantine, my lead pastor texted me. He's like, he texted me some of Jeff's podcasts and the church digital and just said, hey, does this like beat your heart a little bit? Like get your and I think it was some of Tyler Sansom stuff and other things that we're listening to. And I was like, this is really good. This is really good. And I told my lead pastor that it's like, good. I want you to start leading our digital strategies and.

i said okay um and that that happened in i think may of 2020. and so in at may in may were you still doing some of your old responsibilities as well

Well, at that point, because of Safer at Home and because we had to close down our in-person locations, the executive pastor side of that other location, that began to dwindle significantly because of, I think there's obvious reasons there, but then it was leading our critical gen teams to help them start thinking through digital strategies as well. And so then I was able to kind of like help all of our ministries and just do a lot of research and learning. And we were all at that point trying to figure out what what is our digital strategy not just to get us through those few weeks and ultimately a few months but then um afterwards as well so that part of my job stayed the same for a little while okay cool now you said before covet hit you were kind of in your sweet spot and you were feeling it

so what kind of a feel what what kind of feelings were you going through again i know your heart beated for this digital stuff but how how was it kind of leaving the one behind and moving it over to another one because i feel like there's a lot of people who have been going through that same process yeah it's a great question i think

I had a number of friends reach out to me and say, hey, this is cool that you're doing this. Is this what you want to do? And I just kind of thought it was an interesting question that they were posting to me. One thing about my specific way that I'm wired. I'm traditionally known as my 10 years here on staff is kind of the guy who shifts roles a lot. And I think what we learned with my wiring is I like to go into new places and identify what's going on, make it, you know, improve upon it, build on it, and then find the next person to hand that off to. That's been part of my history. So I think for many people, and I think it honestly still for many, like right now, they're like, okay, this is Tyler's new thing. How long is he going to do this and then hand it off to the next person which I think that's got to be our ministry mindset anyways is like how do we just continue to build and build and develop people and hand that off. but i think for me it was like well what is the advantage that developing and leading digital strategies really provide that gets the heart beating and and tom for for us as a church uh our heartbeat uh and i think many churches harpy would say the same thing is for the one it's for those who are in church and what we just see right now is God has given us this great tool. We have no greater tool to connect with the unchurched than digital right now. And so as long as we can use that to connect with unchurched people, Let's go after it. Let's go after it. And so that's been what gets me excited about this.

Did you experience any kind of pushback from other people outside of your church that said, you're going to do this digital thing now, but like, it's only going to be temporary because we're going to go back into the building eventually. And digital is not even a big deal. Did you get any pushback from that and people surprised that you decided to do this?

Not like vocally to me, like saying, hey, you need to do this. What has been very interesting is to see some other churches locally, I think, begin to slide back on their own where they kind of said, hey, you know, we're going to try this out. And for whatever reason, it didn't work for them. And they just said, OK, hey, we're going to go ahead. But one of the things that we've just said is. a church and even my lead pastor mark is just like we're not going to give up on this as long as we're convinced and we feel like this is going to help us connect with the unchurch and now somebody comes alongside and shows us no there's another tool we're we'll we'll put it aside and go after that but for us it's it's all about the one and that and that's what we communicate all the time

Yeah, that's great. And I totally feel the same thing with you. I think, you know, this is kind of the, as Jeff has referenced too, this accelerated our push to online ministry in a big way. And it has broken my heart a little bit to see churches kind of go back to say, hey, now that we're meeting in person, we don't really need to focus the time and the energy, but it's great to see your heart and see your church's heart on saying you want to go after the one and you want to go after that person who needs that. so let me ask you this as you've been focusing on your digital strategy and working with the church how have you been mobilizing the other staffers because again it's great that you're spearheading this but you need the whole team to have a digital strategy correct yeah so that's a great question and

For some staff members and some staff teams, it's easier than others. And so what we've landed on, we went through a whole reorg as well. I think many churches have through this process as well. And I think we've had to land on, hey, what's our approach to digital in terms of staffing? really what we've landed on is as we have one physical location preparing to relaunch our second one again, and we don't know when that's going to happen, but we're praying for that and other in-person gatherings and then other digital gatherings is we need every staff member to think about both more and to see how do they work together and what is the fuel for that. And really, we really love that that digital you know that jeff uses the term digital approach of like digital's everywhere and digital's nowhere all at the same time like we're connecting digitally right now but we could also have this conversation in person and so how do we how do we structure our strategies around that to just allow god to move um through that and so uh so a couple of key things we we've started doing is we have a couple staff members outside of me that we've taken their job descriptions and and we didn't put in a job description but we've said hey every meeting that something's talked about you ask the question hey how does this impact digital and and just and just even just get that thought out there um We have a couple of remote workers that are always thinking about digital because that's the only way that they're able to engage. And then the coaching strategies, too, that I meet with my directors and just like, OK, this is a great in-person strategy. What about those that are connecting digitally? And like I said earlier, if we're going to be fully invested in the one, our research shows us that they're going to connect with us digitally first for the most part. That's how. So we got to think about it.

That's cool. What has been one of the most exciting things for you as you've made this transition into the digital ministry?

A couple of things. One that came to my mind, my heart has broken for where I grew up in northwest Illinois, where my family's at, because there isn't a church like ours there. But family members of mine have been engaging with us digitally and would call our church their home. And so it's been kind of unique to have them. and have the conversations where we can come back. So that's been a personal win for ours on my family side and my wife's family side as well. And then I think the other thing that's just been really exciting for me is just been seeing individuals and team members who. they're they're different i mean you get them in a social setting they're kind of quiet they're kind of reserved but then if you empower them in ministry i mean they're leading groups or they're commenting on social media posts and uh they're telling us hey their friends are secretly watching us so that's the words that phrase they're secretly watching our services and then they text them they're like do we actually make a decision to follow jesus we want to we want to figure that out um that's been exciting to me and then to see the tools that we can put out to empower people to take their own steps to follow jesus anytime has been really exciting yeah that that is really exciting i i love hearing stories about that that someone will watch the stream like i like to share our stream on from facebook on my facebook profile every sunday morning

uh i'm sure it annoys some people but again i i've heard different people saying hey that was a great message by yourself i'm like i didn't even know you're watching it that's great that you're watching it and the the reach potential that we have with digital ministry is just really great and i do believe that more people are going to be able to hear about jesus because of these tools than ever before um and so i i think that's really exciting okay so what's been a challenge or what's been a little frustration for you as you've kind of made this move that's a great question uh i think that the challenge

for me and i don't think i'm alone with this and talking with other online pastors is trying to figure out who is always on the other side is as great as the reach is uh i think a lot of us we get in the ministry because we're wired to care for people and we want to know people and so we work really really hard i feel good about our follow-up process and are getting to know people once they trust us with their information but then there's times you're just wondering i think it's easier when you're looking at a camera or looking at this and the thoughts that creep in like hey is this really making a difference is this really and but i think god's been good to remind us and send stories our way whenever those thoughts begin to creep in like no god is using this this makes a difference like keep yeah keep speaking to the camera man it's okay it's okay yes i agree

And that's where, again, the numbers issue is always very tricky. You know, when you're in person, you can count the numbers and whatnot. And we get numbers on online stats and everything like that. But it's tricky to find out who's there and who's really watching, who's doing the dishes while your sermon's going on, who's actively engaged. But that is really interesting. Shoot, I had a good follow up question for you on this and and now I just totally slipped my mind on this. Oh, dang it. Oh, well, maybe I'll come back to me as we go along. OK, so those have been some of the challenges and some of the things that you kind of been working through as you kind of move forward. What are you most excited about as you're moving forward into this new direction?

yeah what we're looking forward to um again my role not just being the digital pastor but then also our director of ministries tom one of the things that we had to do is we completely transformed our discipleship process. And I think ours was pretty event-focused prior to COVID. Like, hey, come to service, come to this party, then join a group, join a team. And I think that's pretty standard for most churches. And we realized the flaw in that pretty quickly when our party was on Zoom. And it's just like, it's hard to like Zoom online, do a party Zoom online. And it just didn't feel as genuine. and what we realized was like our pathway was so event focused it wasn't really structured to move people among these spiritual stages and what we come to realize was hey have we done a really great job at discipling people and we kind of got honest with each other like uh probably did okay but we can do a lot better and so we've restructured our entire discipleship pathway along with spiritual stages to really look at our messaging and and all of our tools and not just our weekend service but all of the tools like how can we help guide a person from one spiritual stage from being hey i'm completely unaware of the church is to i'm becoming spiritually curious to ultimately making a decision to follow jesus and uh so we've restructured that we feel really really good about it and now the next thing we're gonna start working on is how do we get this in a public-facing way that someone can access it anytime begin to self-diagnose where they are and then start taking these on-demand tools to start kind of not just self-guided discipleship, because I know that can get kind of scary because you're like, well, what about community? Of course we need community, but use it in a way to kind of point into community and help people there. So that's what we're working on. That's what we think is next for us. And that's not just for adults, but what does that look like for students and maybe potentially for parents to help their kids as well? And so that's the next thing, the next big dream that we have.

That's great. Well, as you've made this transition in your job and whatnot, and as you've been talking to different online ministers over the past two years, have you experienced a lot of people or have you encountered a lot of people who are still stuck in between, where they're still carrying over the weight of their previous job and now doing this digital thing? And how do you encourage them as they're kind of juggling both jobs rather than just trying to have a single job?

yeah that's a that's a great question i've talked i've talked to a number you're going to speak to me on this one too because yeah because yeah you have the background of student ministry in the background uh there you know i i've talked to a number of guys who's like man i was just hired a year ago to be a groups guy and now i'm the digital pastor and i'm still trying to figure out what that means i moved my family across the country and here i am and so i think i think ultimately what what we have to do is look look at us as our personal calling because i mean i i probably right now in our new org chart i fill in three boxes which is kind of interesting and i think for you tom and and myself and any of us doing two or three full-time jobs does not make a whole lot of sense. And so for me, it's, I'm looking at in the morning, like, I'm not thinking of, hey, Tyler, the digital pastor, and then Tyler, the executive director of ministries, and then Tyler, the teaching pastor at the Ridge, but it's really the, our lead pastor is just, he just shared this thought with our staff and it's been sticking with me for the last several weeks. And it's the, hey, I don't serve for Jesus, I serve with Jesus. and this whole prospect of like man jesus is in power he's with us and the holy spirit is with us and so each day is waking up like okay jesus how do i serve with you today what are you calling me to do today and so as a pastor as a follower of jesus you've given me for whatever reason some leadership and influence how can i use that today what would be the best way to serve you today and let that play through the particular roles that we have and so some days that's going to be i'm going to have a one-on-one with a staff member and that's how i'm serving with jesus today other days it's i mean just before this i was we're starting to plan out our christmas online service okay then that gets very digital specific but it's this is how i serve with jesus because this guy could hopefully use this to reach thousands of people online So I don't know if that answered your question. No, it's good.

I mean, because again, it is a juggling act. Again, it's a juggling act, a lot of it. So how do you stay healthy in this time?

That's a great question. I've been kind of on my own personal journey of health, even right before COVID. And I was dealing with a lot of anxiety. And I talk a lot about that in our messages beforehand, which was almost debilitating in 2019. And for me, I'm that type one Enneagram for those Enneagrams, like, hey, got to be perfect and get that done and have that high level of control. And so the journey that has led me on is just be fascinated with health. I look at, hey, Jesus said, love the Lord, heart, soul, mind, body, strength. And so really it looks at, hey, every day I got to look at my spiritual health, my emotional health, my mental health, and my physical health. And I think they're all interconnected. And so for me, it's well what what do i do to bring myself some joy that helps me connect with god and what does work for me is okay i wake up every morning 4 30 spend some time with god and go for a run and that's been some of the journey for me just to um i i more than physical health. I picked up, I had the habit of running, but I dialed that up throughout COVID and just began to form this running community and just get really focused on that. So I had that hobby outside of me. But then also with the relational health, emotional health, like... all right saturday saturday is sabbath it's done i don't i don't schedule anything on saturdays that that is our time with our family so having to take control of that time um to turn things off so i can have that margin to then serve with jesus when we're on so the phrase i like to think is hey when i'm on i'm on and when i'm off You got to be off.

That's awesome. That's great. I think that you just highlighted a really important thing of really with having that hobby, having the running. And I used to run a lot, too. That was kind of my outlet. Years ago, my counselor just said, Tom, you just got to go and find something to go get released that stuff. And running was it until about a year ago. And then my knees started getting a little bit bad. the injury bugs are not fun yeah i know they're not fun but but again i still continued i started doing walks then and i would do 30 minute walks and that was my time uh for me to just be by myself and whatnot and you have to find that and i've discovered too i just got to turn off my computer and just shut my computer i got in so many unhealthy habits early on in covid where i was working just non-stop i would wake up at five o'clock in the morning and work and i would eat a little bit work some more eat a little bit work some more go to bed wake up you know it's just like it was so unhealthy and i think a lot of people as especially as they were doing the dual jobs we got in unhealthy habits and now it's like we've got to take back control over our lives

so that we can be healthy for our friends our family and ourselves so i think that's really well and it comes down to the long haul i mean i think i think tom what we're realizing is hey we want to be a ministry long term and so going back to the running example which um i know many love but i mean how do you do a long run you do it slow and steady and you know when when to take your breaks and when to turn some things off and so uh um i'm i'm a full proponent of hey set especially when it comes to digital ministry uh i mean we know Facebook messages come, emails come, texts come, all of it comes. And we feel like we don't have control because, I mean, digital, it's a beautiful thing. It can be done anytime. But the scary thing is it can be done anytime. And so we need to control. when we're on so i i turn off most of my notifications on my phone uh just and then and then i'll i mean i'll check it several times a day but that's the time that i'm going to be like hey i can fully engage with this and then i can put it away and if i'm being in a meeting or doing something with my family then i can fully engage uh with that am i perfect at it no no i don't think anyone is but those are some habits that i've been trying to put in to pursue and maintain health

Yeah, that's awesome. That's great. Well, as we kind of wrap up here, Tyler, this has been a great conversation. What kind of final encouragement would you give to people, again, as they're going from more of a traditional role to this very digital role? What kind of encouragement would you give them?

yeah you know i think a phrase that i've heard a lot uh has been hey i don't know if i signed up for this meaning i don't know if i i type i i uh you know study for this type of ministry or if i you know sign up for all this and and here here's what i want to encourage you with and challenge everyone a little bit with is we signed up for ministry to people and we we signed up to say okay if we're gonna you know our vision is to bring the hope of jesus in every home and if this is the tool that god's given us let's embrace it and use it and yeah it might look different than some of the traditions we've been taught but if this is if our heart is for the people that god's heart is for um let's continue to lean into that and do that and what you're doing it it matters and it makes a difference and what a great opportunity we have to learn uh i mean we can you know i know we maybe have been behind the curve a little bit you know when it comes to digital missions but now we we're learning and we can catch up take advantage of the new things um i mean we we signed up to connect with people and there are people that we are connecting with digitally so lean into that lean in your relational skills and your love for people when it comes to digital ministry

yeah i mean digital ministry is relational ministry it just looks different than what what you are used to uh and so i i think that's really awesome so great okay so as we wrap up now officially what um if someone's got a question for you how how can they connect with you

Yeah, there's a couple of ways you can connect with me. I'm most active on social, on Twitter and Instagram. Just follow me at Tyler Volkers. I'm also on Facebook there, too, so you can connect with me there. And I'm in the Facebook groups that you're leading, Tom. And I love learning from you guys. I told Jeff this. The thing I have loved the most about the digital ministry community is how open everyone's been and just there for everyone, welcome everyone, sharing ideas. It's been awesome. It's been really cool.

i gotta say you're 100 right on that online community there are no like you know in different situations there are arrogant people and and people know it all and whatnot i still remember the very first time i got the call to do online ministry before this was before covid but i i just emailed jay kranda just randomly he didn't know me from anybody he took about an hour of his time i mean these guys these online ministers are so helpful i've never met someone that doing online stuff that was not helpful or encouraging uh so i will include tyler's links to get on there i'm super pumped that he said twitter was one of his favorites because twitter is like the best it's fun and you're a great follow tom like i love just sometimes i'll see our random stuff and sometimes encouragement stuff so it's good but um yeah so i'll include all his show notes and also the uh the being the church online uh facebook group uh i'll include that too so tyler it was great having you on and i know based on our previous emails i'm gonna have you on some more because there's some other topics we want to talk about as well so i can't wait to have you back on would love it hey thanks for doing the show All right here, so what did you think of the conversation with Tyler and I? What stood out to you? What challenged you? What gave you pause? What further questions do you have? If you have any more questions, thoughts, or comments, definitely you can comment on them two different ways. One is comment in the section below, especially if you're watching this on YouTube or on the video format, but you can also go on Twitter. I love Twitter and Tyler's on Twitter as well. And you can hit us up on Twitter and ask us any and all questions about how you're making this transition from a traditional ministry role into an online ministry role. Tyler and I would love to talk to you a little bit more about that. He's a great resource, and I would encourage you to hit either one of us up. Again, hit us up on Twitter or post it in the comment section below. All right, heroes, well, that wraps it up for another episode of the Church Digital Psychic Podcast. Thanks so much for joining me. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, go to Spotify and iTunes or wherever you're listening to this on the audio version and subscribe to it. Or you can go to YouTube at the Church Digital YouTube site. And there you can subscribe to those. We've got lots of content on those videos, on those podcasts. But also, if you go to the church.digital website, you'll get tons of content. Jeff Reed is working on tons more content. I'm working on more content. And we want to really be able to help you in your digital and online ministry. So go to the church.digital today and every day for what it's worth. All right. Here's why I hope you have a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week. And until next time, have a great one.