How to Keep Improving Your Online Ministry

Just because something isn't working out entirely right in your online ministry doesn't mean that you have to ax it completely. There are other things that you can do. What are those other things? Find out in a minute 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 bring on ministry leaders and we talk about how you can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. And today I have Justin Nava back with me. Justin is a great guy to have. He loves online ministry. He loves marketing. And he's got a great marketing agency that he really helps small to medium sized churches. And he'll talk about that a little bit in the interview. But Justin comes in to talk about how we can not put on the brakes on our online ministry and go backwards, but keep moving forward. What are the things that we need to do to keep moving forward in our online ministry, even if something isn't working out right? Because the tendency is, let's just be honest. Hey, if something's not working online ministry, it's just not working. Let's just scrap the whole thing and get rid of it. It's not working, yada, yada, yada. Well, Justin shares three tips on what we can be doing so that we can continue to make progress with our online ministry as an effective tool in this day and age. So I'm really excited about Justin being on. But before he gets on, I have a very special announcement from Jeff Reed. Jeff's going to share with you an amazing opportunity. Here he is.

Hey, Sidekick fans, Jeff here from the Digital Church Network, and I'm bringing to you an incredible opportunity to help churches like yours connect with spiritual explorers digitally. Maybe you've heard of this thing that's called He Gets Us. You've seen their ads on the NFL games. all over social media or even physical billboards around town. You see, He Gets Us is a U.S.-based ad campaign that'll connect people seeking spiritual answers with pastors and volunteers who have the answers to these questions and get them connected to your physical and or digital expression of church. This is a great opportunity that will only expand as, oh, by the way, He Gets Us is running several Super Bowl ads. That's right. He Gets Us has got two ads running on the Super Bowl. Imagine the potential reach that your church can be a part of. By the way, for free. You see, that's right. You'll get 12 months of He Gets Us, 12 months of Spiritual Explorers delivered to your inbox, 12 months of the platform and the technology. completely for free. For more information, go check out thechurch.digital slash hegetsus, thechurch.digital slash hegetsus. And oh, by the way, if you got questions, you can text me, 484-324-8724. Number four, the church. All right, let's get you back here to the TCD Sidekick Podcast. Thanks, Tom.

all right thanks jeff for sharing that that was awesome and i hope every church or ministry leader who's listening to this or watching this podcast will be able to say hey this is something we want to be a part of and you sign up today so make sure you do that i'll have all those links in the show notes today all right so now let's get into the conversation with justin nava all right with me right now is my friend justin nava justin how are you

Doing good, Tom. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Happy New Year to you. Happy 2023.

Happy New Year to you as well. We were kind of talking offline about what we were doing over New Year's Eve, and so it was just fun. Do you have any, like, are you excited about anything as you're moving forward with 2023? Do you do resolutions?

no i'm not i i well i should say i always have resolutions but i don't wait until monday or the new year or the new month i just say i'm going to start doing this and i just do it like literally i'm standing as i do this because i just decided on december 27th i was like you know what i'm gonna start standing during all my meetings I'm not going to wait. And I don't wait till the first because I know me, you know, and my grandma used to say, manana nunca viene, which means tomorrow never comes. So it's like, all right, let's let's just start doing it now. So, yeah, but I hey, I've got some water. I'm standing. Yeah, I just didn't. I just did it a few days before New Year's. I just decided to do things and I don't want to wait. Let's just do it now. Also, the more I wait, the more I tend to spend money on these things. So. yes there you go do you um do you have one of those self-rising desks yeah i got this at costco last year actually and it's uh it was like on sale for like 200 bucks and it's awesome it's just this whiteboard desk and it goes up on its own and it comes down on its own and as long as you don't accidentally hit the button and just watch all your stuff rise when you're in the middle of a meeting it's great yeah That is awesome.

I've toyed with the self-rising desk at times. In fact, I work with a guy who has one and it looks really cool. I just don't know if I could stand doing that. I don't know.

I find it's a lot easier when you're doing social stuff, talking to people or like on the phone.

then if you're just doing like if you're banging out admin stuff or doing creative work it gets tiring real quick but if you're talking to someone i did an hour and a half meeting on friday and i didn't even realize it uh just standing the whole time so i think that was a good thing that's a great thing that's awesome well justin i'm i'm glad to have you back on you're my first guest of the new year so i'm glad to have you on your regular uh but just in case somebody doesn't know who you are tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what you do

So my name is Justin Nava and I run Nava Church Marketing. I'm also the communications director for Cross Waves Church. And what I'm all about is helping your church stop becoming the best kept secret in the community and become the best known in the community. I believe churches will make a bigger impact if more people just knew they existed. So what we do at Nava Church Marketing is... We take your church, your message, your mission, and we help more people recognize that you are in the community. You are here to make an impact. You're here to serve them. And there's a place that's welcoming for them. A lot of people still think your local church is just like the churches they see on TikTok or the churches that they read about in the newspaper, which is never a good thing. So we want to... broadcast your message that we are here to serve we're here to provide you hope truth light purpose healing whatever your church message is because there are people that god is calling to your church and they either have a barrier or there's another false teacher wolf in sheep's clothing that's getting to them first and so my heart is really for those uh small to medium local churches that want to just make an impact in their neighborhood

That's awesome, dude. And I know you are all over the place on social and you've got great content where you're sharing and encouraging people. And I think you're right. I mean, it's a small to medium sized churches that really needs support. And I'm glad that you're one who's able to give them. help and encouragement along the way. Well, today we want to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart because I do the podcast and I write blogs and all that stuff, but I am an online pastor for my church and I help with the digital and all that kind of stuff. And one of the trends that I'm seeing, and you've identified this as well, is that Churches seem to be taking all the progress they've made in their digital and online over the past two years and now are going backwards a little bit. What are you seeing and why does this raise concern for you, Justin?

Yeah, I'm seeing the same thing. And it's completely, let's get this out here, it is completely with the best of intentions. I don't think any pastor or church leader or committee member, board member, elder is saying, I hate this, even though it's good. I want to be more comfortable. Let's go back to what we used to do or how we used to do things. I do think it comes from good intentions. However... i think that maybe either the execution was wrong the implementation wrong or maybe the mindset was wrong a lot of the pastors that i talked to that are saying hey we're going to go offline now or we're going to stop doing zoom meetings and start doing you know we're only going to do in-person meetings there's a good heart behind it but i think there's also sometimes a misunderstanding a spirit of misunderstanding and what that comes down what that comes from is looking at a rose-colored glasses look at how many groups we had and look how many people we'd had coming and now we don't have that many when it's not really the live stream or the zoo meeting that's the reason you don't have many in church it's because we've kind of consumerized or commoditized the church service and instead of being a church that's just decentralized meeting online we've now become a sermon platform or a bible study that's just something else to do throughout the week and i might be jumping ahead or going like way way ahead of where you want to go tom but i think a lot of it is we expected the tools to do something whereas instead the tools are enhancing something and if that something's not there if the relationships are not there the discipleship's not there the teaching's not there the spirit's not there uh the tool is not going to bring that to the table and so i think a lot of folks use the tool either as a stop gap to eventually come back to this in person you know no no longer online or no longer using these tools or they got these tools expecting to see results. And honestly, I don't blame any pastor that thought that. I'm in marketing. I'm in advertising. I write copy. I mean, even for some of the tools that are out there, I write the copy for. And I write this stuff knowing that, hey, we've got to make big claims and we've got to make big promises that can be delivered. But some pastors will think, well, the tool will bring the people instead of the tool enhances my message that brings the people.

Yeah, you said a lot of great stuff. Yeah, you should have stopped me, Tom. No, no, no. This is great because we're going to pick it apart a little bit. The first thing I want to kind of highlight is I think you're right. I think everyone went into going online and going digital, expecting big results. And I actually just read a blog post. from Kerry Newhoff. He talked about 2023 trends that he released, and he said it is his prediction that he feels like the people who invested in online and digital are going to start to see the results now in this year. And that really struck me because I do think we went into a thing and we're going to see immediate results, immediate results. And while we did see some results on the very front end of it, I also remember it was really very clear on 2020 when we all went in online. We had huge online Easter numbers because most of us were online only at Easter at that time. And then right after that, it just dropped. very aggressively at first, and then it just kind of deliberately dropped on our online numbers. And I think the churches that didn't continue to invest in online and try new things online, it just kind of stayed there. And people said, okay, now I just need to go back to in-person. That's where we need to be anyways, rather than continue to make the investment. What do you think about that? Do you think if you put in the work, you're going to start seeing the results?

Yeah, I think, first of all, to go back on that, I think a lot of it needs to be the number one thing you need is a strategy going into it. Prayer is great. I'm going to ruffle some feathers here. Prayer is not a strategy. You can't just pray your way and to see results, right? There has to be action taken. Um, in the same way that we do things like put chairs in our sanctuary, put AC in our, in our, in our church and pay a mortgage, uh, to have a place to gather to fellowship and to bring a new, new guests to, uh, prayer is, is just one thing that we do. And there has to be action taken upon that. So I think a lot of folks, they, they, they treated the tool as just the end all be all. If I just do this, they will come. If I just sign up for this service, or if I just get on Facebook, or if we get on Instagram, or if we start live streaming. they will come. And for a moment, they did, because there was nothing else. And we were in a really weird time in the world. I mainly work with American churches, so my data and insights are from just American churches. But there was a really weird time where people needed a lot of hope, and they were surrounded by fear and just everything to be scared of, including being scared of their own neighbor, that, hey, Easter, maybe there's something here. okay so then yeah we had those big easter numbers but then what was next right and so a lot of people fell off because well if i'm going to watch a sermon why would i watch this 480p low quality sermon when i can just listen to andy stanley or uh, listen to Francis Chan or go listen to Joel Osteen. Right. Um, so, you know, we lost people that we were trying to bring in just to say, Hey, come listen to a sermon, come, come be a part of a virtual church when really we weren't a virtual church. We were a virtual sermon player and you were just writing the sermon. And so that fell off. because people can get better sermons, better worship, better Bible studies elsewhere that are actually producing high quality content. And so you take that part away. What was left that churches were doing? Not much because there wasn't much communications. There wasn't much relationships. There wasn't much follow-up. There wasn't much discipleship. There wasn't much mentoring and leaning on and praying with. I mean, can lay on hands for a few months to a year, but you can still do things in communications. But churches, again, relegated themselves to just a Sunday thing. And if I'm just going to do this Sunday thing, why don't I do it on my own time anytime to feel better about myself? And you and I know, Tom. Again, we talked a little bit about this with resolutions. People plan, you know what, I'm going to go to church on Sunday. Then that plan becomes, well, you know what, maybe I'll watch online Sunday. And then that plan becomes, well, you know what, why don't I just listen to a sermon on my way to work? And then that plan becomes, no, I'd rather listen to this podcast, right? And so again, good intentions, right? We kept pushing it out there, but without pastors doing more than just being online on Sunday and church leadership, it's not all in the pastor. then, yeah, the church kind of relegated itself into thinking that, hey, if I just have this tool, people will come. But the tool is not the ministry, just like sermon is not the mission of the church. The church service is not the mission of the church. And I think, unfortunately, for a year or two and even continuing, a lot of churches, even though they may say they want to be disciple-making churches, they really are Sunday service production churches.

yeah i say that with all the love in the world yeah well and i love it the fact that you just again i think a lot of us just we had to just at the very beginning we had to just survive this time period and so there wasn't a lot of strategy involved there wasn't a lot of planning involved but if you're still going week to week and not really planning out and not being strategic again i agree with you You need to be praying and you need to be praying that God gives you the wisdom and the discernment and the vision to go. But at some point you have to put it on paper what you feel like God's leading you to do. And you have to start enacting on it rather than just saying, well, we're just going to we'll do this this week and this this this week. So I think that's really important that you have to start strategizing and figuring out, OK, what is it that you're going to use? I like to again back in the day when this was really kind of a new thing. People just kept on thinking, I need to be on every social platform and we need to be doing X, Y, and Z. Well, the reality is you don't need to be on every social platform. You need to pick and choose what your people and your congregation are on and really kind of work that way. That's part of your strategy. Just because this church is on YouTube doesn't mean, well, I hope everyone's on YouTube. YouTube is a great thing. But just because this church is on TikTok doesn't mean you need to be on TikTok.

You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I was talking with a pastor who is feeling frustrated that his live stream is just not doing well. And meanwhile, two blocks away, there's a church with, you know, 500 to 1000 people watching every Sunday and the church is not much bigger. I mean, it's not like a mega church versus a church of 50. I mean, the churches were within a few hundred congregants together. And he's like, why? I mean, I'm doing everything that they're doing. And I said, well, let's take a look. I look at his live stream, okay? He's on Facebook, they're on Facebook. They're streaming at 10 a.m., he's streaming at 9 a.m., whatever. I mean, there's very minimal differences, right? So what are they doing that he's not? He's doing it all, right? I said, well, let's actually take a look. And I look... Okay, so his service starts 15 minutes before and it says hey we're going to go live in 15 minutes and then it starts. There's your basic live stream church worship that's kind of unmixed well and there's weird pauses and then pastor comes up and he preaches it's a stagnant camera, and then he's out. then i say let's look at the other churches live stream again not much bigger than this other church by maybe one or two hundred people okay so when the live stream starts there's videos that are rolling five minutes before there's slides and videos that are showing kind of what's happening at the church not just upcoming events but also what's happening hey we had this great vbs that that happened or excuse me uh it was a kids uh kids something i don't remember it was a kid's holiday something And then it went into the live stream. There was someone that welcomed. I said, welcome, let us know where you're from. And now let's worship together. Then it goes into the worship. Now the worship wasn't mixed well either. The worship music, I should say, wasn't mixed well either. Kind of sounded the same, but it was a little bit of a fuller band. So they probably had a better in-house mix. And then the pastor comes up. There's actually two cameras. One is tracking him. One is kind of wide. The sound obviously is engineered very well. And at the same time, while the live stream is going, people are commenting in the chat and the church is responding back. Hey, glad you're watching here. Sorry you couldn't make it this morning. We miss you. We love you. Hey, we got someone watching from Tennessee. Wow, that's great. Thanks for letting us know how we can serve you, right? So, if you look at it surface level pastors like I'm doing what this other church is doing I'm live streaming on Facebook I'm doing it for this amount of time they do worship and service we do worship and service, but there's even more to that that's that that that involves some strategy right, we got to have someone moderating the chat. We have to do some preparation to have some pre roll beyond just some boring countdown right no one no one signs on and stays around for a countdown they sign on, and then they leave to go scroll through Facebook and then they forget about you, right. there needs to be something there then there needs to be maybe some kind of pre-roll host even if it's not a live host someone that says hey we're glad you're here we're glad you're watching on the live stream why don't you go ahead and share this right i've got a client that actually does that live his church takes a back seat for one minute and 30 seconds at the beginning of every service welcome to full deliverance church uh in florida city gateway to the florida keys we're glad you're here we're glad you're at the live stream We want to welcome you and pray. And I'm going to say this prayer over you, our live streamer. Share this. Tell your friends we're live now. And now let's get to worship, right? He does that live. And then at the end of every service, he says, I want to thank you for watching this. It's not too late. Share it with your friends so that they can watch it from the beginning. We're so glad you're here. If there's anything we can do to pray for your family, call this number right here. We'll pray for you. We'll see how we can serve your family. We've got a clinic. We've got food missions. All for you watching live. And his church is like 80 people. Yeah. But he's got thousands watching live because he's specifically using this live. He's not just trying to duplicate what's happening live. And then you're just a fly on the wall. I mean, for a moment, his actual in-person church becomes a fly on the wall because he's talking straight to the live stream audience because he understands this is where this is where the people are. And so all that to say, it's not just, hey, we need to have Subsplash or we need to be live streaming with Restream or Ecamm Live. What's the tool that you use? It's not the tool, it's the strategy behind it. So the first thing you always got to have when you start something new is have that strategy. And unfortunately, a lot of churches, again, not to go back to beating churches down, but they didn't have a strategy. They just said, let's just get this thing, right? Let's buy this house. but not know how we're gonna upkeep it and not know how we're gonna change the AC filter, right? That's gonna cause problems down the road. And so the first thing you need to do if you don't already have one is to go ahead and implement a strategy. If it's not working, my first question is, what are you doing right now, right? If your website's not working, Tom, a lot of people come to me for their websites because that's a great tool for churches to not only reach new people and inspire new people to make a visit, but it's also a great discipleship tool. It's a great next steps tool. There's a lot of great things you can do with a website. And I asked pastors, how does the website fit into your mission as a church? And the answer is, I don't know, because there hasn't been a strategy to make the website assist in accomplishing the mission of the church, to make disciples. to showcase the love of Christ to the city, whatever the mission of the church is. So yeah, absolutely. It needs to have a strategy. I know I started with the story and then I kind of ran off there, but that's the first thing that we need. And if you don't have one right now for your live stream, if you don't say, I know every Sunday, this is going to happen. We're going to do this. I mean, it's just like Sunday service. We know we're going to open the doors at this time. Coffee goes on at this time. video announcement rolls at this time. Then we do two worship songs. Then we do a welcome. Then we do two more worship songs. Then we do the offering with a sermon bumper, right? There's strategy there, right? We don't just do a sermon bumper because it's nifty. We do it so the stage can clear without being distracting the offering. Whatever that is, we do strategy like that for Sunday service, for Bible studies, for events. We can do the exact same thing with our online tools and implementations.

okay so i heard a lot of stuff there and again the strategy is important just just just plan on watching this twice pastor or whoever's watching this you know just go through it again with your yellow legal notepad i'll be with you again but let me rehash this real quick i because i as you were talking about the pre-service and the end service stuff from the from the online perspective i i'm listening to you and i'm like yep we're doing this we're doing yeah we're we're cruising we're doing great this is Justin saying I'm doing good in my mind is what I'm saying as you're talking. And then you start, you share two different things. And I'm like, man, we don't do that. I don't encourage people in my pre-service videos. We do a mix of announcements and welcome and get people acclimated with the online service. But I don't invite them to share this with somebody else. I'm like, that is amazing. I need to start incorporating that in my pre-service stuff. So we've been doing this for eight years now, over eight years. I've never done that. i'm learning something new listening to you talk right now justin so this is fantastic i love that idea but what i'm also hearing you say is before you quit on thinking oh man we don't have we don't have this you know we're not doing good so we're just going to stop doing it completely before you quit Talk to someone, someone like Justin, or even talk to another church and just say, what is it that you're doing? Can we just see what you're doing? Because you're comparing without being like comparing like, oh, we're better than you are, but you're learning from somebody else. And again, someone like Justin, I'm going to pump you up a little bit, Justin, but someone like Justin can help you walk through this because he's been helping churches for a long time like this. But if you just simply look at some of the different churches in your area, you can really learn from them and have improved your services so that more and more people can ultimately hear about Christ. You know, you're not trying to steal other people from you're trying to introduce people to Jesus. And I think that's really, really valuable. And I think about Tyler Samson and. In the church anywhere, he has a very small church. It's very small because geography-wise, physical location-wise, it's not conducive to a big church. But you know what? They are reaching thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people because they have a strategy. They said, we're not going to let our building limit our reach. And so they developed a strategy over time that involved online, involved microsites. And again, they are reaching thousands of people all the time. And their church is just a few hundred people. Their physical location is just a few hundred people. They're not a megachurch at all.

Yeah, those are my favorite clients. I've got a pastor in Texas that he jokes he's more popular in Nepal than he is in his own neighborhood. I mean, he's got a church of 40, but when he teaches online or even goes internationally, he'll draw in thousands to hear the message. And it's fascinating what the internet allows us to do. With that, I think that brings, you naturally went into kind of point number two, which is, first of all, you need to have a strategy. And if it doesn't work, you don't quit cold turkey, you iterate, right? We do this with our, again, looking at Sunday morning, right? People aren't paying attention to our announcements, okay? So we iterate. Maybe we add video announcements. Maybe we do them at a different time. Maybe we add an addition to whatever we're doing. We do pre-slides or maybe the bulletin needs to be changed up. whatever it is we iterate when something's not working in person we can also iterate what's not working online that can take a few different things but first of all you have to know what the strategy is what is the intention okay the intent behind having a texting platform is not to text more people What is the intent of having a texting platform? It's to stay in communication with people. So if they're not staying in communication before I ditch the platform, I say, well, what is the strategy that we're doing? Well, we're texting Sunday morning to come to church. All right, well, let's think about that. Why would someone not come to church on Sunday morning for texting them on Sunday morning? Maybe their plans are already made. So we need to text them Saturday if we're going to text them to invite to church.

Yeah.

people are opting out of our texting okay well let's find out why they're opting out of our texting what kind of texts are we sending all we're doing is sending offers right we're not chipotle or bio trust or someone else who texted me this morning hey happy new year's here's another sale right i'm on all the text list tom um you know maybe it's just how can i pray for you right Because, again, the mission of the church is not to invite people and do events, right? There is such thing as an attractional culture. I understand that. But that attractional culture is, again, in service to the mission of the church, in service to the Great Commission. And so how can we use texting to make disciples? How can we pray for you? What's the biggest question right now? What does your family need right now? Hey, don't even mass text. Just pick three people. Hey, this is Pastor Tom. Let's grab some coffee this week. What day works best for you? Or is that cool, right? You know, so again, it's not just let's, this didn't work the way we've done it. Now we've got to totally ditch it. It's okay. It's not working the way we intended. How can we iterate and do something new next? You know, we do this in churches with revitalization, right? We don't close down the church because the former strategy and former vision is no longer viable, okay? We revitalize. We say, okay, this is how we're doing things now. We're shifting to a group culture. We're shifting to an online culture. We iterate how we do the church. We don't shut it down. And so the same thing when we're talking about, you know, using online tools, whether that's our online service, communication tools, our website. No one says our website doesn't work. Let's kill our website, right? that we say we need a new website so we go and look at the new platforms the new ad agencies or whatever they call me and it's not just let's shut everything down because it's not working we need to iterate so again what is it supposed to do what is the strategy that's been tried and now what can we do better to get to that point where we want to do it it's just kind of like an after action report You look at what you did, you look at what was supposed to happen, you look at what did happen, what was the difference, and what can we do better next time? So again, like if you're struggling right now and you're not the only one, right? There's 330,000 churches in America, about 329,000 of them have no idea what they're doing. So you're in good company, okay? So we need to kind of look at this and say, okay, what is it supposed to do? What is it doing? What's the difference? And then how can we make up that difference? And I think in that, how can we make up that difference? The answer is not usually more of what we've been doing. It's what is the difference? Okay, what's the resultual difference? Meaning like, okay, no one's responding to these texts. So the answer is not to kill all the texts. It's maybe the message needs to change or the timing needs to change. Or maybe even just the phone number needs to change. I've had churches that are like, I don't have a local area code. So no one answers our calls or texts. And it's like, well, that's a big problem. Get a local area code. um and a lot of that too you know helps you know one of the things we do as an agency is we're very big on uh coming in in a consultant role because you've got to have a good someone to check your blind spots uh because it's often very hard right even i have uh two mentors in my own business because i have blind spots in who i hire and how i support them uh in what i do in communications um it's a huge thing to have someone check your blind spots and so know bring in a third party bring in someone that's unchurched okay you probably have family that's unchurched or friends that are unchurched if not i hope you find some this year that's a big prayer for you um and say what does this make you think of how does this make you feel how would you react to this and obviously don't bring in anyone that wouldn't be a good fit for your church if you're not equipped to serve them uh but then also you can bring in someone uh in a consultant role to say give us a good objective uh eye at this that you know can help us kind of figure out what we're missing yeah

Well, again, I just think, you know, one of the things I love about online ministry, and it's also very frustrating, is that the moment you feel like you got it, the moment something changes, you know, the moment you feel like, oh good, we're going to go Facebook groups and do all our discipleship through Facebook groups. Facebook changes something else. And now Facebook groups is not as good as it used to be. I still like Facebook groups, but it's not as good as it used to be. Two years ago, people weren't talking about TikTok. They weren't really doing until we have a pandemic and then Everyone just goes on TikTok. It used to be an app called Musical.ly where you would do dances and lip sync stuff. I mean, nobody was talking about it. It's constantly changing. And so just because you're doing something on it doesn't mean that you're hitting on the mark exactly right. You've got to continue to evaluate, process, and look at it and see how you can make the improvements you need to reach more people. Absolutely. Okay, so you've hit on two things. You got any more tips and more things for us?

Yeah, the last tip is to be outrageous, unreasonable, and relentless. That's kind of my motto for everything in life, ministry, and business. Look, Tom, we serve an outrageous God. He came back from the dead. That's outrageous. That's unreasonable. He gives us an outrageous vision. to go and get things that are in other people's hands, go get their attention, go persuade them to make a decision for Christ. Even in our giving, right? Everything that we have in church has been given by other people. That's pretty outrageous. So we need to have pretty outrageous thinking. uh to go out and do what's do what's never been done okay and then we need to be unreasonable it is very unreasonable we know this by looking at other religious beliefs and faiths that our god came in human form and then resurrected in human form and then went off uh and said hey go go replicate our beliefs right that's pretty unreasonable so we need to have unreasonable actions okay you have my permission pastor church leader whoever's listening to this be unreasonable we already are unreasonable in our beliefs okay People are like evolution so hard to believe. So is Christianity, it's pretty unreasonable. Okay, that's why we, it's crazy right I don't I've never met anyone that came back to life. I've never met anyone that walked with God and then went straight to heaven Enoch style right. And then the last thing is we need to be relentless right this is a this is hammering a little bit more on the iteration okay we have to be relentless we are relentless in our mission pastor. There is never a Sunday unless there is extreme weather or a good reason that we don't have service, right? It's not like social media where we think, oh, I don't really have anything to post today, so I won't post. It's not like you wake up on Sunday, go to church, and like, you know what? I don't really have a sermon today. We're not going to teach anything. We're just going to, you know, do worship. Go home. Right? We always have an on-mission service. And so we need to be relentless. God is relentless in his chasing us. We need to be relentless in our chasing of fulfilling his mission, fulfilling the Great Commission, equipping our people to fulfill the Great Commission, and to serve our church. nothing less will get us to that good and faithful servant when we go to heaven so you have my permission to just be completely audacious and say you know what this online service needs to be fantastic and whatever board member finance member uh committee member whoever else that you run things by and says ah that's pretty crazy pastor that's pretty unrealistic good we have a very unrealistic job no one else works like pastors do okay or or youth pastors or interns or anyone else it is we are very unrealistic we take unrealistic salaries we have unrealistically large families we work unrealistic hours it is okay for us to have an unrealistic live stream unrealistic texting strategy unrealistic social media profile spent on outrageous amounts of money on advertising to get the word out and get people's attention to say, we're here for you. We love you. There is an outrageous God here who unreasonably loves you and is relentlessly pursuing you. Come here to find out who he is and find out how much he loves you so you can find hope, so you can find truth, so you can find healing, so you can find purpose. Everything we do is outrageous, unreasonable, and relentless. And so you have my permission in your technology, in your use cases, be the same. And you will see God do amazing things. I 100% believe that.

Dude, this is encouraging, man. This is great. I'm just, again, every time I have you on, it's just great, great conversation. And it's just very motivating for me. Just that last thing right there that you just shared is just very motivating to me. Again, we can always be improving. We're always looking to improve in our ministry. And even if things aren't going right, you don't just throw it out all the time. You constantly evaluate, look at it, say, what's our strategy? Do we need to do it a certain way here or there? And so this thing can apply for our online ministry. So my encouragement is to keep on plugging forward, moving forward. Maybe you do need to cut something, but don't cut it entirely. Just evaluate and see what needs to happen and kind of go from there. Online ministry is here to stay, and if we don't utilize it in some way, we're going to miss out on a huge opportunity to reach people for Christ. Well, Justin, as always, it's great having you on. If people want to connect with you, have questions for you, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

You can go to Nava Church Marketing. That's N-A-V as in Victor, A, churchmarketing.com. I'm sure, Tom, you're a great host. You'll have links and everything down below. From there, you can see more about my beliefs in being outrageous, unreasonable, and relentless, as well as links to all of my podcast shows, all that good stuff. In fact, I would do that first. You're here listening to podcasts. You love listening to podcasts. Go on the website, subscribe to my podcast, The Best Known Church Show, where we talk about ways that you can get your church out in the community. Stop becoming the best kept secret and be the best known in the community. I want people to know your local church like they know Walmart. They know where it is. They know when it's open. They know what to expect when they go. They should know the same, if not more, about your church.

Yeah, that is awesome. And Justin is on social media. He is on TikTok. He is on Twitter.

I haven't posted on TikTok in a few weeks. I need to pick that back up. Yeah.

Well, you're on Twitter. I see you all the time on Twitter because Twitter is the best social media platform, in my opinion. I love Twitter.

It's great.

Justin, as always, it's great having you on the podcast. Thanks for being with me today.

Appreciate you, Tom. Thanks for having me.

All right, so what did you think of the conversation? What was the one tip or two tips or maybe all three tips that really stood out to you? I would love for you to comment below or hit me up on Twitter at TAPounder and even hit up Justin. Include him on your tweet. We would love to carry this conversation online because our online ministry can be a really effective tool for us to reach more people for Christ. We live in an online world. We live in a digital world. It's not going to go backwards. The world is not going to go backwards. So you're just going to keep on moving forward. So us as the church, if we want to reach people in this day and age, we have to be online, but we have to use strategy. We have to evaluate constantly. We have to be looking to share about our outrageous and loving God in this online area, in the online sphere. So I want to encourage you to keep on plugging away at it and keep on striving for it. Again, hit us up either in the comments section or on Twitter. We love this conversation to carry on online. All right, heroes, thanks so much for joining me today. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, make sure you go and subscribe to it. It's on YouTube, it's on Apple, it's on Google, it's on all the other platforms. Go subscribe to it today so you can get these every time they come out. All right, well, I hope you have a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week, and until next time, have a great one.