4 Tools Online Ministers Can Use to Build Relationships

What are some apps that you can use as an online minister to help you build relationships? We're going to be talking about that today, so get 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 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've got a first-time guest, someone who I've known online for a number of years because we've run in the same circles for a number of years, but he's a first-time guest. His name is Jess Herman and he is the online discipleship pastor at Mariners Church. It's in California. He lives in Arizona. How does that work and how is he able to build relationships? He's gonna talk about that today. His story is awesome and he's got some apps that he uses on a regular basis, online apps that he uses to really build relationships with people who attend their church so we talk about that and we encourage you that hey listen there are some real opportunities to have real relationships online so i'm really excited to have justin on but before we do that i want to just highlight the church.digital at the church.digital we really talk about how you can do online ministry in an effective way in today's world very effectively. We share blogs, we share podcasts, we have cohorts, we have coaching. There's lots of great opportunities for you to learn how to do digital and online ministry, and even digital and metaverse ministry as well at thechurch.digital. So if you've never checked it out, go to it today. I've got links in it in the show notes, but again, it's thechurch.digital. All right, so now without any further ado, let's get into the interview with Justin, talk about these digital relationship apps that you can use today. All right, with me right now is Justin Herman. Justin, how are you?

Hey, man, how's it going? Excited to be here.

Well, we're excited to have you on as well. I think you and I have followed each other for a number of years over the course of time, but I've never had you on the podcast, so I'm excited to have you on sharing today.

Yeah, we spent a legacy in youth ministry. Many years ago, I was doing youth ministry, and that's how we kind of crossed paths at first. But this is wild online, and I'm such a fan of what you're doing and what you're putting out. So thanks for having me on.

Well, I'm a fan of yours as well. I've followed you over the years, so this is exciting, and I'm excited about your job. And so let's just get into it real quick. I know what you do because I heard you on the Social Media Church podcast, and I think it's awesome. What do you do? Share with everyone else. What do you do, and how did you get into that?

Well, you know, at the core of what I do is make sure that all the people who are tuning in online are able to go through the fullness of our church discipleship strategy, which is called the transformational loop. You know, weekend, which is follow Jesus, groups, which is grow together, which is rooted in life groups and in courses, serve one another, is being able to volunteer at your church. like the the things we think are very simple all right actually an x complex i'm sure you know this when it comes to online someone says hey i want to serve at the church you you walk on a church patio and say hey i want to serve you'll be inundated with pastors who are more than willing to take your time yeah but if you raise your hand and say hey i'm online i want to serve everyone's looking around each other like well what's he going to do like are they going to make social media like can they make graphics and it's like

So you have to think completely differently.

So you have to really start from scratch, but it's serve one another and then change the world, which is our outreach stuff. So how do we impact communities and globally? But it's not and I don't want to diminish this, but it's not. things like let's just make a bunch of sandwiches and go hand them out now again not diminishing that yeah i would do that with i'll i plan on doing that with my kids but as a church we look at outreach as a how are we building relationships um with organizations uh in communities that are like they really have a footprint there so it's not just hey we're in and now we're out it's like hey we're in and we're building a relationship with you well how do you do that it's easy to do that when your church is you know in irvine california you have a campus in Santa Ana, you partnered with organizations. When you say, hey, we're online, We can't partner with every organization in every city in America. So how do you kind of figure through that? So again, it's like the complexity of what I spend time doing. While I sit on a team that talks about who's tuning in, what our numbers look like, retention, growth projections, blah, blah, blah, the number stuff, which is important, which is important. My role is from all the people who are watching, how are we discipling those people? that's awesome okay so and your official title is what the online discipleship pastor I drop discipleship sometimes just go to online pastor depending on who I'm talking to because you know if you're if you're like new You're like, hey, people don't know what discipleship is. You throw discipleship out there to someone who doesn't speak church and they don't know what you're talking about. But my official title is online discipleship pastor to really bring focus to what I do on a regular basis.

And describe your team then. So if you're this, what does your team look like?

So I sit on a couple of teams in the church. I sit on the Irvine lead team. Which is made up of kind of like department heads of Irvine, like the ministry side of Irvine leadership for discipleship. I sit on the, we have multiple campuses, congregations, and I represent the online congregation, which isn't officially a thing. So this is, again, there's like a rabbit trail of the complexities of language when it comes to online. Is it a campus? Is it not a campus? Is it a community? Is it an extension of one of the campuses, kind of an extension of that? And sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. So I sit on what we call multiplication. So there's a discipleship multiplication with all of our campuses. There's an outreach multiplication with all of our outreach people at our campuses. And then and I sit primarily I spend a lot of my time on the online team. So that is our CEO. operations guy the dude is a genius his name's earl dry humor he's a hunter me and him get along great our personalities are like kind of kind of different i'm more like gregarious and over the top and he's like very even and super affirming and super kind um and i do an impression of him which i'm not going to do right now But I'm testing it out. And some of the staff like it because it's accurate. You know, you just say like the most positive thing you can think of in like the driest, calmest sense you can. It's great. Our communications pastor is on that team, who also is remote, by the way. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Our weekend experience director is on that team. And he's the one in charge of planning and executing the entire product, for lack of a better term. of our weekend for online. And then our social media director is on that team as well. And she's the one who makes sure that our strategies are kicking on all cylinders and Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, that's awesome. Okay. So some people may not know this about you, but that you are the online guy or the online discipleship guy, but you don't live in California. You are truly online. And so talk to me about how that came about, because like for me, we were talking about this offline, but I was a student minister and they just said, hey, you would be a good fit. And I've heard a lot of online ministers who were student ministers and then they made the transition. You were not in ministry at that moment when you got offered this job. So what did that look like?

Yeah. Well, let me say one thing first. I've talked to a tremendous amount of online pastors, partly because I'm only, you know, I'm pretty new to it still. And I want to learn from people and talk to people. I've talked to more online pastors who made the move from youth ministry to online that it just completely blows me away. I think back in the day it was like, well, I'm a youth pastor. Then what's the career trajectory? Yeah. Career trajectory into online. It's so much more fit for the talents and skills of youth. The Wild West, a little bit gritty, got to figure out how to do it, maybe on a tight budget. Not everyone really understands. So what do you guys do? You play dodgeball, and then you do a Bible study. And they're like, so what do you do? You do a Zoom thing, and then you're praying for people? And what, huh? And where do they live? So there's a lot of correlation there, but that's not here nor there. So I was working in construction, doing sales. pretty unhappy if i'm being honest um i uh when i was praying for clarity hey god i i need i think i feel a wrestling a stirring in my soul that i'm not meant to do that like i meant to be back in ministry i just gotta figure out the path for that i went to a thing called man camp which i think it's it's you know it's the we take youth away to camp Not because God speaks differently, but kids tend to hear him differently when we're away. Same thing for men. Getting away, just without kids, without a wife, just getting away, hearing from the Lord, connecting with him, it's important. And so I did that at Mariners. We do a thing called Man Camp. Tim Lukai is probably one of the best men's pastors in the country when it comes to activating men. Really, really, really an incredible talent. And I went and I and there's a lot of fun stuff that happens there. And I didn't do any of those things. I sat on a big boulder with my Bible and a notebook. I was just sitting there. I was just I just needed clarity. and it came through a guy named ben um who used to own a brewery called hanger 24. sold hanger 20. he just felt this call this call into ministry dropped everything sold it to like his brother or whatever i think it was kind of all you know in the family sort of bought a boat you know learn how to sail take the gospel to different like villages and towns and islands like it's just wild stuff and he and he was the one that really gave me the wisdom that really triggered me which was i didn't know the destination i was going to i just started taking steps in a direction and that's where i was stuck i just didn't know what direction to go so i came back from that trip feeling a good sense of clarity started taking steps Um, and you step here, step there, step, you know, and then, um, through some of the conversations I was having with some of the staff at Mariners, um, about podcast stuff and digital stuff. Um, in the midst of that, I got laid off from the construction job I was doing. So I was pretty unhappy doing it. And so I got laid off, um, like a lot of people did, you know, at the time, like Carvana and Ford and like a bunch of layoffs were happening at different companies and, you know, whatever it happens. And I'm driving around. Phoenix, Arizona, figuring out, okay, I'm going to drive home right now. I'm going to go tell my wife that I just was laid off. Like I walked out of the chiropractor and got on a Zoom call and got laid off. What am I going to say to her? We have four kids. This is going to be dicey. And as I'm driving, one of the pastors at Mariners, a guy named Jared, called me. who's been a friend of mine for a very long time. And just to shoot the breeze. And I was like, man, I was like, you caught me at a good time. And I told him what happened. And he's the one who said, hey, you should reach out to Eric and Beth, who's the executive pastor. Beth's the executive pastor. Eric's the guy who's the senior pastor. And I said, okay, I'm going to do that. And I did the next day. And lo and behold, they were having discussions about online. Because the conventional thinking, I think for everyone online is going to agree with this. The conventional thinking through COVID was, okay, everything's online. And then when COVID's over, everyone comes back in person. And then online is going to kind of dissipate. But that's just not what happened for us. And for a lot of other churches, it's not what happened. so they were looking at these these numbers of who's tuning in and joining and saying hey um we need to uh uh disciple these people like we need to put it's not just going back to a live looking in near the corner of the room like this is a thing and um And it just, the timing was perfect. And I was very grateful to be back in ministry. And not just at any church, at what me and my wife consider to be our church. I mean, she was baptized there, her parents were. We just baptized my six-year-old son there. You know, all of our kids have been dedicated there. Like, it is our church. I mean, even when I didn't work there, we attended there. Like, that was our church. Eric was our pastor. So to go back on staff as a pastor is one of the greatest joys. and but one of the opening dialogues was you know i live in arizona i'm not looking to move back to california and it's going to be up front with that and they were like perfect we love that because you're the online guy and you're going to come with an online perspective and and i do and sometimes it's annoying like you know it's kind of like a little bit of buyer's remorse sometimes because you know we do you know announcements and service you know which is one i kind of you know zing on a bunch we know we you have a class where people got to get a book so like you know and i look at it from the online perspective where everyone else in the system is, oh, you need to get the book? All right, well, just drive to one of the congregations and we'll hand you one. And I'm like, no, no, no, this dude lives in Ohio. And the class starts tonight. He signed up late. Where again, in person, you sign up late or sign up when you arrive. It's like, oh, great, you're here. Give me 10 bucks. Here's a book. Enjoy the whatever. And it's just not like that for online. So it comes with a perspective that the church finds valuable, but that also just lets me be the fullness of, I think, how God has wired me in this season.

Well, dude, I think that's so important that you have that online perspective. And again, for me being an online guy in an established church, and I'm physically present in the church when we're doing our online stuff, but I will say things to them and say, guys, this doesn't translate well online. We have to think of our online attendees if we're going to make this work and if we're going to value them. And again, they get annoyed with some of the things I say sometimes, but it's true. We got to think from that online perspective.

I love these online attendees, by the way, because that is the right language. Just like there's an attendee of Mariners Irvine or Mariners Santa Ana, Mariners Mission Viejo, whatever. These are attendees of online. I have very... I was in youth for a bunch of years, so there's a little bit of rough edge still. But I have a very rough edge when it comes to diluting those who attend online to just being viewers. Because for someone who's a viewer, there's very little responsibility to the viewer. um you know here's the product you're gonna consume it or you're not and hope you come back for more like i hope we keep you addicted to the product you know that we want these think clips to go viral and but if they're attendees then we have responsibility we have a moral responsibility to not just ensure that yes in fact this is their church And it feels like their church, but even like the moral responsibility of, you know, the, of, you know, one thing that I think every church makes easy online is giving. We make giving very, right. But maybe, maybe getting into a life group is like pulling teeth, maybe, you know, providing parent resources for parents who live in other States for, through the youth ministries, pulling teeth. But when it comes to, Hey, how do we, how do we execute giving? Oh, that's a very, very simple stuff. We'll, we'll, we'll make sure we nail that. Yeah. Right. But in that. It's like, listen, great, I give, me and my wife give, and you should give to your church. I think it's a biblical mandate that's part of what we do to support our church. But therein lies a moral responsibility, again, that if we're saying to someone, hey, give us your hard-earned money to support the ministry, that they're able to take a step back and say, okay, well, and yeah, this is my church, and I am able to... be part of the ministry of my church, not just a part of a part of the ministry. I'm able to engage in the fullness of my church. And and that's the obviously the complexity of my job. How do you bring that fullness to bear? But then, you know, it's the. That it's those are the strategic conversations in the back end that if you to your point if you say hey well hey guys this isn't going to work online it does that fall on receptive ears or it's like hey you know online guy you know keep it keep it down over there, but I mean so that's the that's the the navigation that constantly takes place.

Yeah, 100%. Okay, so here's what I wanted to talk about today. This was great hearing your backstory a little bit and how you got involved with this. Since you are truly online, you probably use a variety of different tools to do your work. And so I wanted to just hear from you about what are some tools that you use online that really help you do ministry more effectively?

Yeah. So here's, I'm going to lay out four things. Hey, and just so you know, probably two of these things are maybe like, maybe like one of these things is like really like, oh, I've never heard of that before. And the rest are things I think everyone's heard of. These are the four things we're going to talk about. Calendly, a thing called Boncerno. a thing called Zapier and a thing called ChatGPT. Okay. And I'm going to throw a little Canva in there, too, by the way. Okay. So and I'm going to put the theme of this. The theme of all of these tools is relationship and efficiency. Like if there was a bookmark heading in your in your browser, it'd be relationship and efficiency and you'd find these apps under it. and if it's okay with you i'll just i'll just ping right through and then yeah yeah yeah okay so let's give a quick overview so calendly is an important tool we use that for our onboarding for leaders to you know schedule time that works for them we use that as a workflow for instance we're launching online baptisms so if someone wants to get baptized they fill out the form online which keeps their information in our database so now we kind of have an anchor around their information but it sends them over to Calendly to schedule time with me. They can pick time with me and I talk to them. Oh, you want to get baptized? Why? Tell me more, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then in the response email they get after the Calendly appointment is over is where they'll get the links for these additional resources, how to plan a baptism experience. If you have someone baptizing you that's never done it before, here's a video that'll help them. Hey, here's tips to make it super successful, blah, blah, and all that's in there. So it's automated. It's made to be easy. But the most effective thing I've used it for is just the book Digital Coffee with Justin. So every email I put a link, every time my email signature, every meeting I have with someone or every email I get, every prayer request I get from online, every new connect card I get, every everything I get. comes with a, hey, grab digital coffee with Justin. It's 30 minutes at a time that works for you. And it gives you a chance to get to know your pastor. For online, while they see Eric as our senior pastor teaching, from the day to day, they're going to see me and spend time with me. So that's Calendly. Super integrated into everything I have, made to be relational. Bonjourno. When anyone signs up for stuff, connect card, they sign up for a course, whatever. Through Zapier, so I have my Gmail connected to Zapier. If I get emails about certain things, there's trigger words, et cetera, et cetera. It will load their email into Bonjourno. This is what Bonjourno is. It is a video messaging tool where if, let's say, Tom fills out a Connect card. His stuff auto-populates into Bonjourno, pops up on my phone, and I can record a little video right from my phone. Hey, Tom, how's it going, man? I see you did a Connect card. I'm Justin. I just wanted to put a name with a face. Hey, I'd love to talk to you more. I hope you're having a great day, blah, blah, blah. And it is immediate. It pops up immediately. It notifies me like, hey, a new person's added to your thing, your queue. So imagine you live in Ohio, and the church you're looking at is in California. And you're like, okay, I'm kind of interested in this, fill out a connect card. And two minutes later, which it's not like I nail this every single time, but two to 10 minutes later, you get a personal video from one of the pastors who says, hey, I'm an online pastor. I'm your person. I'd love to talk to you. Hey, here's the link. You can schedule time with me. Yeah, I just wanted you to put a name with a face. It's a short thing. That takes relationship and that feeling of, oh, they noticed me. You know, people will walk in and out of a physical church building and never be talked to, never be noticed. You can be invisible in a room of a thousand. You can be invisible in a room of a hundred. Talk about being invisible digitally. I mean, you absolutely can. So helping people not feel invisible, Bongiorno is an incredible, I can't talk about it enough. There's workflows in there too. So if I wanted to create a progressive workflow that, you know, welcome someone and then reminds me, you know, two weeks later to re-engage them or a month later. There's workflows that are insane. That's awesome. Chat GPT. Everyone knows about AI. Everyone has strong opinions about AI, blah, blah, blah. Here's the deal. It makes my job easier when it comes to writing a blog post and giving me a frame of reference to start with. One time I typed in there, hey, what are the 50 ways to share your faith with someone? And it gave me 50 ways. Give me 50 more ways. It gives me 50 more ways. And I find the ones I like. I take that, load it into a Google Sheet, CSV file, take that file, pop that over to Calendly, kind of create a template, and boom, auto, you know, upload that, and it auto-populates. And the font that I want. Now I have a bunch of social media graphics, like literally within five minutes that I can share over the course of a week. I can share all at once and they're numbered one through 20. And then I do the little video. Hey guys, sharing your faith's important online. You can do it wherever you live. Hey, I dropped in our story, 20 ways to share your faith. They're super easy. Check them out, comment below on the video, the one you think is the best. Or if you have a different idea, let me know. So now you're using social media as a relationship kind of community building tool. Use Chappie GPT to create content, not plagiarize, not be lazy, but to get things started so that you can take it and edit. Now, again, people are going to listen to that and be like, I totally disagree. Okay, whatever. I'm not going to die on that hill. But it makes my role easier to give me a starting point. And then the last one that I really like is Zapier. So it allows me to do a ton of automation with Instagram, ton of automation with Gmail. Um, you know, we have hooked into our system pretty well so that, you know, as people fill out connect cards or different things, it just, it just auto, you know, sends emails. It auto alerts me so I can follow up with people more effectively. Um, you know, Xavier is a killer to social media. It's great. Um, you know, you get a new follower on Twitter. It does this new follower on Instagram. It does that. Um, those are the, those are the four or five tools that I've, I've used that I use often. I use them every week. So there's a, there's a quick overview.

Dude, those are great. Okay, so the one thing as I was listening to you and thinking about our student ministry pass that goes into our online ministry, I think this is what makes student ministers so great at online ministries because in student ministry, you're always thinking about relationships. It's always about relationships. And with online ministry, I went to a conference a few years ago. This was even during the early stages of COVID. And someone said, and I was greatly offended by it, and I let them know that I was offended by it. But they said, online relationships are not real relationships. And I thought, that is so false from what I've ever experienced online. I know some of the people on my 8 o'clock. I chat host our 8 o'clock service. I have other chat hosts for other ones. I know some of those people, and I've never met them in person. But I know them because we've had interaction, not just in the chat room, but outside of the chat room. Because I think very relationally, and I want to build relationships with people and help them experience Jesus and discover who he is. And so we have real relationships. Those tools that you just highlighted are all centered around relationships and you're building relationships. I love, I didn't even think about the quick little video thing that you did about sending that to someone really quick, put a face with the name. It's so great of how you're viewing online ministry as real relational ministry.

You know, and there's easy, I mean, there's so many easy ways to do that. Here's what I'd say. I think this is going to be a pretty edgy thing that I'm going to say. I think this is going to be a pretty ridiculous, edgy, I don't know. When you said what you just said, here's the first thing I thought of. That sounds like a type of bigotry to me. That sounds like a type of online bigotry to me. Hey, you can't really have relationships with those people. That's not really. Imagine applying that to any other sphere of our regular ongoing life. and and uh put any other category of group so like the on so online's a place where things happen you know you hey we're going to do this study so it's also going to be online then there is the people of online like the this is their congregation this is their church the people of online so We're going to do this Bible study. You know, we're going to use online as an avenue of doing this. And then there's the people of online. We want to include the online people into this thing that we're doing and apply any other people group and say that same foolish insight.

Yeah.

And you'd be labeled a bigot. They'd say, Oh, well, you know, you're just you'd be like, you're super close minded. I can't believe you would say that. But with online, you know, here's the deal. If you think that you can't do it, then you're never gonna try to do it. And if you say to yourself, you know what, this is gonna be hard to do, so let's figure it out, you will be successful. I was chatting with a couple yesterday and we were just frigging hanging. They have a junior high kid. He does triathlons. They live in Bakersfield, California, which is super far from Orange County. Um, he's going down to orange County for a triathlon in September. The call, the call was about just other stuff. And he's like, Hey, you should, you should, he knows I do triathlons too. He's like, you should do it with me. I'm like, you know, September, I'm kind of looking at my calendar. Like, can I arrange being in Irvine for some reason, some church meeting I got to go to in order so that I can do this triathlon with him? Uh, yeah, I probably can. But you never get to that point if you're not willing to say, hey, this is going to be slow going and let's get started and figure it out and go with an open mind and know that to them, they just want to connect with, they just want to be connected. They want to be seen. They want to be known. and that's the business that's the business we're in which is another reason i mean i affirm what you said so much another reason why youth ministry people can be successful really successful when it comes to online because we have that mindset like pulling that kid in who's kind of on the fringe um you know the the bad kid i'm using air quotes the bad kid that you know they all they do is make mistakes like are they even worth it no no they are worth it like we got to fight hard to pull that kid in um you know it's it's the same kind of deal the same kind of deal

Yeah, I love this. Well, those are great tools. And again, I think it's great encouragement that anything online we can look at and we can try, we can experiment. I like how you're using chat GPT too. I mean, because again, that's still very new to a lot of us. And I'm trying to figure out, hey, how do I utilize this? And to see what you did, again, you're using it, you're using a tool. to help build relationships, to help encourage people, help spur them on towards Christ. And I think that's fantastic of how, again, I'm sure you're not be like, hey, this AI stuff, I'm going to invest all my time and energy, but you're starting to explore it. You're starting to look at it and you're starting to say, how does this fit? Can it fit?

thinking of i think a chat gpt and anyway i don't go deep down the rabbit hole in this i think of it like if i had an intern writer on my team there i had an intern english major who loves writing and i just opened the office door i said hey can you write me can you write me a quick blog like i'm going to edit it i'm going to edit it and make it my own and kind of add some stuff Can you write me a quick blog on the six ways, six reasons it's really important to volunteer at your church? And they say, oh, yeah, sure. Here you go. And they type it up. Hey, can you just write for me 50 ways to share your faith with someone? Oh, yeah, sure. That's my mindset. So it's not a, hey, this writes it and I just post whatever it writes, whatever computer language it uses. But it's meant as a tool to help build efficiency, kind of get things started, get me going so that I can make the most of my time.

Yeah, and I think that's right too, because like you just said, they're not just relational tools you highlighted, but they're time-saving tools and they really help you. Again, automation is good. Like if everything you do is automation, maybe that might be kind of weird, but having automation to help you and help them in the process, I think that's really exciting stuff that you're doing. So dude, this has been great.

The end result's the big part. No one who is on the receiving end of the video, for instance, is asking me questions about like, well, hey, was this automated? What tools were you using? How much did those tools cost? They don't care about any of that stuff. You know what they care about? Oh, my gosh, this guy, he noticed. I just filled this card out 10 minutes ago. This guy notices me. Like, what's the deal with this? I've never gotten a response like this from a church. Like that's what we're going for. Just like in youth, we go for the, I can't believe we just did that moment as a kid sitting in their chair. We're going for the, I can't believe this church, I can't believe I got this response. I can't believe they noticed me. If I can get that response. from the the people who are new visitors to our church um online then we're nailing it and i'll do i mean any any other than sin any means necessary i'm willing to do it and i'm telling you and so and i that's what i love is these questions because it's about again relationship efficiency um be and again the keeping the end user in mind you know like the i can't believe that they connected i can't believe they noticed in a sea of people they know and made time for me Maybe this church is, maybe I'm going to take a harder look at this church. Maybe I will sign up for that Bible study. Maybe I will attend this weekend. That's those payoffs that we're looking for.

Dude, this is awesome. This has been exciting for me. Anytime I talk to an online minister, I just get so encouraged and inspired because you're thinking about things that I haven't thought about. And I'm like, okay, I got to start looking into this a little bit more. Like Buongiorno, I've never heard of that before. I'm going to look into it right after we get off of this and see how I can start incorporating it because- Oh, so you're going to love it. You're going to love it, bro. Well, Justin, this is awesome. How can people connect with you? If they want to look you up and connect with you a little bit more, what would you suggest?

I'm on Instagram. Instagram is a great way. Hey, Justin Herman.

I'll send you some links you can put in the show notes.

I'll send you the coffee with the online pastor link. If you're an online pastor out there, man, I don't know everything. I didn't know everything when I was a youth pastor. Like, we're all learning. We're all on the same road, going the same direction, you know, whatever. I love talking to online pastors. I have the same heart as you do. That feeling of connecting, like that synergy of like, man, we're all in it together and there's good ideas here. So anyone can book time with me and spend 30 minutes and chat and probably go longer than that. But Instagram is the best way. And Facebook, actually, hey, Justin Herman, I realized I was really early on to these things. So like for Facebook.

youtube i got hey justin herman for everything so the the branding very very good alignment very good very online well well when i reached out to you on twitter i was wondering if you were actually active on twitter or not or if you just had it and so i was glad that you responded to me on twitter because i i love twitter i'm a twitter guy

i've been getting i've been getting way more into twitter i don't you know i don't know why but i just have been i feel like it's been more more mellow there's been more people on there it's just been more fun and and i discovered our church we have a twitter account for our church it's just not really utilized there's no one you know twitter was like such a toxic weird place for a really long time so a lot of people kind of disengaged that that's typically what I like to engage the most, like where I put my hands in the most. It's like things are really chaotic. Oh, perfect. I'm made for this. And so I've actually been like writing like, you know, a strategy, you know, how can we really how can we put meat to Twitter? We have this handle at Mariners Church. How can we put meat to it? But, you know, it's it's it's you know, there's a lot of other priorities right now. It's sitting in a file somewhere right next to my my position paper on space aliens. So it's it's it's. it's not which which is the real thing i've been writing this this paper my free time being back in the church you just got time and people ask weird stuff you're like it gives like people i don't know the weirdest question you've been asked but for me it was you know what's the church's position on like space aliens like dude like what does that mean for our faith real and i was like i'm gonna put some thought into that because i know there's an answer i went deep down the rabbit hole now i got a five-page paper that outlines that more responsibility for evangelism or you know what it means in context of genesis one We could talk all day about space aliens. I know stuff.

Well, after I saw all those pictures of all the different galaxies, I was like, okay, we are totally not alone. And if we ever think we're alone here, we're fooling ourselves. So anyways, that's a whole different rabbit hole, like you said.

This is the one question I throw out there. When it comes to the work of the cross, so when it comes to the work on Calvary, the work on the cross, when when jesus you know died on the cross for our sins was that sacrifice that propitiation for our sins to to satisfy the the anger the wrath of god was that a for this planet or was that intergalactic act that that sent ripples through the cosmos that that that that that that forgive forgiveness is there for the people or is that contained to the the people in the situation of earth that god created adam and eve and on on planet earth as the bible documents what happens on this earth sin happened the whole thing and then jesus was the solution to this situation where uh people from another plane i mean i'm telling you dude you go deep down the rabbit hole if aliens showed up is you know should we be proselytizing to them sharing with them possible of Jesus where they didn't have like these same stories and examples of situations on their planet. There's things there. There's things there to legitimately talk about if you have the time for it. And most people do not. Most people do not have the time to embellish me on space aliens.

Well, when you're done with the paper, you need to share it with us so that we can read through it.

Not only will I share it with you, I will demand that I come back on this. I will demand that I come back on this podcast to argue every point and to convince people that if space aliens do arrive, it changes nothing about the veracity and the strength of our gospel because our gospel is made for us and with our situation. But I'll argue some of the obviously the other implications. I will demand my return.

The title will be Online Ministry and Space Aliens. So there you go.

Hey, these radio waves go into, you know, go into the cosmos. You know, it's a thing. Some alien shows up like, hey, I'm looking for Tom and Justin. You know, we got these radio waves in this podcast. They did. We need to talk to them. You know, the leaders of Earth. Yeah, we're totally leaders. Come on. Come over to our house. Let's have some bourbon and talk about the Lord. It'd be great. You'll love it.

Amen on that.

So, hey, you know what? I want to throw something out there to you. I've been talking to some other online pastors about pulling together a round table of online pastors in like a formal sense. It would rather be in person or digitally, but let's just go with digitally. You know, a very impromptu-ish, get everyone together. Hey, everyone, if you're coming, come with five minutes of something to present, and we're going to throw out a topic, and we're going to talk about it as a group. If we did something like that, would you be down? Oh, yeah, I would totally be down for that. I don't think there's anything like that, at least that I know. I don't know of anything like that that is really going after. And not like the mega, mega people of Life Church. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the people like us. COVID happened, we made a pivot, and we're trying to figure this out as we go. Not, hey, we've been doing this for 10 years with budgets of millions. And I know people at Life Church. I'm not knocking Life Church. But where we're at... kind of wrestling through things is different than, hey, we've been doing this for 15 years. We have the number one app. We have a staff of a million people and a lot of money, but in the practical sense of what we're doing, would you be down if we did that?

Oh yeah, 100%, 100% for sure.

So I'm adding you to the list. And if anyone else is interested out there, they should shoot me an email online at marinerschurch.org. And I'd love to add them to the list because it's something we're gonna be launching very soon with all their online guys. You'd probably know, to be honest. but i want to drop them right now out of respect for them but it's going to be it's going to be fun this podcast on talking to you has been fun dude it's been great but i'm definitely going to have you back on whether it's about space aliens or something else we will definitely talk again uh it's great having you on yeah you you you want you have me back on in the fall Because if you're ever going to hit me back on the fall, we're launching a regional approach, a time-zoned approach to how we do this thing we do called Rooted, which is a 10-week discipleship experience. Right now, it's Southern California. It happens 6 to 8 p.m. And that finite structured deal is the same across the entire country. So if you live on the East Coast, you're signing up for 6 to 8.30 California time. And it has not been getting us the results we're looking for. So in fall, we're launching it in every single time zone groups that are centric to that time zone. So you'll do it from 6 to 8, you know, 6.30 to 8.30 in your time zone. And the implications of like this multi-time zone approach to discipleship is something that I'm putting, I mean, all of my strategic time right now in conversations is how do we build that functioning system? equip it with leaders just all the structure of that to meet the needs of of the attendee yeah meet the needs of the church like hey we're gonna make it easy we're gonna kind of do what we do here and then just kind of say hey anyone can do it if they want to but it's like we're gonna make it easy for people to do church in a way that makes sense to them in a time that makes sense to them like the whole they're not like oh well you know it's nine o'clock where i live You know, it's going to 1130. This is insane. But we're going to make it easy for people to connect with their church in different time zones. I'm excited about it. I think it's going to be different.

That sounds exciting. I will definitely have you on in the fall and we can talk about it. So because that will help. I think how big implications on how people do online ministry in different time zones. So I think that's really cool. So, Justin, it was great having you on, man. I look forward to the next time. Me too, Tom. Thanks so much. All right, so what did you think? What did you think of the interview? What did you think about Justin and his sharing and those apps that he encouraged you to use? Have you used them before? Again, as I highlight, I haven't used some of them before and I'm really excited about using something like Bongiorno in the future. So that was really encouraging to me. Were you encouraged by the space aliens paper that he's working on? What kind of questions do you have? What thoughts do you have? Definitely share it with me online, or you can put it in the comment section below, or you can go to Twitter, at TAPounder is my Twitter handle, and HeyJustinHerman is Justin's Twitter handle. We would love to carry this conversation online as well, because again, online relationships are real relationships, and we can have those kind of relationships online. Hit us up on Twitter. Hit us up online. We'd love to talk to you a little bit more. All right, heroes. Thanks so much for joining me today. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, go and subscribe to it. It's on YouTube. It's on Apple, Google, Amazon, all the platforms. We'd love for you to get these every time they come out. So check that out and subscribe to it today. All right. Well, I hope you have a great rest of your day. And until next time, have a great one.