Creating Digital Processes for Better Communication Amongst Your Team

How do you know if you have the right systems and processes designed digitally so that your whole ministry team can function properly? What am I talking about? How can you find out? We're talking about that right now. Are you 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 this is the Church Digital Psychic Podcast. This is the podcast where I bring on ministry leaders. We talk about how you can do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. And today I've got my friend Corey Sullivan back. And if you're listening to this on the audio podcast, you won't notice anything different. But if you're watching this on YouTube or on the Digital Bootcamp Facebook group, you'll notice that it is a little bit different because Corey and I are just on audio. We don't have, we'll have a picture up, but Corey actually came and visited me in person and we recorded this podcast because he's actually in town, my area, and he's given a presentation for his work. He's not in ministry anymore, but he is a ministry leader and he does help with ministry. He's a consultant and whatnot, but he talks about how what he's doing in his job directly applies to us in our ministry and how we can have systems and processes lined up digitally so that we can better minister to the people we're ministering to. Again, what am I talking about? How does that look? Corey breaks it down for us today in this podcast episode, so I can't wait for you to hear it. But before we do, I want to highlight thechurch.digital. At thechurch.digital, we have great resources where we have blogs, podcasts, coaching, cohorts for your digital ministry, digital ministry, your online ministry, your metaverse ministry, whatever digital ministry you're involved with, we have all the resources designed for you to succeed successfully. So if you've never checked out thechurch.digital, go check it out today. All right, so without any further ado, let's get an interview with Corey Sullivan. all right with me right now is my friend cory sullivan the one and only in person like we're actually here in person i would i would touch tom but he doesn't like that so definitely not a touchy type of person but corey is here he's actually here well it's actually the reason why we're doing the podcast we're talking about a topic that he's really familiar with but for anybody who doesn't know corey corey why don't you give a quick little introduction real quick

Hey, I'm Corey. For the past 12 years, I've been helping organizations help kids and their families thrive. So whether that's from churches and nonprofits to other community organizations, to right now I'm running a program in New York State that helps kids.

um to thrive and so excited to be here i've been podcasting with tom i don't know forever i don't even know what i don't you're you're you're my the podcast my guest who's been on the most yeah i mean it's clear but you haven't been on for a little bit so and the last time it was you know via zoom so whatever. But Corey, you also have a ministry background too. Give everyone your ministry background.

So doing a lot was doing ministry on a few different churches, helping from, you know, sixth, twelfth grade. I also really love and enjoy writing curriculum and contract with a couple curriculum organizations too.

Orange and Grow. I mean, just to name a few. Was I not supposed to say that?

I don't know. I don't know the rules to these things. I enjoy writing curriculum and trying to edit it and find the right voice because sometimes I think how do we communicate faith is important. And how we do that for the next generation isn't the same way we do it for adults. And I think it's important to think about that as we go and communicate those things.

Yeah, 100%. And that's how Corey and I met when I was doing youth ministry. Corey was one of the volunteers, and then he took over a staff position, and then he left me. And I cried.

And I cried too. Yeah. I cried too. I missed Tom. Yeah. And now I'm sitting in his living room drinking an orange juice.

I'm drinking a coffee. We have to paint the picture for people because this one's not a video one, so we'll paint the picture.

Okay. Okay.

So, um, all right. Well, Corey, uh, thanks for the intro. Uh, let's get into why you're here because why you're here actually applies to ministry in some context. So let's talk.

Well, I came from New York down to DC area for a conference. I ended up coming down a day earlier to see some friends like Tom. But I'm presenting at the conference, and one of the things that we're presenting on is really thinking about how we use our digital tools and our electronic tools to measure our program success. And also show, because it's successful, how do we then advocate for changes based on those measurements and the data that we see on it.

So, okay, so you're down here for that. And so break it down because you're going to be sharing at this conference as well. So break down what you're sharing and then we're going to relate it to ministry.

So for us, we see that a kid's health... is often made up of what we call a lot of different factors, but really social determinants of how things like, do they have access to transportation? Are they connected to school? What does their family look like? What are some of the behaviors that they have? Are they healthy behaviors? And how do we increase those healthy behaviors and limit the negative ones? And we see that and we understand that for the long-term health of a kid, those are needed. But money-wise and funding-wise, most of the money goes to only doctors and the medical side of things. And there's a graph we show that 90% of the funding around the health of a child goes to only 20% about what makes up a child's health. And that's like their access to care, their quality of care, right? There's so many other things that do that. But there isn't a good measure. to show how does things like resiliency impact trauma and how do we track that over the lifespan of a child. or we don't have good measurements of how can transportation really impact a family when we have better access to transportation. So what we're trying to do is think about how our systems and our practices to say, how do we measure this? How is it worth it? And what do we do with it next? How do we inform in the end our program allows basically a social worker to help coordinate the care for all these kids. And so how do we inform them? So we also then utilize our system to inform those end users, those care managers to say, all right, here's the things going on in this person's life. What are the action steps for it? For instance, if a kid goes to the emergency room, they're supposed to have like a follow-up doctor's appointment in the next like seven days, right? For different reasons. And if you go for other reasons than maybe just like a broken leg, there's some other things involved as well. but just keeping it pretty simple that way. But how do we inform all the players at the table, all the people, stakeholders in that kid's life that, hey, he needs to go for this follow-up doctor's visit, right? Make sure, like, hey, if I broke a leg, make sure that the cast is set. Make sure that's not, like, rubbing the wrong way. Making sure there's good aftercare and the kid feels comfortable with someone that's been around him for a while to understand those things. So we're trying to figure out how do we use our technology and our systems to measure those things, to show that they're effective, and then also inform the right people about it.

Yeah, see, I think this is really important because, again, we talk about systems and processes, and in fact, I think you and I have talked about systems and processes before in a podcast, but this goes beyond the systems and processes. It relates to follow-up on some things. It relates to notification. That's where the digitalness comes into it. And truthfully, like, again, you may think that you have the right systems in place, the right processes in place, but I always like to, it's a sad example, but it's an example I always like to point to is the fact that before 9-11, we had a bunch of different agencies that had a bunch of different information, but they weren't sharing that information with each other. And because of that, they were not able to prevent what happened on 9-11. But now after that, they've created different processes, different systems, different notifications. So now hopefully that kind of an attack would not happen again. And that's what I see you guys doing here with your stuff.

Right, yeah. So for instance, like someone going to the hospital, broken leg, you know, from a bike accident, right? What happens is when you go to the hospital, it sends a notification up to like your insurance company. then your insurance company has that data and it has to go back down to other doctors or other providers. So we have it set up that we would get those notifications about what's really called a gap in care or a heat dismeasure in our field. And then we would get these as at my agency, but then we would say, how do we get this information in a faster way to the end users, to those care managers to say, how can I help this kid faster? And so then we took systems, we unified like six or seven different, you know, payers or insurance companies, all their different data they had, because it's all different, right? There's nothing unifying it. And so that was a tough part for us was how do we create that unifier? How do we create that one that's the same? And then how do we then share that information to those people? And that's where our electronics come in and our digital tools that we have to say, here's information. We consolidated it. We've gathered it all. We consolidated it. We unified it. And now we're dispersing it back out to people to say, now do something with this information.

Yeah. Okay, so if you're listening to this, you might be thinking, okay, I've heard systems, I've heard processes, I've heard digital, but then I heard a bunch of Corey talking mumbo-jumbo stuff. They're like, how does this apply to me today as a ministry leader? What is it that you're doing that you think could directly apply into ministry?

I think for me, as I was thinking about this, I think of our volunteers. And the people that we have, that sometimes they have great hearts, they have great passions, but not always sure what to do, right? Or they're not sure how to engage. They're not sure how to follow up with something. And so it's really like, how do we communicate those things to our volunteers? How can we create, use our digital tools to say, hey, this week, here's some goals for you to set. Here's some action steps for ministry you can do. And so it's less like up in the clouds and it's less loose, but it's more concrete. Say, hey, I can reach out to a kid this week. I can reach out to two kids. I can take one kid out. I can show up at one basketball game. And how do we make those connections there and really inform them of what's happening? What are some data points that we have? And even data points of, hey, here's sharing things. Here's our ministry trends. Here's our small group trends. Off of this, get volunteer feedback to say, what's working right now? And what's not working? Because that data then can inform some of the choices and decisions that And what I know about volunteers is like when they have buy-in, when they see that and their transparency, they feel like they own this ministry just as much as you do. They're going to stay and be engaged a lot longer and then impact that ministry more.

Yeah. So what I hear you saying is that you want to be able to track this information and any ministry leader is wanna be able to track the information, but then it's about consolidating it in a digital way and then getting it out to people so that they know what's going on. Again, analytics is really important. We've talked about this before. We don't wanna track numbers just to track numbers. The numbers go to point and paint the picture for how well you guys are doing in your certain area. And you could track any number of numbers It's not just butts in seats on Sunday morning. There's lots of different things that you can track. But the important thing is that analytics can change the way you do ministry. It changed, again, to go to a different example, analytics changed the way baseball... players were were judged and valued the oakland a's did that in that movie moneyball you know the oakland a's changed what they valued and they went to the playoffs for a number of years now now they're moving to las vegas or something like that but the reality is that analytics are really important and it's getting that data to the people and then getting the buy-in and actually too it's important to analyze but then what is the action steps from this this is where

i think we really want to make sure we're focusing on is like hey data for data's sake really doesn't do much yeah right it's numbers on a piece of paper maybe you're presenting it somewhere but how does it drive action and drive change you know in your program and in the decisions that are made yeah right if you're looking at the analytics and you're seeing that your sunday you know study is has super low attendance but then your weekly small groups have super high attendance what data does that show and what do you do as a leader to then invest in more small groups and improving your small groups and the energy that you have for your volunteers? It's like, hey, this thing isn't really effective. Let me talk to my leadership. Let me talk to the people that I met that it's not working very well. If you're seeing the trends towards different age demographics, right? Hey, what's working? How do we grow ministry in that area to hit the needs of that age demographic?

you know as a church gets older as a church gets younger what does that look like and how does that shift on the programming that you guys might have yeah and you control the narrative with these numbers you're collecting data and then you can make goals out of that you can make plans out of that um but then again i think it also helps you be able to track how people how effective you are doing in ministry because We were talking about this before we started recording, but one of the things I really see about this is, talk about a guy who's been baptized, or a girl who's been baptized. You wanna be able to track that, that person's been baptized. Well then, who's following up with that person? What Bible study are they getting involved? What are they doing? What are the next action steps you're doing from that? And if you have a system, a digital system in place where you could track that and that you and I could both see that, that Johnny just got baptized and now we need to do some follow-up with him. If you have a digital system for everyone and all your leaders to be in sync with, you're gonna be doing ministry more effectively. And you guys are all gonna be on the same page and not wondering, Johnny's not gonna fall through the cracks because you all know. And you can see the data that he got baptized this day and then what happens from there on.

And you can communicate easier across the team.

Yeah. So I think it's really important, again, to get systems and processes in set. Get it in a digital format so you can analyze the data, see what trends are happening, and then you can do ministry more effectively. Did I misspeak in any way?

No, I like it. Okay, you like that? Yeah, you're good.

Okay, so. We can trademark that one. If you don't have this in place, you can hit Corey up, you can hit myself up. We'd love to talk to you a little bit more about this. But it is really important, this digital world that we're living in, that we are making strides to calculate and analyze data in a digital format so that people can grow in their faith and also not fall away in their faith. Corey, as we wrap up, what else would you say?

I'd say, too, again, just re-hitting on that same point of the data, the analytics, it's all there. We can have systems for it. But what we do with it is what's really important. And it takes a lot of critical thinking because sometimes that data shows that we need to change stuff. And that data shows that we need to shake something up and it can be difficult and having those conversations, but it's worth it because you have evidence, right? Data is not just like this may believe stuff, but you can utilize that as evidence to show, Hey, I want to try these things out and try those. So I'd say like, look at the data, look what your systems are showing you. And really reflect on it and say, all right, what do we do now? And create some action steps out of it. And I think that would be a great thing out of this podcast to say, hey, we have this stuff. We see these numbers. We see this data. What's the story it's telling me and what action do I have from it?

Perfect. Corey, where can people connect with you if they want to connect with you after this? Track you down.

Head to rallyyouth.com. It's a great place to go. Great free resources to connect with kids and help with families. And I also love, if you guys want to, there's an area to set up a quick call to just chat about your ministry, your program, and what are some systems and things that we could help with. And then rallyyouth is a great Instagram page to follow. And then just my personal one is Big underscore Sully55.

And he's Big underscore Sully55 on Twitter as well, although he never uses it. No. I wished him a happy birthday the other day on it, and he never responded.

He hates Twitter. I think it's a generational thing.

I don't know why we're friends still, because I love Twitter, and you don't like it. You like Instagram, which is terrible. All right, Corey, as always, it's great having you on.

Thanks for being with me. Thanks, Tom.

All right, so what did you think of the interview? What did you think about what Corey shared? Did it make sense to you? Did you understand it? Again, there's a lot of things that go on with volunteers and our ministry components and what people are doing. Again, we highlight baptisms and how you can best follow up with that. But do you have the systems and processes set up digitally so that different ministry components, different leaders, different staffers... can communicate collectively and can communicate effectively so that you can best minister to people. Do you have those processes in place? Are you ready for that? If not, I would love to hear from you. I'd love for you to ask some more questions. You can put it in the comment section below or you can hit me up on Twitter at TAPounder. I would love to talk to you about it. And then we can get to Corey, who's just on Instagram. He's not on Twitter that much. But again, if you have those processes in place, what does that look like for you? I want to know about that as well. So if you have a question, if you have an example, again, put it in the comment section below or hit me up on Twitter. We'd love to carry this conversation on because it's so important for us to be communicating effectively and be sharing resources effectively so that we have the data to make it, informed decisions so we can minister more effectively to people.

All right.

I've done enough talking. Thanks so much for being with me today. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, go subscribe to it. It's on YouTube. It's on Apple. It's on Google. It's on Amazon. Check out all the different podcasting platforms. It's on there. We'd love for you to subscribe to it today. All right, heroes. 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.