Creating Digital Systems and Processes for Your Ministry

[Tom Pounder] Why is it so important to have digital processes and systems set up for your church? Find out in a minute, because it's time. Hey heroes, my name is Tom Pounder and this is the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. This is a 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 new friend in. His name is DK Hammonds and he's at a church down in Dallas, Texas area. And even though he's down in Dallas, Texas, he is not a Cowboy fan, which I found out, unfortunately, during the interview. And you'll find out. Well, actually, you just found out right now. But we talk about that a little bit in the interview. It was great getting to know DK. He's a co-host of the Social Media Church Podcast with Neil Smith and Aaron Magnuson. And he's just a great voice to talk to about systems and processes, in particular, digital systems and processes, how you can use technology in the digital side of stuff to help reach your people in your church, but also in your community. So we break down what does that look like from guest services to baptisms? to emails, to text messaging, how you can do that more effectively today. Because as DK and I talk about, the world is going digital. The world is going online. How can we set up some systems and processes digitally that will help us reach people in our church and our community? And we're really excited to have DK on and share about that. So without any further ado, let's get an interview with DK talking about that. All right, with me right now is DK Hammonds. DK, how are you, man? [D.K. Hammonds] Man, I'm good. I'm grateful to be here and thank you for having me. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I'm grateful that we got to connect. You know, you and I, we have a mutual friend, although I've never met Aaron in person. I have. Yeah, he's been a Twitter friend for a while and he runs a podcast. You're on the podcast now too, right? [D.K. Hammonds] I am. I'm one of the co-hosts of Social Media Church with Niels and Aaron and myself. So yeah, for sure. [Tom Pounder] Yeah. Okay. So we'll, we'll get into that in a second, but why don't you give people background in case they don't know who you are, who are you, what do you do and how did you get into it? [D.K. Hammonds] Yeah, man. So I'm DK Hammonds, husband of one, father of four. I am located here in Dallas, Texas. Currently, I serve in the great position of IT systems administrator for NBC City Church, which is a small church in urban Texas. Well, the pastor is Tim Rivers. And so I've been there. And prior to, you know, being at NBC City, I was a campus pastor at a small church in on the south side of Dallas called Disciple Central. And prior to that, I was at New Hope Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, where I was a youth pastor for years. When I say years, I mean absolute years. That's kind of where I got my chops going in youth ministry. And one thing I learned about youth ministry, brother, is youth ministry really, really lacks systems and administrations. And so being able to learn at a youth ministry, take that everywhere I've gone, And now applying some of that knowledge to the areas that I serve in has been really great. And now I use that, of course, to do podcasting, to educate churches, to kind of be a consultant for a lot of churches. It's really been a blessing to be able to use those skill sets and set certain projects in place in motion so that churches can be blessed and the people blessed. So that's me. [Tom Pounder] Dude, that's awesome. Okay. So I got some follow-up questions before we get into the systems and processes. I got some follow-up. What's the, what's the range of your kids? Like how old and are they all boys, all girls, a little mix of both? [D.K. Hammonds] I have three daughters and one son. My oldest daughter is 25 years, 26 years old. my youngest kid is 19 years old nice and so my my two my first and my second are girls my middle is my son and the baby is a girl and so you know they're all grown adults which is a great thing let me tell you emptiness living is the best living of all time I love it to death. And so that's the range of my kids. My oldest just got married last year, which is a really dope thing to be a part of. And so, yeah, man, that's, you know, kind of how we live. And my wife just finished her degree at Dallas Baptist University. She got a master's and her bachelor's at the same time. And, you know, I'm around here getting certifications, whether it be in scrum master certification or PMP. So we're very forward thinking family and just kind of moving ahead that way. [Tom Pounder] That's awesome. I asked because I have four kids of my own and they're all girls. So I've got you beat by one. No way. My oldest is 22 and my youngest is 15. So I'm looking, I get a little bit of glimpse of the empty nest stuff with two of them kind of out of the house, but the other, so I still got a few years left. They're both in high school left, but you know, still a few years left. [D.K. Hammonds] It is, it is a blessing to get up and not have to fix breakfast, worry about who has to eat. It is amazing. [Tom Pounder] I agree with that from the high school perspective. Hey, so are you a Dallas Cowboys fan? [D.K. Hammonds] I am not odd. I really wish. that we had another team that I could celebrate. I'm actually a Baltimore Raven fan. [SPEAKER_00] Oh, okay. [D.K. Hammonds] For the Ravens, I'm a Laker fan by heart. That's who I go for all the time, but my football team is Baltimore Raven. Anytime people think as you live here, you root for the Cowboys, but it's hard to root for mediocrity. Every year, they figure a way out to lose, and I just can't put my heart through that type of... [Tom Pounder] nonsense everywhere no i i get that i'm i was born and raised in washington dc and everybody were reskin fans growing up and so i actually am a cowboy fan and so you know there's quite a few of us here but it is i've gotten less and less enamored with them because We're a long ways away from championships. But the tension now is because the Redskins commanders have been so poor lately. There's been a lot of fans that have kind of migrated a little bit north to Baltimore and said, man, those Ravens, they've got a championship. They've been a contender for years. So they're a really good football team and really good organization. [D.K. Hammonds] I love the Ravens. I've been following the Ravens while Sarah Goosa was there and Ray Lewis and Ed Reed. Those are my guys. When we didn't have a quarterback, just had defense. Trent Dilfer was not a quarterback. He was purely there for giggles, right? He wasn't there for anything else. But it was really an opportunity. Just to watch these guys kind of grow it up. And now we have a new quarterback. We got some, you know, new receivers there. I'm looking forward to this year and watching them play. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, it'll be nice now that a contract's not hanging over Lamar Jackson's head that they can really focus on football. [D.K. Hammonds] Yes, absolutely, man. [Tom Pounder] All right, well, we could talk about a lot of different things right now, but let's go into what we really want to talk about and why people are listening. We want to talk about systems and processes, and you and I both said we have youth ministry backgrounds, and I've lived under the policy of making it up as you go along, but that only gets you so far, and it often gets you in trouble. So talk to me about the systems and processes. You kind of gave us a little tip of it, a tease of it earlier, but why is it important for us to have these systems and processes in place? [D.K. Hammonds] Yeah, man, I think, Tom, when you talk about systems and processes, if we expect people to experience excellence on the back end, we also have to be excellent. And one of those ways to be excellent is to make sure that our systems and processes are you know, tangible, understandable, easy to assimilate and adapt and easy to deploy as a result to a new system. So let's let's say one of the systems that I'm always adding something to is we use ministry platform. That's our customer. That's our system. Some people use other systems like what is it called? My friends. So some people use rock. Some people use PCO, the other types of things. We use this one because it allows us a certain degree of custom customization that other programs won't allow. So when I first came in, I came in from a startup mentality. And so I worked for, you know, startups out of San Francisco, startups in Dallas. They did point of sale systems or they, you know, they sold other systems that were a part of the tech industry. and so coming from that into the church was kind of like okay i'm used to kind of building the rocket as it takes off but in church you kind of get a chance to watch the train move slowly and slowly before it picks up steam yeah and so i think one of the main things when i'm thinking of systems and processes is asking the question what is it that the church body needs now What do I need to put in place to help us function the flow. So let's take one area will say guest experience when it comes to guest experience. What information do we wanna ascertain from people when they come and visit our church? Do we wanna get their names, their email addresses, their phone numbers, so that we can then have correspondence with them at a later time? And so I'll tell you how my process works is, we didn't have necessarily one defined, so we had to define one. So once I found out that we didn't have one, okay, let's walk through it. What experience do I want to experience as a user? Duane Barlow- Number one I want to come into a place that is somewhat technologically savvy and not inundating with information and branding and all of that that's not necessary as relates to a system. Duane Barlow- So what we did this year is we added new iPads to our rooms, so that people can literally walk into our guest experience area and do self checkout. Duane Barlow- On their own right, and so I like to call this the introverts. best thing right i don't necessarily need to talk to you i can just select what i want keep going and so from there it captures information in a form that then is led right to ministry platform we can then take that information and send out two or three levels of correspondence whether it be text or email throughout the week through automation so a part of the systems that you're going to hear me probably talk about most outside of the word systems is automation these things are automatically automatically automated when you select this way and then from there we're able to keep up with our guests and then do final correspondence that way, all automated, right? And so that's one of the myriad of ways that I do systems to make the church more efficient. So now we have people's names, email addresses, phone numbers. We can call and say, how was your experience at church? We can call and plan a visit. We can call and say, hey, did you want to have a meeting with the pastor or someone in leadership to help you make a decision about church? Did you want to serve? We can ask all of those things. And so one of the major things that I did when it comes to the email is I sent a newsletter, sent it to everyone. and it basically lines out your next steps so you don't have to guess you can simply look at this form and say okay if i am a new guest then here are the five steps i can take i can join the church i can get baptized i can have salvation extended to me i can go to a residence class and or i can become i can serve as an ambassador or a serve on a serve team five things you can do so that's the call to action at the end of the systems piece every system has to have a call to action And so that's our call to action. That's kind of one of the ways that we set up systems. I really think through because my heart is pastoral. I can think through the lens of it and still have this technological lens and say, OK, yeah, here's what people want to experience that won't make them feel like left out. And they kind of build an entire program around that. So that's kind of one of the mirror ways that we do systems. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so I have a few questions for you on this. Just so I understand you correctly, you put up iPads in there that they can sign in. Is everybody signing in or just newcomers signing in? [D.K. Hammonds] So anybody with five things, I have five things on the actual tree that you can select. So that five things, number one is, do you want to be baptized? baptism or salvation, do you want to be saved? Those five things are there. Do you want to become a member? Do you want to learn more information? Those five things are there. You can select which one of the five. And so if you didn't want to talk to a person because they're really sitting at a table, you can say, hey, I can kind of navigate this on my own. And they can navigate that on their own. So that's kind of what we do as it relates to what's on the iPads themselves. [Tom Pounder] Awesome. Do you guys use any, like, I know a lot of churches have gone more towards text kind of stuff. Do you guys do any of that stuff as well? [D.K. Hammonds] I have the technology to do it. We're more so of a Trello company, Trello Church. And so we use like SendGrid to kind of do some text to church. We are system ministry platform because it's connected to Trello. It automatically allows us to send text messages from ministry platform. So for us, let's say every month I want to send a text. I can send a text to that same group every month. Hey, we know that you visit our church and it's totally just for that particular group of people. And so I think it's really important that as we adopt new stuff and we try to assimilate that we can try to find things that merge together because they all work well together. So having a good ecosystem that kind of is connected helps us a lot with automation. [Tom Pounder] I think you said a really important thing there, because I think we all have a lot of like, hey, we got our text platform here. We've got our church management platform here. We got this platform. And they don't talk together. And you're spending half your time logging in and logging out of different things. And I like what you just said there. It all works together. And that is one thing I've actually started noticing, too, is more of these church management systems have become more tech systems as well. Yes. [D.K. Hammonds] it saves you money you don't have to pay for a separate system you know that's right and and and the saving of money and not paying for that separate system is so critical right so here i hold on a second here i am uh as a person uh with five to ten thousand members and only ten of them did let's say new membership orientation i wanted to do i can send that to that specific group of people at one time within one system and so i've spent a whole like this last six months to a year finding out the systems that didn't necessarily integrate with us and started working with the systems that did integrate so that i could just say hit a button hit a text hit a button hit an email and we can just be extremely uh efficient or what we like to call um in the tech space streamline our activities most of our activities in church at least from what i can see are kind of like really hectic chaos right it's really just chaotic we're trying to figure it out but if we can streamline it then we can make it extremely easy for anybody to use on the back end of it yeah no that's awesome okay so you got this great system set up for guest services what other systems do you have that set up that make it easy for people to connect or get engaged with uh your church Yeah, man. So the other thing that's, it sounds like I'm becoming a ministry platform, but the other thing that we do that I just actually redid and it'll be deploying soon is opportunity finders. And so opportunity finders ultimately allow us to put all of the opportunities in our church, right? Everybody always wants to know, well, I don't know where to serve. Well, I can tell you exactly where to go. It will line out where you need to serve. But before you get to where you need to serve, many of the people that want to serve, we have to determine, do we want people to serve as not members or do we want people to serve as just members? And we have to determine that thing. So what determines that? So you have probably some type of class that people will go to, whether it be a DNA or a discovery class or a learning class or some sort like that. And a lot of people don't think that part of that could be automated. You could probably do videos that will do a lot of that automation for you. And then that person is able to serve at a very faster rate, right? So the opportunity finder shows how many people we need in this department. How often does it serve? The description of the service that they're doing and the person by which leads that department. You sign up with that information, somebody responds to you in 48 hours of your response to let you know we've received it and here are your next steps. And then our ambassadors, what we call ambassadors or serve team leaders, they then take it upon themselves to walk you through the onboarding process as it relates to serving within the church. And so now you have a streamlined process that works with our current relationship management system. that helps us and keep all of our data in house. That's the main thing. So I work like, again, a lot of times to just really cultivate an ecosystem that is kind of like centralized and has everything in one place. Not perfect at it, but that's always the goal. [Tom Pounder] Dang, that's awesome. Okay, so help me understand a little bit. Is Opportunity Finder a program or is it something that you guys have created? [D.K. Hammonds] Yeah, it is a program that is within ministry platform. And so think about Opportunity Finder as Craigslist for church. The good side, not the bad side of Craigslist, the good side. Where we can go in there and see what needs are there in the church. How can I serve? How can I volunteer? How can I connect? It's there, right? And you can go find out what ministry opportunities we have for you to serve, connect, all that. We also have groups set up the same way, or small groups. We call small groups parties at Embassy City. nice um so our small group we have the same setup and so there's a myriad of i think it's like 40 some odd small groups within our church in various areas has a picture has a description you can click on it same rules apply you can sign up somebody will call you within 24 to 48 hours and connect you as well all of which that information is within our back end system to always keep our data flowing and connected across the board [Tom Pounder] That's awesome. Okay. So then a follow-up question is, are you the only admin of the opportunity finder or does every ministry leader or like kind of head of the department or however you structure, do they all have access to it and they can upload their own stuff? [D.K. Hammonds] sure i am myself and a young lady who works with me her name's braden she is the actual admin of that i'm like the curator the builder of it she admins it so if they want to have something there she'll put it there for them and the connected piece is it automatically emails that party person or whoever that point person so the system does everything for us as long as we set it up correctly we even down to let's say prayer so i know normally a lot of churches use text and pray or they use email and pray well i set up prayer directly through our chrm system person fills out their form it goes to the person that handles prayer they call you back within a set amount of time we have an automated list now of every prayer request that comes to that system And so that's really critical because when you're thinking of prayer, you can think, okay, what subject matters are people asking for prayer? I can actually see and tell my pastor, here are the top 10 issues that I'm seeing. Here's how we can address that. Here's maybe something you can consider in terms of preaching that we can see on the back end. So now we're creating this robust system. that helps support senior and executive leadership to make decisions on some of the stuff that we're building because that information produces data and numbers. When it produces data and numbers, it helps us make more informed decisions as it relates to church because we have great systems. [Tom Pounder] that's awesome okay so that was what kind of my next question is what kind of statistics do you get or what kind of stuff are you looking the data what kind of data are you analyzing from all the systems that you're you're you're doing oh man oh man all the data all the data there's no such thing as bad data [D.K. Hammonds] let's start there there is no such thing as bad data when it comes to church but here let me give you some things that i think you should measure in church now for years the last two years especially coming out of post pandemic we've been trying to measure how many people attend and watch online that's a very hard measurement to find yeah you're probably not going to find an exact number Because number one, you don't have the back end to YouTube to tell you that, or Facebook, and they're not going to give it to you. You're only going to get how many people have watched, how much time they've watched, and you can estimate how many people were actually there. [Tom Pounder] Yeah. [D.K. Hammonds] Okay, cool. Number two. Other analytics, I think that's important. Salvific experiences, people who want to get saved and baptized. How many? think it's a good number that pastors want to know yeah what did you preach that sunday that drove people to your guest experience area or your qr code and ask for them to be saved and then what are you doing behind that scientific experience to make a change or to tell a story i think that's really important right people are making scientific experiences decisions outside of church What are you doing to help support them? So that's a number I want to capture. I want to capture scientific experience. How many men, how many women, how many children? um some churches like to keep up with if gender specific some people like to keep up with demographic and color specific you can do all of that based on how the form and formatting is set up for you to have a good system in place so that's one i think that's really important when you talk about baptism baptism how many who what when how then sometimes you want to know the size is because you want to order shirts you want to order bottoms when people get into the pool and provide that for them this gives you a better detail on who's getting baptized when how where and let me take a step further i have an automation um i have a couple automations but i think this is really important is uh people love it's the good tip so like people love to have the baptism certificates of old And so I make sure that we send out certificates after every baptism with people's names on the end of their day. Just so they can always have an earmark that this is when I got baptized and I can see and I can post it, I can share it, everybody can see it. It becomes now content for them to share. And the church is on full display when they do that. [Tom Pounder] That's awesome. Actually, that's very cool. We don't do certificates. I was just thinking, I was like, man, that's something that would be cool to do because you're exactly right. You can share that with someone else. I always like to say, why won't we share about our faith? Whenever something good happens to us, we want to share about it to the world, but yet we don't want to share about our faith. In the same way, this is a baptism. You want to share about it. Look, I got a certificate. That's a really cool idea. [D.K. Hammonds] really cool man really easy to do it's not hard to do um and i suggest if you're not doing it and here's how i knew it it's impact because at first we didn't do it you just got baptized you got put in the water got let out the water you what about your business right cool then one sunday i was like it would be really cool to have a certificate and i created one within a template of ministry platform they don't have them i had to create it who I created it, and I sent it out with a misspelled name. That person called me five minutes later. Hey, my name is misspelled. and then next day hey i didn't get a certificate i would love one and now the certificate has become a whole entire thing on its own organically that people want to experience and share with their community now if we're talking about biblically how what way can we share and experience and tell a story put your certificate up on your social media look what i just did i just gave my life to christ i just got baptized at church man i can't wait to just really live for christ and now this just sets a this just marks a moment for them yeah to then share with their community [Tom Pounder] That's awesome. You know, the funny thing made me think about when you're talking about the misspelling. I always know that someone's listening or checking out our social media is whenever I misspell something or I have a grammar mistake, they're quick to text it to me and quick to let me know. They don't say anything. They don't comment on it or anything like that any other time. But it's whenever I make a mistake, it's I always hear about it. [D.K. Hammonds] Absolutely, man. Absolutely. And we love those people that help us become better, that see things that we don't see. And let me, let's put a shameless plug. If you're seeing this stuff, you have an eye for copy and edit. Listen, come to Embassy City or go to Brother Ponder's church. We would put you right to work. at our locations. [Tom Pounder] That's right. Fantastic. All right, dude, this has been awesome. This has been very helpful. As we kind of wrap up a little bit, what other tips would you encourage us with systems and processes and all that? [D.K. Hammonds] I think if you can assimilate, not assimilate, but if you can automate a process that normally would take you two hours, spend eight hours trying to figure out how to do it it'll turn your life around it'll save you time if you can automate and churches can't be afraid now to automate sin in certain processes most of the stuff that we're doing in tech are automations that can simply be triggered at a voice or whatever text texting here's another tip in my experience one of the most powerful things you can use in church is yes your newsletter and yes a phone call or a relationship word of mouth but what i've seen is texting is one of the most powerful tools that you can use in your terms here's why it's so incredible because an email takes about two to four days for a person to respond to it and see it a newsletter takes about i think three to seven days for a person to respond to it and see it a text message people usually respond to something or make a decision within the hour yeah so using text messaging to connect with people to inform people of what you're doing within your church to keep keep guests involved with what you're doing and engage. Texting is one of the most powerful tools. So if you don't have a customer relationship management system that has everything that I mentioned, please go to Text to Church and talk to them about the applications they use, or I don't know if PCO does it yet, but those various applications can help you send out text messages. And I think Glow. Glow may do it for free, if I still recall, or have a free option for churches to actually send out text messages. So texting is really, really, really critical. I think when I think of other systems that you need in place, you just need to have somebody on your staff, on your team that is sensitive to the tech needs of the world and able to communicate and see it from a pastoral lens. and implement those tips and tools that we would help to be a more efficient and streamlined church, right? That's the main thing. So I would give those couple of things as things you know to keep up with and connect to and do, and you will see like engagement shoot through the roof. [Tom Pounder] yeah now there's those were some great tips i want to um hit on a few of those that you were talking about you talk about how doing automation and hey maybe it takes you eight hours to do and someone may be listening to you a bit like eight hours i don't have eight hours but the reality is like what you were just talk about is you spend eight hours now you don't have to be spending 20 30 hours responding to things so automation really helps you out a lot and again if you want help with that i'm sure you can connect with dk he'll love to connect with you and and help you with the automation process of how you can do that but i also like how you said you were encouraging someone find someone maybe you're not that person with the digital the tech stuff but find someone who is because that's the way the world is going right i i know that people have gone back on some of the digital progress they've made over covid and in my opinion that's a shame because yes the world is moving in that way we need to move with it we don't have to go as fast as as everybody else is but we do need to be making strides digitally and so i think we need to just keep on making moves there rather than saying oh we can't do it and our church doesn't do that kind of stuff well we can do that [D.K. Hammonds] Yeah, we will definitely can do it. It's about want to. As a famous pastor here in Dallas, it's about hallelujah and doogaloo. You got to have some hallelujah to your doogaloo to help you do it. And you just got to get the right people in place. I get the frustration that it could kind of be. We want church to be the same as it once was post pre-pandemic. Church will not be that way. We have to now be more efficient. We, some of us don't have the ability to hire a full staff like DK has. Some of us don't have the ability to afford certain things. So we have to find things to make us more efficient that works for our demographic. And then we're able to be a blessing. God enjoys us striving for excellence in every area that we try to put our hands to. whatever you do in word of deed, do it as unto the Lord, right? So he enjoys that we do that. So when I think of eight hours, I think of if I want to be an expert, it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert. I simply want to spend eight to help me better understand this and make it more efficient. You would be surprised, and I'm going to say this tongue in cheek, but you would be surprised how many things we have in church that could be automated, But because we didn't sit down to think about data automations, now we're paying exorbitant amounts of money when there's actually a tech tool that will do it for you. [Tom Pounder] Yep. Technology is not the enemy. It's our friend. It's going to help us do ministry more effectively. [D.K. Hammonds] Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. [Tom Pounder] Dude, this has been a great conversation. I'm going to have to have you back on again. You're, you're, you're fantastic. Um, how, how can people connect with you? Um, and, uh, actually let's talk about the social media church podcast too. First, how did you, how did you get connected with that? Because you're a recent. How did you get connected with that podcast? [D.K. Hammonds] Yeah, man. Um, those are my guys. I actually got, I don't know if you know, Jan from Philly. Jen, Jen from Philly. [Tom Pounder] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [D.K. Hammonds] So Jen is my sister. And actually, we did Black Light Digital with her. I started there. And I got invited to Social Media Church's conference. And Jen and I taught a class. And then Jen and I taught separate classes. And then we interviewed each other. And then it became a full-out conversation. I met with Erin in person, talked to Nils. And it just became something more organic. That an additional voice to social media church is what was needed. And so them actually wanting to add a crazy guy like me, who's like a tech clown, enjoys being a beta tester for new applications, was kind of like a good fit. And I'm not as far off as a lot of people may think. I'm right in the vein of what we're doing. And so that's kind of how I got connected. was something there's really something god said um because you know i'm not doing it i'm not doing the information inside giving for the money i'm doing it because i love god i love god's people and i want to see them blessed and this is my way of not gatekeeping this is my way of giving back to them there's other ways i make money but this is my way and how i give them back through podcasts [Tom Pounder] That's awesome. That is great. Well, I've enjoyed hearing your voice on the podcast. Well, if someone wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to connect with you? [D.K. Hammonds] Yo, man, all social media platforms have one name. I am DK Hammonds. You can check me out on threads, blue sky, fields, Facebook, Instagram, clubhouse. I am there in some shape, form or fashion. And I would love to connect and see how we can help the church be more grand and more appealing to the lost. [Tom Pounder] You are my first interview that dropped the threads, uh, link on that. So that's my, that'll be in the description of threads. I've enjoyed getting to know that app and I've seen you posted on it. [D.K. Hammonds] So, um, you know, we have an actual podcast coming, I think Monday or Tuesday, uh, whatever day you're watching this social media church, we'll be talking about it, meals, myself and Aaron, we'll kind of break down. Because I didn't want to do the podcast like a day of. I thought that was really insensitive and just really crazy. Spend a day with it. See what you learn. See what you find. See how it can help. And then, you know, come out there and just kind of jump out. But, you know, a lot of these apps, and I'm going to say it on your podcast, what I think I'm seeing with the apps is what we're seeing is this digital renaissance. where technology is re-engaging itself in a different platform. And now we get an opportunity, we have choices that we can kind of get into. Whatever works for us, we can get into that. And so my tip for spills for churches, just get your platform, go on there, don't put nothing up. We don't even know what we're doing on threads yet. We're just having a good time. [Tom Pounder] Yep. No, 100%. I love Twitter. I'm a huge Twitter guy. Oh, yeah, man. And so I'm exploring threads to see what it looks like. And that's the thing. One of the things I learned, especially through the Clubhouse stuff, is slowly enter in, feel it out, see what people are doing, see how people are interacting, and then start making a strategy for it. Don't just go all in and be the expert immediately because we're all in the same boat. [D.K. Hammonds] yeah so here's my story you mentioned twitter i'm a twitter head here's my story with spaces spaces is one of my social places that i actually i was one of the first beta testers uh well the second round of beta testers in spaces uh i wouldn't want my faces sweatshirt is one of a kind many people don't have a sweatshirt well we did all the beta testing and i had a show on there uh and i actually used to travel around and other people's spots just really trying to build the platform because we didn't know how to do it. And those who are beta testers understand that. We are simply getting familiar with new platforms, understanding how it works, how to use it, and then we can push out further once we understand how that works. But enjoy the new stuff that's coming out. And we still love Twitter. Twitter ain't going nowhere. It's not going nowhere. [Tom Pounder] Now, that's the thing. All these people were saying, see you later, Twitter. I'm not going anywhere. So, yeah, I've got thoughts. [D.K. Hammonds] Unless you have 30 million viewers that's going to leave Twitter tomorrow, Twitter is going to still be running strong. [Tom Pounder] That's right. That is right. Well, dude, DK, this has been great. I love getting to know you a little bit more. And so I can't wait to have you on the podcast the next time. [D.K. Hammonds] Anytime, brother. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you. [Tom Pounder] All right. So what did you think? What stood out to you from DK's interview? Was it the fact that he's not a Cowboy fan in Texas? I mean, that stood out to me. Although I'm a Cowboy fan in the Washington, D.C. area, which is really weird, too. So we can't hold that against DK. He does like a good team and a good organization. So we'll give him that. But what stood out to you? How are you doing with systems and processes? How are you doing with automation? Do you need some encouragement? Hit DK and I up. You can hit us up on Twitter. You can also hit us up on threads as we just talked about. But hit us up on Twitter and we would love to talk to you a little bit more. If you're on threads, hit us up on threads and we'd love to connect with you there as well. There's a lot of great things that you can do digitally to set up these systems and processes that will help you be more effective in your ministry. So set them up. Talk to someone if you've got questions or thoughts. We'd love to have this conversation. Carry on so we can encourage you each and every day. All right, heroes. Well, thanks so much for being with me for this episode. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, subscribe to it. It's on YouTube. It's on Apple. It's on Google. It's on Amazon. It's on all the different platforms. We'd love for you to subscribe to it today to get these every time they come out. And here are some great interviews with some great people. All right, heroes. Well, I hope you have a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week. Until next time, have a great one.