This episode is not only the final episode of this season of the podcast, but it’s a synthesis of everything this season has been about. Kyle Ranson at Crossroads Church is using just about every tool at his disposal to do online and digital ministry right. In this episode, we learn how he uses social, blogs, podcasts, video, SEO, and more to reach people during the week and on weekends. And he’s not just inviting them to church, he’s reaching people with the Gospel online.  Oh, and you have access to all the same things he’s using to do it too! Find out how he does it and what God is doing at Crossroads in this incredible conversation!

We’re wrapping this season up strong with Jennifer Benton from the BLK LYTE podcast. She is an Instagram influencer as well as a content creator for her church and she does it all remotely! In this episode, we will see just how far online content can go when it is used as a means for discipleship and ministry. Can you impact someone’s spiritual life and walk with Jesus while you’re asleep? All this and more in this week’s episode.

Before the pandemic, only 5% of the workforce worked from home. In May 2020 it shot up to a whopping 60% and it looks like there will be a lot of people refusing to go back to an office-only model ever again. If you are in a position where your job can be done remotely, then the pandemic has thrust you into a very interesting future. Before we start calling these fortunate few “lazy,” you should know that a two-year study by Great Place to Work® of more than 800,000 employees at Fortune 500 companies found that most reported stable or even increased productivity levels after employees started working from home. On this episode of the podcast, I talk with my Church Comm Team partner Paul Fleming. Paul has launched numerous successful businesses like Church Ink and Church Swag: all fully remote. He has a ton of insight about how church leaders can utilize remote workers and contractors to fill in the gaps for skilled jobs you need asap! (or you could hire Church Comm Team, but that’s whatever). :)

In 2021, Ryan Wakefield and the Church Marketing University team did something bold. Instead of continuing to talk about what a hybrid worship service would look like, they decided to create one and see for themselves. Because everybody knows that when it comes to hybrid worship services and vegetables, your mom wants you to try it because you might like it. What would it look like if both the digital space and the face-to-face worship were seen as equally important on Sunday mornings? Imagine that no one can tell you ”no” and suddenly, you DO have the money and manpower to make it happen. What would you do? Get rid of that organ, that’s what. But then what? Well, we did it and we learned a ton. In this episode, Ryan and Seth talk about what went well and not so well in our test of all these theories in real-time.

What would it take for your church to embrace the digital space just like you do the face-to-face as a legit ministry? How would you even do it?  If you’re kicking those kinds of questions around, this episode with Jason Moore will help you process the practical side of running a hybrid ministry. He calls it ”Both/And” and his new book by the same title lays out the framework.  We talk about Both/And (physical and digital) ministry, church communications, and more in this episode of The Seminary of Hard Knocks!

Did you know that there were more email addresses on file than social media account handles COMBINED? Email still drives much of the communication space and churches need to be able to master the medium. If you said ”the subject line” was the key to more opened emails, you’re mostly right. But there are a lot of other factors that Email Marketing specialist from CMU (Church Marketing University) Julianne Alkire and I discuss in this episode. Especially the art of making automated emails personal. How can you get your website and social media to work for you while you’re asleep? Or after hours? Or on your days off? And how do you make those automated responses feel personal for those who are interacting with you when it’s convenient for them? All this and more in this episode of The Seminary of Hard Knocks!

Every comms team struggles with getting good photography. Whether it's finding the talent to volunteer or it's how photographers turn in photos to use or even training them to know what photos you will need, photography impacts your social media, website, and promotional graphics profoundly! So I talked to a guy who has basically mastered this issue at every step, Zach Zamora. He is the Media and Communications Pastor at New Life Church in Corpus Christi, TX and we talk extensively about how to get good volunteers, train them, get great photos, and how to actually GET them!   LINKS Fluro Smugmug Church Comm Team New Life Corpus on Instagram 

We all know that social media has some data privacy issues and many users are feeling more than sour about using them, especially in the church. Not to mention your reach is probably like, less than 5% on your FB page posts. So what do we do? Enter the private, online community of Discord! And here are two guys from BlackBar who can tell you all about how to use it, Zach and Caleb! I think that Discord is a must for kids and student ministry digital communities now and in the future, may become more and more important for adults as well. If you’re considering creating your own private, online community for your church outside of Facebook or Slack, you need to hear what these guys have to say about Discord and see what they’re doing on their own servers.

You don’t want to miss this! Ok, maybe you do, but you shouldn’t. In fact, we may be contributing to a major problem in the church and culture with that simple phrase and ideology: the inability to observe Biblical rest. Rhythms and patterns in our lives help regulate our physical, emotional, and psychological health. In this episode, James Kelly, CEO of FaithTech, the creators of Digital Sabbath helps us understand how to incorporate rest in our routines, especially taking rest from technology and social media.  What if the church led the way in helping people practice Sabbath? Learn more in this episode!

What constitutes Biblical fellowship? Are there any reasons we should break fellowship with one another? I’ve watched my guest, George Holleway, navigate conversations online as the pastor of his church for the last 2 years.  Fellowship is more than sitting down to eat together. In this episode, I have a very in-depth conversation with a pastor in the trenches of ministry about how to be in fellowship with people who drive you nuts and maybe believe different things than you.

When Jesus told us to make disciples, do you think He meant that 2000 years later we would all be using something called Zoom over the internet to do it? I like to think that he probably winked at John and secretly thought ”you’re never gonna guess where this thing is going!” Jeff Reed from Church.Digital & DigitalChurch.Network joins us to talk about what discipleship can look like in the digital world and how churches can (and already are) seeing growth there.

The great resignation is taking its toll on the American workforce and this is one instance where the church is NOT exempt. This week on the podcast we’re talking to Brooke Hodnefield from Slingshot Group about the HR situation as well as how churches can better examine what it means to work and minister today from a practical and Biblical perspective. From office hours, setting healthy boundaries, and remote work, we look at what is working, what is not working, and where we go from here in this exciting episode of The Seminary of Hard Knocks podcast! Sponsored by Church Comm Team

The definition of a Biblical ”gathering” today has expanded. We are going to look at the Biblical definition of gathering, also called worship, and see how (or if) it can be applied to online and digital spaces! Hebrews 10:25 has been the primary Scripture that many have used to push back against church online. Meanwhile, many churches are forced to respond to the realities of the pandemic. Now on the backend of the pandemic, churches are faced with a decision: how do we go forward with the digital expression of the church now that people are starting to come back? They have responded one of three ways: 1) Go back to prioritizing in-person and simply streaming services to FB/YT, 2) Going all-in with a hybrid approach to in-person and online services, or 3) going back to prioritizing in-person services while attempting an online strategy with no extra resources, manpower, or attention from leadership. Our Guest today is no stranger to the controversy surrounding the issue of what the future of the online church may look like. After being published in an article by a major news network, the passion of all sides of the issue came out in the comments! It’s been a long journey for Dave Adamson to today, as we near the release of his forthcoming book on the subject called Discipleclick: How to use digital ministry to reach people and make disciples.

It has been a good break over the last several months but we are coming back strong in February of 2022! We are switching our format, focusing on hybrid church strategies, and bringing in the heavy-hitters in the digital church space to help you and your team reach more people in the new era of the church. Subscribe to this podcast and don’t forget to join the email list, where you’ll get a free download of our Major Messaging Calendar, the tool we give our Church Comm Team clients to help them organize all their communications, from sermon series to events, to the emails going out each week! Important links in this episode churchcommteam.com sethmuse.com/calendar sethmuse.com/88ideas

I love a good scroll-stopping headline. In our profession, church communicators and marketers are always looking for a quick list of best practices to help us get more emails opened, increase clicks, get more followers, etc etc the list goes on and on. Over time, the playing field changes, and those tried and true best practices, well, aren't anymore.  In episode 150, Meagan and Seth talk through a list of previously believed best practices for church social media, websites, email, and more that no longer work as well as they once did! *Note: We're taking a break after this episode until Fall 2021 when we come back with a new format that no one else is doing!

If you've ever received a "bad" gift, you get it. It's not that you're unappreciative. You just don't know what to do with a wall-mounted fish that sings when people walk by. You don't think you'll ever wear a pink unitard that says "Work Out" anywhere. When guests arrive at your church, it's a nice gesture to give them a gift to say thank you for coming, just make sure you've thought it through so that the message you send is what you want. Justin Nava from Mr. Church Marketer gives us lots of great insight to the good, the bad, and the ridiculous guest gifts! IN THIS EPISODE - The right philosophy behind giving guest gifts - Good gift ideas - Bad gift ideas and what makes them bad

Have you ever walked out of a church service? Turns out, lots of people have. This week on the podcast, Meagan and I read some of the crazy, hilarious, upsetting, and uplifting stories we heard from you! IN THIS EPISODE - The amazing AUDACITY - Legit reasons to get up and leave - What some "normalized" actions can communicate to today's crowd that might be walk-out worthy. - Lots and lots of laughter & opinions

A church website is more important than ever in the post-covid, digital world. The year 2020 accelerated everyone's digital savvy by leaps and bounds, so more and more people will be using your church website than before. We'll discuss how to make your home page guest-friendly and how to optimize other pages for your regular attendees as well.  IN THIS EPISODE - Things guests are looking for on your home page. - How to use your website as a social and content hub - Personas, targets, and how bullseyes work. - How to organize content on your website that answers questions people are asking. - What's the "junk drawer" of your website?

Today, you have two lobbies to think about. There's the physical lobby and the digital lobby. You've probably thought about how to cast vision in your lobby a little, with handouts, signage, posters, etc. But have you thought about your digital lobby? Meagan and Seth give practical ideas and strategies for communicating your vision both directly and indirectly in both spaces in this episode! IN THIS EPISODE - Ideas for capturing information from visitors - Ways to implement your vision and values into the design of your lobby - Ideas for creating digital lobby spaces that align with your vision - Ways to create a journey and pathway for visitors to connect deeper into your church life

What is a First Time Backer? Well, it ain't no holla back girl, that's for sure.  In this episode, I talk with my good friend Jeff Reed from TheChurch.Digital about the future of the church in a hybrid digital/physical expression and what to do about it. We also talk about the phenomenon of your regular attenders who haven't been back in a year feeling like a first-time guest when they return. How are you handling both first-time guests and first-time backers?  LINKS Jeff on TwitterStadia Church PlantingThe Church Digital Podcasthttps://thechurch.digital/  OTHER GREAT LINKS 88 Ideas for Church Social Media Posts