Speaking At the Michigan Progressive Convention

Well, thank you so very much, Michigan. It's such an honor to be there with you all today. I'll be virtually. This is such an honor for me. Let me start with a word of prayer, and then we'll jump into our time together. God, we are grateful that you're God and that you. You privilege us with being our father, being our leader. And so, God, today, as we dive into your word, as we dive into our culture, thank you that you've already gone before us and made a way, made everything clear. God, I thank you for Pastor Bland. Thank you for this entire leadership team. Thank you, God, for Pastor Chandler Harrison and the gift that he is to the body of Christ. I pray today, God, for every person to hear what you have to share, that they may go forward and build their churches, build their congregations and build their people, that they will reflect what you desire for their congregations to be. Thank you once again for the privilege of being your children. Speak, open our eyes so we might hear you. Open our ears that we might hear you and break our hearts so we learn to love you. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. It is such an honor to be here with you all. I will say one thing. Hope you guys don't tune me out. I am from Wisconsin, and so I'm a Packer fan and a Bucs fan. And so right now I'm in hype because we are in the finals. And so I'm from Wisconsin, originally went to Nashville. One of best friends in the whole world is Terence Chandler Harrison, and so I'm grateful to call him friend and call him a colleague of mine as well. And so it's an honor here to be here with you, Pastor Bland, and to everyone in the Michigan Progressive Convention, it's an honor to share this with you. As Pastor Bland mentioned, I recently received and earned my doctorate in ministry from Boston University, where my dissertation centered on gamifying black churches and revitalization, eradicating a culture of stagnation in black churches. And so we're currently in the process of actually making the first black version of youversion for black churches and making an app. So I'm really excited about it and how we can infuse not just technology as a means just to have it, but as a means of cultivating sustainability within black churches. And that we're going to talk about today. So one thing I will say as we go on. So we have about an hour of time together. I would love to Talk for like 40 minutes. And if you have questions, please leave them in the comment section and I'll peruse the comments section to try to actually answer those. My hope is to be very, very practical. My goal today is I'm going to share with you two main things really generations and social media. I want to name the numbers behind generations. I want to name exactly what's going on with social media. Then prayerfully, if you have some more specific questions to your church, if you're on Zoom, I'll be looking at the chat here. If you're on Facebook, I love to go there as well. If someone can make me a co host, that'd be great because then I'd be able to share my screen as well. But I don't mind doing that. In those of you who are on Zoom, I'm going to upload a file that I created that I think will be very helpful in that if you want to go through it, it will allow you to really kind of go through what we're talking about. I want to, like I said, make this very practical. And so for those of you on Zoom, I uploaded a file called Marketing PDF and what that does is you literally can just walk through what I'm going to talk about. Because those things, this is we're really going to engage in. I want this to be current to your context. I want this to be current to who you are, what your church is doing, what God is calling your ministry to do, what God is calling your hands to, and what God needs your church to do in these times where God needs churches to really please stand up. So if someone can make me a co host, that'd be great, so I can share my screen. But let's jump right into this. The first place I want to start with this today is very simple. I want you to write down whether it's in your notebook, whether it's in your notebook, or anywhere on the sidelines of what you have. I want you to write down your church vision. I want you to write down your church vision. Whatever your church vision is, I want you to write down pastors especially. I'll say this about church visions. Church. The moment we get tired of saying our church vision is the moment that people start listening, right? The moment we get tired of saying our church vision is the moment that people get the moment that people start listening to our church vision. So I want you to take a moment and write down your church vision. Scripture tells us that without vision, people die. That's Proverbs 28. Without vision, people literally die. So I want you to write down Your church vision. What is it that God has called your church to do? Remember this about visions. Visions change vision. Back up visions for an appointed time and the initial speak and not lie. It's going to happen. So what is it that God's calling you, but your mission does not change? The mission of every church is Matthew 28, to reach those who are lost, teach them the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, baptize them into the fold of the body of Christ, and then wait in dangerous expectation for the second coming of Jesus. That's the mission of every church. But our visions are different. And what I want you to see is as you write, your vision is that each one of our churches is different not by desire, but by design. Don't miss that. Every one of our churches is different by design. And that's because God designed our churches to all be different. And so as we dive into this today, some of your churches, as we get into numbers, as we get into practical things, I want you to be mindful that some of our churches literally have not been equipped to do certain things. Some of our churches are literally simply called to reach certain segments of people, to do certain things across the border. And God has called our churches to do particular things. So I want you to see that our churches are not different by desire. They're different because God designed our churches to be that way. So as we jump into this, that's what I want you to really kind of grab a hold of today. Right? And so what's your church vision? And then as you write your church vision, I want you to know this. When it comes to social media, when it comes to marketing, when it comes to small groups, when it comes to greeting, when it comes to everything, everything is based off your vision, period. As we consider this Covid era of church, this Covid era of life, in terms of rebranding your church, I don't think a lot of our churches need a rebrand. We need a deepening of our right. We don't need to rebrand and overhaul this re everything, reimagining, rebrand all that. We need to deepen our intentions. What is it that God has called your church to do? What is it that God has called you to do? And how are you going to do that to the best of your ability? To glorify God, to honor God. Remember Colossians 2. What's our purpose? Colossians 2 I believe 18. To glorify God. Right. So social media's purpose is to take the old stories that we have and make Them live today so we can live out the Great Commission. Remember this, the Tower of Babel. When we talk about the sin of the Tower of Babel was not the use of technology, the man made building materials, or being a one accord. The Bible is decidedly pro human among humans, the pre unity among humans. The sin was when the people of Babel saw the technology building. This. This tower was the can overcome a sinful world independent of God. Like, I really want you to see this. The sin of the Tower of Babel was that people thought that technology could overcome sin instead of them walking in step with God. All right, so that's where I see us as we wrestle with this, that I want you to really see us. Those of you who are just coming on. My name is Justin. I'm privileged to lead this session tonight on Technology. There's a resource I put into the chat on Zoom that if you want to go ahead and take a look at that, go right ahead. I think it'll help us. So as we get into the starting point, I'm going to get into this, but I want you to find where you are. Just work with me here tonight. So as we begin the starting point, I want you to see where you are. I think there are four types of people who come to a class like this. Four types of people, right? Number one, I want you to acknowledge where you are. Number one, there's those of you who come to this class and you use technology and you want to figure out a way to make it greater. And I applaud you for being. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. I want to hopefully give something to you and build something on you. There's another group of people who are here. You know technology exists in church. You know technology exists in the world, but you don't want to do it. You just, nope. This is something we can give to somebody else. And if that's you, I'm glad you're here as well. And prayerfully, what this will do is unearth something in you to help somebody else. There's some of you who are here today, you just don't want your church to touch technology, right? And you. And you don't want to admit it, but it's the truth. And you're here to prove why we don't need technology. If that's the case, God bless you. I'm glad you're here as well. And there are those of you who are curious but don't know where to start. I'm not going to be able to share everything in the next hour. But prayerfully, we can meet you where you are and push the kingdom forward. All right, so I want you to say this, that the main reason digital media, this theology of digital communication is important, are three things. Number one, digital communication gives voices to our members internally. Right? The reason we have social media and marketing in our churches is to give voice to our members internally. That people who may not speak up in meetings, people who may not be involved in the ministry, people who are part of a ministry can see themselves on social, see themselves in the church. It gives voice to our members internally. Secondly, it gives voice to the gospel externally. There are billions of people using all these different social media accounts all across the world. Billions of people using social media. It gives voice to the gospel externally. We're going to talk about some ways to do that in a second. And then thirdly, what social media can do, what we saw in 2020 and what we saw actually about 10 years ago when Trayvon Martin happened and Obama came along and post Obama politics is social media, through churches can be a way to affect change and policy and through a movement globally. Because now we're no longer just talking to people that are across the street or in our city. We're really affecting change and getting across the world. And so to me, I think that's really, really exciting to do as well. Alright, so let's, let's jump right all the way into this today. So I want to do this. I want to talk generations. I want to talk generations. And then not only do I want to talk generations, I then want to talk, I'll talk a little bit of social media and marketing as well. If you have any questions, please put them in the comment section. That'll help me to make sure that I'm saying something or doing something that will help you out. But I want to start talking generations. And I think too often what happens when it comes to conversations like technology, things like this, as it jumps to like, who are the people in the world? What are these Gen Z, who are these millennials, all of that. If whoever is leading, if someone can give me the ability to share my screen, I think, I don't know if I can or if it's, if not able to, that's fine, I'll just talk it out. But I have a PowerPoint here, I can email it to someone. And those of you who are on Zoom, it's in the chat section as well. So let's go with this. What are the generations we talk Gen Z and we talk millennials and we talk all of this. Who are these generations? Let's do it. Number one, you have the builders. The builders are people who are 76 plus 1922 to 1945. Those are the builders. Right. Then we have the boomers. Who are the boomers? 57 to 75. That's 1946 to 1964. Right. Then we have Gen Zers. Gen Zers. Sorry, Gen Xers. Sorry. Gen Xers. Gen Xers are 41 to 56. I think I might actually be able to. Nope. 51 to 41 to 56. 1965 to 1980s. Those are gen Xers. All right, we have millennials. We're going to talk millennials in a second. Millennials are 25 to 40. It's 1981 to 1996. We have generation Z. That's age 9 to 24 or 1997 to 2012. And I want to give you the next generation. The generation after Gen Z is Gen Alpha. They're Gen Alpha and they're ages 0 to 8. Now, I want to tell you right now, the mission field is Gen Alpha. I'm just going to tell you the truth. I have a 4 year old son and my son can use his iPhone better than I've seen some adults use it. As much as we joke about children being babysat by their phones, our children can use their phones, especially just Gen Alpha. So that's Gen Alpha 0 to 8, Gen Z 9 to 24, millennials 25 to 40, Gen X 41 to 56, boomers 57 to 75 and builders 76 plus. Now I want you to see, why do we mark this? I was talking to someone a couple of months ago as we were talking about different generations and one of the things that he said to me, and he said, you know, Justin, I think generations are cop out to conversation. He said, I think we name generations because we want to figure out a way to keep separating ourselves and causing disunity. Creating disunity. Instead of actually finding a way to build something together. We talk about intergenerational ministries. Intergenerational ministries are not just one generation doing the work, another one watching. That goes from older generations to younger generations, younger generations to older generations. Right. That means there has to be a cohesion between the two different generations. Let me pause here and give you a little bit of my story, which kind of why I think this stuff is so important. Pastor Bland mentioned that I've been pastoring Terrence, and I want to use stories Telling a lot. Today Pastor Bland mentioned I've been pastoring for five years. I pastor a 202 year old church, the oldest black church in the state of Rhode Island. We had. My predecessor died while he was still pastoring. And after really some crazy things going on in my church, the person before that, he left abruptly. He got up in church one week and said, I'm done next week and took like four to six weeks of vacation. The person before that, he quit and pastored someplace else in the same city. I mean it's just been. And so I came to my church. We had 27 people and an 87 year old musician. And so Terrence talked about last night how it was important to turn a battleship. Yeah, for me it was hot and fast. We had to sear this thing because if not we were going to die. And we had a lot of builders. We had I think four people under the age of 40 in my church five years ago. Since we've grown, God has blessed us tremendously. And I'm coming to you from that perspective. Innovative, very, very quick thinker because I had to do that because our church is on the verge of death. And maybe I'm talking to pastors across the screen here where for you, you're in a church very similar. It's a need of revitalization, it's in need of renewal. Maybe those of you looking at your churches today, you're saying, geez, if we don't do something now, we're going to lose out on the future. If we don't do something now, we're going to lose. And that's what I'm here for. I'm here to hopefully unearth some creativity. I believe that we are the picture of God's infinite possibility and imagination. We are the picture of God's infinite possibility and imagination. And so these generational markers become an opportunity for us to. To engage in. Us engage in. What is keeping me to only want to be around people my age? What is keeping me to only want to talk to other people at different ages? And how can we create intergenerational ministries together and how technology helps. Alright, so let me go to the next. Let me give you some information and statistics on these different generations because I think they'll be very, very helpful. Like I said, if you guys have any questions, please feel free to ask them. I think we work better in dialogue. So let me give you some information on millennials and senior adults. Those of you who have the marketing PDF you downloaded, you can see this information there so some information I want to give you. Recent survey done about four years ago on black millennials and senior adults. They compared boomers and millennials, and here's what they found. I want you to see this. 61% of millennials said that religion is important. Well, 81% of senior adults said a religion is important. I want you to remember that 61% of millennials pray daily. 78% of senior adults pray daily. 38% of millennials attend service weekly or more. And 50% of senior adults attend service weekly or more. Now, that's important to this conversation. Here's why this is important to this conversation. Immediately. One of the things I've heard when I've taught this or one of the things I get when I, when I teach things like this is immediately, well, yes, the young folk ain't coming to church. They ain't doing nothing. I want you to see this. 61% of millennials pray daily and believe religion is important. 81% of senior adults and 78% of senior adults pray daily and believe religion is important. There's a gap there. And instead of us getting frustrated about who isn't. Ezekiel, Bible says God was talking to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 22, and he said, ezekiel, I'm looking for someone to stand in the gap. May we be the gap fillers. This is a mission time. May we be the gap fillers. May we utilize our creativity not to talk about who is. I believe we've gotten too comfortable criticizing those who don't instead of celebrating those who do. Right. 61% of millennials pray. I believe religious important. Pray daily. 81% of senior adults believe religion is important. Pray daily. There's a gap there. Let's fill that gap. Preachers and leaders, let's fill the gap between millennials and senior adults. If we talk about Gen Z, I want you guys to hear this. I'm going to get into the how of this in a second. So the comparison then, if we go to go from senior adults to millennials, the comparison between life goals between Gen Z and millennials. Here's what I want you to hear this. Number one, the number one thing that both Generation Z and millennials want to do. I really want everyone to write this down. Hold this as you talk about the paradigms of the church. Number one, the number one thing they want to do, 66% of Gen Z and 59% of millennials want to finish their education. Number two, they want to start a career. And number three, they want to become financially independent. I really want you to grab these for every pastor, every leader. Gen Z Millennials want to finish a career, finish education, start a career, and become financially independent. One of the bottom four things that Gen Z or Millennials are concerned about is becoming mature spiritually. Only 16% of Gen Z want to become mature spiritually, and only 21% of millennials will become mature spiritually, according to Barna research. Now, the reason that's so important to me that I really want you to grab a hold of here today is that becomes an opportunity for us as churches. I really thank you so much. I really want you to consider. I'm going to share my screen here so you guys can see this. Here we go. Alright. So I really want us to consider as churches. I really want you to see these statistics here today. 66% of Gen Z want to finish education, 59% of millennials want to finish education. 66% of Gen Z Want to start a career. 52% of millennials want to start a career. 65% of Gen Z want to become financially independent. 51% of millennials become financially dependent. Lowest one of the bottom four things on the totem pole was to become mature spiritually. It's not a bad thing. It's an opportunity for us as churches. I want you to consider this because I know I'm going to get into tech stuff. I don't want you to miss on this. Where are you doing those top three things in your church so people can see Jesus in the three things they care about? Right. Are we really, really emphasizing finishing education? Are we emphasizing not just job fairs, but career fairs? Right. And are we really emphasizing becoming financially independent? I'm going to tell you this. I have a girlfriend that is not going to leave me alone. Her name is Sallie Mae. I hate her so much. She calls me every month. And I can't stand Sallie Mae because these student loans are going to kill me. Right? If someone, if my church could teach me to become financially independent, oh, my God, how it would change my life. And I'm not the only one, because it shows us here, statistically speaking, y', all, that that's 65% of Gen Z millennials. This is so important because it speaks to. I want you to know what you're already doing in your churches is absolutely amazing. But I want you to get some opportunities. We have to continue to grow and in our churches as well. All right? If you have any questions, please make sure you comment them. I'm here for you. Let me give you some other data on these generations so we can understand what we're talking about. Then I want to unpack the data. All right. I hope I'm not boring you. I really hope I'm not boring you, but I love this stuff. All right, so let me give you some notes on Generation Z. I'm gonna give you some notes on millennials. Black Gen Z 17% will be outnumbered by Latinx Gen Z by 21%. This is, hear me, the first time in history that will this that black people are not the number two largest group of people in the country. Right? This will be the most diverse generation we've ever had in history. We talk about multiculturalism and talk about post racialism. This is going to happen in black Gen Z. Number two, hear these statements. I mean if you're writing stuff down, hear me, and I want to unpack this in Gen Z. Hear me as I'm about to say this, only 9% of generation zone are engaged Christians. 9%. That means they're attending church reading their Bible at least once a week. I just put it on generation. You can't see this reading the Bibles once a week. Only 9% of Gen Z are engaged Christians. 33% of Generation Z are churched Christians, meaning they attend church once a month. That's it. So that's 42% of Generation Z attends church once a month or is engaged. Now Here, this statistic, 34% of Generation Z have no affiliation to a church they attend occasionally. That's about once to two times a year. And 16% of Gen Z are completely unchurched. Right? Their strongest priorities are their education and hobbies. You guys saw that as well. 37% of Gen Z identify gender as strong to their sense of self. And 43% regard professional and educational identity as important to their sense of self. We gotta really consider our paradigms in church. The second thing, I want to give you some notes on millennials. I'm a millennial. I'm 32 years old. I'm a proud millennial. Me and our Birkenstocks. And some coffee. I'm a proud millennial. Alright, so what are millennials? We number a little over 77 million. We make up 1/4 of the US population. More than 85% of millennials own smartphones. Right? We touch these stupid little like devil devices. We touch these things over 45. And I think the recent statistic was over 80 times a day. Right? 87% of online adults in the US between 18 to 29 use Facebook. 53% of millennials are on Instagram, 37% of millennials are on Twitter and 34% of millennials are on Pinterest. And hear this as we talk about growing our churches and greeting and all that. Millennials are seven times more likely to give their personal information to a trusted brand than any other brand. If you're looking to grow your church, do people trust you to do well with their information? They are seven times more likely to give their personal information to a trusted brand than any other brand. Right. What does this mean? That I want to give you the statistic and I want to give you the statistic on millennials and people in church. I want you to see this on your screen today. This recently came out in George Barnard's research Trends in the Black Church. I want you to see these things. I want to unpack these two things really quickly. Black church attendance. So 5% of people who attend black churches are builders. Look at the numbers with these next two generations. 33% of your churches are boomers. 32% of our black churches are Gen X. 22% of people who attend our churches are millennials. Really want you to see this. Under the age of 32, we have 30% of our membership is on the age of gen Z is well, 8%. Right. So we can't say that millennials aren't in church, they're just not engaged. We can't say Gen Z is not in church, they're not engaged. I want you to see a couple things. You guys look at this statistic. You can please take a picture of it. Look at the Barna trends on black church. But I really hope this is helping you all today. The number one thing that all generations want is leadership of the pastor. So I want to say this to pastors, pastors, people follow a pastor before they join a church. They follow a pastor before they join a church. Pastor, your leadership is so unbelievably important. What you say goes, develops culture and drives a congregation. If you look at every single generation, no lower than three, every single generation wants the leadership of pastor. The other thing I want you to recognize, we see music style and style of preaching. You can see those are big for Gen X and Gen Z and millennials. I want you to make sure that you are authentic to yourself. Because we can talk about all the marketing in the world, but if y' all are not doing what God has called you to do, we'll just fail in the process. Right? Please take a picture of this. Please be sure to engage with that. I think that will prayerfully help some of you as well. All right, let's talk generations as well. So what do people want to hear? The most recent one that came out. Please take a picture of this as well. The most recent survey that came out. What do generations want to be with you? Top five things generations want to hear. Number one, Bible talk. No, thank you. They want spiritual guidance. Number three, engaging in local poverty issues. Number four, fellowship. Number five, Got to go to James, chapter one. Right. Somebody's mic is on. Care for the elderly and widows. You can see after that, racial justice, wisdom for life, teaching emotional mental health, providing pastoral care. That's what the folk want to hear, right? That's what people are craving for. And you can see interwoven in there what pastors desire. Number one, pastors want to teach the Bible, racial justice, spiritual guidance, wisdom and pastoral care. That's what people want to hear when we talk about generations. All right, so I want to give you this quote. So what do we do with all of this data? What do we do with all this stuff? I want to go to Ezekiel 22. I sought for those among them who repaired the wall and sand the breach before me on the land so that I would not destroy it. Ezekiel 22. But I found no one. Are you going to be the one that stands in the gap? We're talking gaps. I'm not talking about. Find the millennials who don't go to church. Who are the folk in your congregation? Who are the talented people in your church? Who are the gifted people who show up? Who sits in the back of the church with their kids? And we need to engage them. The same thing with older individuals as well. 32% of our churches are Gen Xers. They have the highest earning potential, like besides boomers right now. They're the ones growing in their, in their resources. Gen Z is making money. I mean, they are, they are making money. They have and they are the. They are. Now as of last year, Gen Z's graduating from college. So we gotta really begin to see, man, how can we begin to grow with our generation Z as well. I want to give you Jeremiah 6 and 16. The Lord says, stand at the crossroads. Look and ask for the ancient paths. With a good way lies. Walk in it and find rest for your souls. What's the ancient paths According to Jeremiah, according to our gospel. That's the gospel. I want to tell you this. Jesus gave us the greatest marketing plan and it was very simple. Jesus said, go therefore reach to teach, teach to keep and keep, teaching others to do the same. Thing. That's all Jesus told us to do. Reach to teach, teach to keep, and teach them how to do the same thing over and over. We have to teach the gospel. There's nothing I can give you tonight on marketing. Nothing I can give you statistically that's going to change the fact that if we are not reaching the masses with the Lord Jesus Christ, everything's going to fall apart. Right? Benjamin May said this. Whatever you do, strive to do it so well that no man, living or dead, can do better. Let's. What does this mean? Three things I want you to consider and then I'll get to social media. Three things. Number one, if I did a survey for my doctorate program and this is what I found in my survey when I surveyed people in terms of what is it they're looking for when they go to church, Right. Number one, I can see myself there. Can people see themselves becoming a part of your church? Right. Whether that's worship, whether that's children, whether that's small groups, whether that's outreach, do people see that there's a place for them to actually be a part of your congregation? Is there a place for them to feel known, to be seen, to be? I love that with the story of Hagar and Sarah, when Hagar flees away because Sarah and Abram push her away, she goes and she prays. And that's the place where God sees me. Is your church a place where people know they are seen in a world that is beating me down, in a world where I'm screaming, my life matters. And constantly it seems like my life doesn't matter. Do I matter when I show up in this church? Does my gift matter? Does my body matter? Am I being objectified? Who am I? Can I see myself in your church? Number two, I can get a cup of coffee with the pastor. Pastors, I want to tell you this. What I've. What I'm learning. I've only been at this thing for five years. My preacher pose does not save souls. I'm going to just say it. My preacher pose, like this or like this. I don't know how y' all do it. I did the, I did the laughing pose, right? It doesn't say so. My preacher's poses work because people. I'm learning like people want to know you because people don't. They're not joining an institution. They're following the leader. Pastors, I want to ask you this question. What makes you you, right? What makes you you? If you preach on family, are there pictures of you being a Family person that are not staged pastor. If you preach on serving, are there pictures of you serving that are not staged? Pictures. Right. If you're serious about preaching, are there pictures of you preaching in all different types of ways? Whether that's your dress, the location, are you pastor? And then not just that, but then the main thing that people said was, I can get a cup of coffee with the pastor. Here's what that means. That means I'm willing to leave my pulpit in my office, go into the community with you, sit across a table, and have a conversation with you in public where you're talking loud enough that somebody else can hear you, and you're willing to engage holistically for an hour. Can people in your church get a cup of coffee? And are you showing that whether that's a cup of tea, Those of y' all who ain't as saved as. As some other folk are, maybe you're not safe. Not me, Other folk. Because I can't say I'm all that safe. Can you get a glass of wine with a pass? I don't know. Whatever it is, I want you to think about. Can I get a cup of coffee with this pastor? Do I want to get a cup of coffee with this pastor? Are there too many layers? There need to be layers to access, but are there too many layers to access to get a cup of coffee with the pastor? Right. If there are like 20 rows of ridiculousness to get to you, you're wondering how people aren't sticking around, they're following you. And if they can't get, they can't know what the fo. And we can't say, we need to smell the sheep, and the sheep can't get to us. Can I get a cup of coffee with you? And thirdly, is there a place I can add something? Millennials and Gen Z are the biggest groups where we're looking to give. We want social good, we want social growth. But if all I see is screaming and hollering and singing and crying on Sunday and there's no social good and no place here, me, where I can add something. Right? You see so many people in this generation that have college degrees and are looking for a place to use it, why can our churches be the place? We're not just engaging in our emotions, we're engaging in our intellect as well. Right? So that's the three things I want you to think about. Talk, listen, and repeat. I'll throw this in for free. It also means we've got to consider our hires going forward. We can't be hiring the same old positions. We got to look at our hires going forward. And that brings us to social media. Alright, so social media, we get to this, I'm gonna spend the last 20 minutes on social media. And I told you guys before, we talked about vision. Now I want to talk about social media. I want to give you five myths of social media that I hear all the time when I talk about social media. And they're absolutely crazy. But the number one thing, the number one myth that I hear here is that if I use social media, it'll get young people to my church, and it won't. Here's what I mean by that ministry. Jesus gets people to your church. At the end of the day, the Lord Jesus Christ, the preaching of the gospel, the teaching of the gospel, sound community gets people to your church. Social media becomes an opportunity and a place for you to share the story of how you practice being Jesus followers. But if you're not practicing being Jesus followers and you're expecting to grow your church. Jesus literally told us how to grow churches. I told you before, at Matthew 28, Jesus told us how to grow. Social media ain't gonna grow a dysfunctional church. Social media, if y' all are mean, like, if y' all ever go to a church and they got them smiling pictures on Facebook, but you show up and them ushers be sucking on lemons, right? I mean, they just mean, right? Social media is not gonna get people past your mean usher. Fix the culture, right? And so number two, older. The number two myth I get on social media, Number two is older members are not on social media. Let me give you something. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook and Instagram, boomers. You know why? The fastest growing demographic? Because my generation's having grandbabies. That's what it is. We're having babies and grandma wants to see them and grandpa wants to see them. Churches, your older members are on Facebook. They just don't tell you because they don't want you to find them and they don't want you to see them drinking wine, right? So they're on. They're on Facebook. So how can you engage your boomers, your 65 plus, your 74, 76 plus who were on Facebook, number three. The number three myth I get about millennials is that in order to reach millennials in my community, I just need to record some funny videos and be on social media. Nope. Here's the myth I want you to get here. The way to reach millennials and gen zers in your community is the gospel and then having a good webpage. Let me pause here and talk about webpages really quick. And please get in the comments, y'. All. I really want to make sure I'm personal with this. Let me give you some stuff on webpages for pastors and churches. Your webpage is not for your members. Your webpage is for your guests. Right. Your webpage is the first stop that people have when they come to your church. You ever go to Target? Some of you all go to Target? Some of y'? All? Yeah. Okay. Some of y' all boozy. So y' all go to, like, Whole Foods. I go to Target, Right? So when I go to Target, here's the thing I do when I go to Target, I look up. Before I go to Target, how much are strawberries? I don't go to Target's website to look at their mission statement, who the president is, who the owner is, who. Who's the manager of my local Target shop. I want to know one thing. What time do y' all open and where are the strawberries at? That's all I want to know. For some reason, when it comes to church websites, we got to get there. And it's the preacher pose, it's the choir pose. It's everything. Everything we believe. How big the building is, what our building fund is, how much money to give, and then it takes 20 scrolls and 10 pages to get to what time is worship? Right. What's your address and what's your email address? If you are living into the vision that God gave you, people are going to figure out who the pastor is. People going to figure out what you stand for, because you're going to constantly communicate that we are a Jesus following church. If you're a Jesus following church. So I really want you to realize your website is for your guests. Your Facebook is for your members. Right? Your Instagram is now moving from your members to your guests. The number one group on Instagram, Millennials. If you're looking to reach millennials and you're not on Instagram, you're not going to reach them because the boomers are on Facebook. So we left Facebook because I don't want. I don't want to show my grandmama what I'm doing on Facebook, but I do want to show my colleagues on Instagram. And the number one group, the number one site for Gen Z, TikTok. I mean, they're on TikTok and they're moving away. They're on Snapchat. They're kind of still on Snapchat. But Snapchat kind of nasty so they're kind of getting. But your website's for that, right? So I can get into this later if you want to but I really want you to see your make your website. So I'll give you this from websites. Let's be listening to websites. I can talk about this all day, four clicks at maximum. Before people make sure you get their information, make sure there's a chat feature on your website, right? Make sure that giving has to be right at the top. The number one thing people want to see, what time is worship, where are you located and how can I contact the church if that's not easily accessible on your website. Your website is wasting the $25 a month you're paying and then the $3,000 a year you're paying in hosting. The third, the fourth thing I know I got a rush fourth thing here. If we get young people to do the socials will be. Okay, let me give you a story. So I told you about my church. We're 202 years old. My social media manager is 32. One of my photographers is in her 60s and I want to tell you where the story comes from. We I immediately when I got to my church, my church I thought okay, I'm, I was 27 at the time and I'm going to get all these young folk to do our social media and they did for like two weeks because they wanted to be leaders, they wanted to be a part of the church, they just want to do social media. But then I had this like 60 year old photographer who just, who just wanted to get on the floor and so we have outdoor services y' all and she's on the floor taking pictures, she's getting under seats, she's getting pictures of the babies because her ministry is photography. I have a 30 year old Deacon at my church who is one of the wisest people and here's the thing, I think about Acts 6, I think about the wise people who care for the widows, right? We have some Stevens in our churches who are 30 who we're trying to get to do social media, who need to be trustees, right? Who are great financial managers and we have some 60 year old trustees who need to be off the trustee board and need to be on social media, right? We have some 30 year old amazing ushers who need to be on, I don't know who need to be on the social ministry role. We have some folk who went that weren't called that need to be on. They need to be on the Usher board. Right. I really want us to. One of the things we can change here about this in terms of getting young people thinking that young folk are going to do it. I want us to see an Evil 11 playing field. Because when we put social media ministries aligned with the importance of music ministries, then we're not just looking for young people to do it. We're looking for the best people to do it. You need folk who proofread. I'm just going to be clear. If you can't proofread your emails, you can't put up Facebook statuses for the church. We can't be out there with spliced commas and misspelled words and, you know, come to church and spell ta. We can't be doing that. Right. We need excellence. That's why you need the best people. Google is paying folk hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to just man their socials. Right. And if we see it along with the music ministry, you don't let the woman or the man who can't sing do a solo. You just. You don't do it. You get the best singers. You don't let the mean person on the chief usher on the front door. You just don't let them do it. You don't let the person who can't preach get up on youth day. You just don't do it. That's fifth Sunday. I'm kidding. But you don't let the folk who can't preach get up on youth day. You get the best. The same has to go for our socials. The first thing guests see is your socials. We can't just get anybody to do it. It's not whosoever will, it's who will. And God has equipped our churches with the best people. The last thing I want to give here is leadership. Doesn't need to be involved. Pastors, I'm talking directly to you. You got to be involved. Your deacons to deacons. I'm talking to you all. You got to be involved. If the leadership of the church isn't bought in and it's just something we're just throwing to some other people, then the church won't be bought in. Pastor, you got to do it, man. This is. You got to do it, ma'. Am. Like this. We got to just do it. If an event is shared by the church and the pastor doesn't share it. So I want to give this rule that I have at my church that I got from my pastor, actually, if there's an event shared on the church, every staff member, every deacon, every leader must share it within 24 hours. Because if the deacons and leaders don't want to share it in their personal time, then why would a casual member care about the picnic? If pastor don't care about the picnic, why would a casual member care about Youth Day? If the leader of the youth ministry ain't sharing and getting hype about Youth Day, leadership must be involved. You don't spend all that money on a revival to not be shared. Right? So if you aren't involved, if you aren't involved, if you're not caring, don't feel comfortable saying, like, I'm not going to get on there. My church just knows what I mean. My church knows my heart. They do. But they want to see you share it. They do. They want to see you share it. Right? Don't expect people to care if we have to force you to care. All right? So I want you to think about your leadership. I want you to think about, think about your ministries and the work you're doing. So let me go through the concrete things about these social media sites. I really hope this is helping you all the day. Let me go through the concrete things about these social media sites and then I'll open it up for whatever else at the end of our time today. So I put at the bottom whether I think you need it or you don't need it. So the first thing is Facebook. Facebook is a site 9 million and growing, uploading videos, articles to connect people. People know. Active users range from teenagers to senior citizens. The pros of it, Facebook live, fan pages, business pages. You can make, make sure you monetize your Facebook Page. You can make some money off of this stuff. Everyone has Facebook. The con, everybody got Facebook. One of the things about artificial intelligence and Facebook is that it doesn't reach everybody. Your Facebook post on your church page reaches about 10% of how many people like your page. You've got to ensure that you have other people sharing it. And that's why monetization is so important. But you need Facebook because everybody has it, right? So that's where Facebook comes in. You want to get to more nitty gritty, like practical things in Facebook. We can talk about that if we have time. Second thing is Twitter. I have a real time information network. Users write 140 character messages. They're longer now to 250, I think, known as tweets. You just follow the conversation. The pros, it's rapid information. The cons, a lot of folk ain't really using it as much as they used to. The only reason Twitter is still alive is our former president and that rhetoric he had. And that's the reason Twitter actually came back six years ago is because of that whole presidential race. I suggest having a Twitter. If you don't, you're not gonna. It's not gonna do anything for you. If you do, it's not gonna do anything for you. Instagram. If your church doesn't have an Instagram, you're missing out. It's the largest group of millennials in the country. A real time picture network, one of the fastest growing networks. It's directly integrated into Facebook. You can comment and share images. They added video, similar to TikTok. You need. Your church needs Instagram. Your church needs Instagram. You use this. I want to tell you this on Facebook and Instagram. I'll just give you this. You need two to three posts a day, right? You can time them on hootsuite. You need two to three posts a day on Facebook and Instagram. And that's very simple. I want you to think about this. If you do this, I'm gonna get. I just want to help everybody. So, like, if you want to write these down, go ahead and write it down. Once a week, volunteer spotlight. Once a week. No, sorry. Twice a week, sermon posts. Two times a week, update on what's going on with the church, right? Just like what time we have in church, whatever that is. Another. Another part of the week. Whether it's just resharing, a sermon, a scripture, a funny thing. You need two engaging posts. Whether it's just like, what's your favorite color today? What are you having for lunch today, whatever that is, and then your announcement post, and that's your post for the week. You have enough data in your church to share it. The reason you want to have two to three posts a day is so that Facebook doesn't start to pulling down how many people see your stuff. So if you have 10,000 people on your Facebook page, 10% of them are going to see it organically. You want to get that up to like 30%. And then prayerfully, as you have some more popular stuff, it gets to more and more people. But you need to be consistent. You don't go viral without being consistent. One post is not going to go viral. A hundred posts, one of them will go viral. All right, same thing with Instagram. You can come Facebook business Suite. Those of you who are social media managers, Facebook business Suite, you now can post on multiple sites and at the same time you can post on multiple things at the same time. I mean it's really, really great stuff. But you need a Facebook and the Instagram. Third. The second set of social media sites I'm going to address state this is. Now let me tell you this, this is not all of them. These are just the ones that if we're going to do a starting point with this stuff, I think you start here. YouTube. Okay? YouTube is insanely popular right now. And the thing about YouTube that I think is absolutely amazing is that YouTube is a video sharing stream site that allows you to share original created content. It's great for ministry leaders to post any type of video content. If you're streaming stream to YouTube it is the most popular video page. And if you are a youth leader, I want to talk to youth leaders. I want to talk to pastors as well. Your children's ministry needs to be on YouTube kids. Remember I told you guys a long time ago about generation Alpha 0 to 9, they have phones in their, in their pockets from like 3 or 4 years old. I mean as much as we're sitting here like give the baby a tablet so they can get away from me, these kids are on their phones and YouTube Kids is giving them all this different type of content. The opportunity for us as a church is to get our Christian content on YouTube kids. Right? That's your, that's two minute Sunday school wrap ups. That's your youth ministry recording videos the same way we record church service. Your youth ministry recording funny videos. Your youth ministry recording puppet videos. Youth ministry recording things about Jesus. YouTube Kids is a mission field and if we're not infiltrating that then 9% of people who are coming to church from Gen Z will say the same for Generation Alpha and will lose their generations. I really want to see how we can utilize this stuff for them. TikTok short form video sharing site screams creativity supreme moneymaker largest opportunity for influencers. And I'll tell you this, Gen Zers are all over TikTok. The pros entertaining people's relationships. The cons. I wrote this just very bluntly. Sex is everywhere in that place and it can be a negative place. It's a great opportunity for all people, all generations and pastors. I think it's a great place too for you to show your creativity. Leaders is a great place to show your creativity. What are you wearing to church someday? What are we singing Sunday? What are we talking about? What is scripture saying to us? All things like that. I'll give you some other just things about this, just consider these things. In the transition of our digital area, social media transforms the building blocks of society. For example, you can literally talk to the President on Twitter, right? On Reddit you can take free classes from MIT and Harvard on your couch. Hear this. There's a 91% adoption rate of social media among Americans 18 to 34. 91% of 18, 34 year olds are going to eventually find some social media site to be on, right? The Internet user is spending six hours on social media alone per week. And that's just social media. That's not their phones on socials alone. At least at a minimum six hours a week. Social media usage. This sounds so bad, but it's so true. Has overtaken porn usage. Facebook is used to search for things more than Google is used to search for things. Hear me as I say this. Facebook is used to search for things more than Google is. And the second largest search engine is YouTube, right? Gotta be on there and your church can use it. I want you to think about this. I'm. Here's my. I'm gonna give you like two minutes of like creative things. Think about if you have construction folk in your church or people who are building things in your church and you have, and you have people in your church who are either buying homes or building homes. What if you got the men in your church to take videos about? Like this is how you build things in your house. This is how you build a desk in your house. This is how we fix the. Like. I want you to think about videos, DIY things to get you into different realms of social media to be a disciple making place. How great would it be to fortify the men's group in your church by doing DIY construction videos? How great would it be to fortify the women's group in your church? If you guys are doing cooking videos or classes or DIY videos, How to buy a home, how to do financial, how to do. How to be sound financially. If we see that that's the number one things for people, then what if the church overtook it with the gifts we have in the church? Don't overthink social media. I really want you to hear me as I say this. Don't overthink social media. Just don't overthink it. Who are you all show it. Just who are you all show it. And I think that'd be a great place. Last thing I put into here was LinkedIn. Know your congregation. LinkedIn is great. If you have a bunch of professionals in your church and you want to use that opportunity to endorse one another, to share what you all do, go ahead and use it. The last thing I'll talk about in terms of apps and things like that I have on here, church apps online giving, church texts. These are essential now with COVID and so church apps and church websites, if you don't have one, you need one. Giving. The thing I'll say about giving as a suggestion, every single form of giving possible makes you have it. Like whether it's zelle, Cash App, PayPal. I don't even remember all these different things like, but I've seen churches that have like sheets of like 20 Ways to Give. You want every single way you possibly can give. And I would even check with your bank because your bank might have an easy way to do it where they don't take as much money. That's a trick we found out your bank might have a way you could get directly to people can give directly to your bank online, you don't take as much money as PayPal, Zelle and cash apps. That's something that I learned from a colleague of mine who actually helped us save like 5% a month. And then church text messages, look at different ways to search text. If you don't have it, if you have it, great. If you don't, I think this opportunity to do it. All in all, I want to give you the scripture. Every movement had someone had people who stood and became catalysts for change. Is it a first chronicle to the writers that are from the tribe of issachar? There were 200 leaders, excuse my mistype there of the tribe with their relatives. All these men understood the signs of the times and knew the best course for Israel to take. Every communication shift in history has religious leaders at the forefront. I think we can be those. Let me finish my story and then I will open it up. So I told you guys before, I pastor a 202 year old church in Rhode Island. I came here at 27 and in terms of like, I love barbecuing. And so there's some things that are low and slow. Like you don't cook a brisket, you don't sear it, you cook that thing for like 12 hours. And then there's some things you do hot and fast. Frozen hamburgers are hot and fast, right. And so my church was on the verge of death. We had 27 people attending a budget that was dwindling. And God told me to go here. And so we came here and over the course of five years we went from 27 to over 300. Our budget expanded like crazy. We're debt free, free and just amazing things that God did. Our largest demographic now is 25 to 34, whereas before our largest demographic was 76 plus. God has done amazing things to our congregation and one of the things we had to do was sit back and have more congregational open meetings about who the heck are we and what gifts do we have and how can all of us participate in this. And that meant 30 year old deacons, right? That meant younger people seeing themselves as leaders in the church and not just the praise team, right? That meant younger people having decision making power. That meant doing some risk. So we have this thing called Popeyes and a pastor where I literally go by Popeyes chicken sandwiches and talk about everything from gender to sex to money to everything and take risks. And in the midst of the process we're able to reach some 20 year olds who now are 24 with full time jobs. At 20 they were just college students, but at 24 they're now they're full time jobs folk that are tithing to our church because we were there with them when they were 20. I really want you to think about opportunities, opportunities you have in your church to be yourselves. That's really what I want to emphasize today. There's a lot of things you can do with social media and marketing. There's ways you can buy things. I don't mind going into detail. There's ways you can curate your website. Like our website for our church is artificial intelligence. So it updates based upon what people search for when they look for our church. So when last year for example, when BLM was huge, the things about our church that were about race and racial justice came to the front of our page where things that weren't went to the back of the page. People googled our church. We didn't have to update it. Our AI site automatically curated itself so that everything came to the front. So now people are looking for how to transition into work and what's the workplace look like and all of that. So now on the front of our page are our sermons that talk about workplace politics and workplace discipleship, right? All those different types of things come into the play and forefront. So I want to, that was my goal today. I really wanted to take some time to dive into ways that God can use the church, ways that God can use you and way that God can use your gifting to really be shape shifting and really be powerful. You are gifted beyond belief. Church gifted beyond belief. Pastors. My love for the local church calls me to critique it at times. We are too gifted to leave things in the back. We are too gifted to leave people in the back. And I think there's so much. The kingdom of God is at hand. Let us seize it and take it by force. So I want to. I will send. Yeah, I will email that NIF over to you. So I am. That's really the end of what I had for you guys today. I wanted to make sure, open the space up if there were questions or something you guys were curious about or something you wanted to talk further about. I have no problem doing so or answering anything you guys want and go from there. But I really hope that this was empowering and helpful for you all. And I will open the floor for questions or if not, I will turn it back over to the leaders. I want to say thank you so much to Pastor Glenn and my best friend, Terrence Chandler Harrison, for the opportunity to talk to you all. I pray this empowered you. There's a whole mission field of people who need Jesus. Let's go give it to him. God bless you guys.