Hybrid Ministry

By Nick ClasonBusiness Religion & Spirituality Christianity Technology Marketing

Hybrid Ministry episodes

March 29, 2023 Episode 038: The Fourth Step of the Church Social Media Framework: Instgram
What do we do about Instagram? The app that most milennials use and find themselves on, do we have a need for Instagram in the local church in 2023? Why was it put in behind Facebook in Nick's 6-Step Framework? How should we use the feed? Stories? Reels? And what is the optimized Content Strategy for churches in 2023?
Entire Show: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/038
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
FREE e-book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook
TIMECODES
00:00-01:55 Intro
01:55-06:25 The Instagram Usage Statistics of 2023
06:25-08:23 The Instagram Feed Grid for Churches in 2023
08:23-10:03 Instagram Stories in Churches in 2023
10:03-12:10 Instagram Reels for Churches in 2023
12:10-14:59 3 Things to do on Instagram in 2023
14:59-16:40 3 Things to avoid on Instagram in 2023
16:40-17:48 How to Utilize stories on Instagram in 2023
17:48-19:21 How to Utilize Instgram Reels in 2023
19:21-20:41 Instagram Content Strategy Idea for 2023
20:41-22:45 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always am your host, Nick Clason. Thrilled and excited to be with you. We are going to be continuing on through our six part church social media framework and this is actually the very final piece, um, of actual social networks. The next episode we're gonna talk website, text groups, email list, um, which is a little cheating cuz it's more than six, I get it. But that's what we're gonna look and chat, look at, and chat through next week. We are gonna round it out with Instagram today. Excited to be with you Before we dive in, a, uh, would love to encourage you to hop into your podcast app hitter rating hitter review. That would be an incredible resource and an incredible gift to us. We will be thrilled if that's something that you will be willing to do.
Nick Clason (00:56):
So please take time to do that. Also, we are on YouTube, so hit the show notes for a link to YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube, we're a podcast. So hit the link in the show notes to check out our podcast episode, um, website hybridministry.xyz. And for each and every single episode, we provide for you 100% free of charge transcripts. So if you're on a run and you're hearing something and you're thinking, man, that was really good, I want to go back and look at that a little bit more. I want to extrapolate that out. You can head to the link in the show notes. We will link this exact episode to the link in the show notes hybridministry.xyz/038. Once again, thrilled to be with you. Glad that you guys are here. And without any further ado, let's dive in and start talking about Instagram as a part of your church's six step social media framework.
Nick Clason (01:56):
All right, let's talk Instagram. So, um, again, if you, uh, did not watch last episode, uh, or listened to it, I would definitely recommend going back and doing it because in our order we want YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. And the primary reason for putting Facebook ahead of Instagram was, I personally have found it easier to start with Facebook link my two accounts, Instagram and Facebook. Um, on the Facebook side you can try and start linking 'em through Instagram side, but you're eventually gonna end up over needing to do your meta business suite. And that that's just the easiest place to start is Facebook. And so if you're starting from scratch, start with Facebook, but don't abandon or neglect Instagram because Instagram is actually an incredibly used and um, popular resource among Americans. So, uh, just a couple quick Instagram hit quick hitter stats before we dive into actual strategy around it.
Nick Clason (02:52):
In the US there are 127.2 million Instagram users, uh, in the United States in the year 2023 alone. Uh, Snapchat, conversely is at 89.5 and TikTok is at 89.7 according to stati statistica.com. I'll link some of the stuff in the show notes. Some other interesting, um, stats and statistics is the age breakdown is that male users are at 51.8%. Female users are at 48.2%. Um, the age breakdown on Instagram, 13 to 17 year olds are 8% of the usage. Um, where 18 to 24 year olds are at 30.8% of the usage. 25 to 34 year olds are at 30.3% of the usage. 35 to 44 year olds are at 15.7% of the usage. 45 to 55 year olds, 8.4% of the usage, 55 to 64 year olds, 4.3% of the usage and then 65 plus are at 2.6% of the usage of people on Instagram. Now that being said, you can see that the data skews young, but there's a giant, a giant spike between the ages of 18 and 35.
Nick Clason (04:16):
Again, my guess is as a church, uh, we did this, this thing with the unstuck organization a couple years ago with the church I worked at and uh, they said it well. They're like, you obviously wanna reach all people and be all things to all people. However, you probably also want to kind of hone in on a demographic and you don't wanna pick one over the other. But once you hone in on one, what you do notice a lot of times is that the other demographics are attracted to just you having some sort of vision. And so my guess is that the demographic, the target demographic that you're attempting to reach if you're a younger church or if you're going to at least try and reach the next generation with kids and students, is that you're gonna wanna squarely reach between 18 and 34. Like that is probably your prime shot and you're probably weak on that 18 to 25, 18 to 30 pre-k um, spot.
Nick Clason (05:12):
And the reason I know that is cuz just about every church in America is actually kinda weak at that. However, uh, I think that that is still squarely a good demographic to be, um, targeting and and trying to to go after. All right, some other quick Instagram stats, Instagram story, daily active users are at 50, uh, 500 million plus. Uh, the number of businesses on Instagram are 200 million plus. And um, there are 0.59% of Instagram accounts with over 1 million followers. So Instagram, as you can tell, are is still incredibly, um, active. It's still incredibly popular while is very much on the rise, um, and has been challenging Some of these legacy platforms like Instagram, like Facebook, Instagram still has a place, in fact, just like anecdotally, like I prefer TikTok, but my wife, she watches short form videos, but she chooses to do so in the Instagram reels section of Instagram.
Nick Clason (06:16):
Which leads us to our next section. Let's talk about some of the different features, um, that you can find and can use on Instagram. All right, the first feature is the Instagram feed. Now this is probably the thing that if you are just logging into Instagram for the first time, the first thing you're gonna see is the spot where people post pictures and you scroll. Instagram made the scroll endlessly. Like that was them. They made that, uh, popular and then they made all their social media sort of adapt to that. In fact, I remember the update when Facebook went from side swiping photos to you could click on a photo and you could swipe this way. They did that in response to Instagram. I don't know if that was before or after they acquired it, but nonetheless, like Instagram has been very popular and has made a lot of important headway in the world, um, of social media.
Nick Clason (07:07):
And so the feed is probably your legacy platform. It's also your social graph spot where you are following the people that you want to follow. Um, and so you get on there, you'd scroll and you'd see, oh, so and so just, you know, they just went on a trip to Brazil. I'm gonna check that out. I'm gonna like it, I'm gonna comment, I'm gonna share. That's what happens on the Instagram feed. I do also think that the Instagram feed was one of the first places where the highly curated look became popularized. And I do think that some of the platforms like TikTok, like Snapchat and even like be real, have um, swung the pendulum back is because they are pushing back against some of the highly curated social media, uh, places. And so they're looking to find a place where you can actually come in, be yourself, be real, show the unfiltered version of yourself.
Nick Clason (08:00):
And so the whole perfectly edited, perfectly airbrushed photos and curated. I think that that is starting to wane, especially with the newer and younger generation. And so while Instagram and its feed definitely has a position in this six step social media framework, I do think that it is probably one that has grown the most tired and people have grown the most weary of over the years. Let's talk about Instagram's stories. If you log into your Instagram app on your phone across the top, they're little circle icons of different accounts. Uh, and if you like navigate onto an account and there's like a little yellow, not yellow purple or like pink the Instagram gradient, uh, ring around it that indicates that they have a story. Well, when you log into your app immediately right across the top, if there are icons up there, almost inevitably that means that those people have used their stories.
Nick Clason (08:53):
So that was made popular by the social media Snapchat. It was an idea that you could post something that would last for 24 hours. And so a lot of video, a lot more unfiltered, a lot less curated, a lot more behind the scenes, a lot more just real life. And Instagram stories was an amazing platform and one that um, I think a lot of churches took advantage of and honestly can still take advantage of, like I think for example, really great strategies to just hand that over to someone on your staff once a week and have them do a day in the life. A takeover, a takeover Tuesday. Um, we do it at like on Wednesdays cuz that's our ministry night at our church. And so, um, someone is in charge of taking over the Instagram account either, you know, on a Wednesday all day during the day, uh, to lead into, you know, Wednesday night coming up for, for students or whatever.
Nick Clason (09:44):
So I think Instagram stories have grown in popularity. Uh, statistic I have here says that 86%, approximately 86% of Instagram users access their stories on a daily basis. So it's still a very popular feature and still one that's very much widely being used by Instagram users today. Let's talk about Instagram reels. The reason most of us are here, especially in 2022 with short form video content, Instagram also stole another feature. Just like they stole stories from Snapchat. They stole reels in that idea from the popular app. TikTok Instagram introduced reels into their platform in August of 2020. Um, it's the same basic premise of what you get on TikTok. Scroll endlessly use trending sounds, do silly dances. One thing that's interesting to note is about a year ago or six months ago or so, Instagram recently converted every single video on their platform from whatever it was over to a reel.
Nick Clason (10:43):
So for example, I don't know if you remember, there was this platform called I G T V Instagram tv. They're trying to kind of go after YouTube and the long form video pieces, however they went for vertical where YouTube was still focusing on horizontal. Every one of my and i I went in on I G T V when it was new. I used it a lot personally. I used it a lot in my ministry. They've converted all of those I gtv videos over to Rio so they don't sit under an I G T V tab anymore or over an I G T V app, which was its own thing. Which not sure why Instagram felt the need to add a whole nother app that you could still access through their normal app. Nonetheless, I digress. But now you can still find old legacy I G T V videos sitting under your Instagram reels tab.
Nick Clason (11:28):
That's where all of those have been converted and now that's where they sit. So, uh, Instagram reels, uh, has become very popularized and um, Instagram has gone in to say that we are, we are about reels now. This is our thing. They have recently come out with a little algorithm shift in saying that they do want to push, um, photos, again, not just reels. And so, uh, we'll dive into the Instagram algorithm change in a future episode, but for now, still know that in 2023 I think your strategy should be short form video content. And that does definitely and very much include Instagram real. Let's talk best and worst content strategies for Instagram. Here are three dues on Instagram. Do number one, do post pictures of people in your church congregation. A couple years ago, Brady Sheer went out and did this study. Uh, it was just an anecdotal study, but he took a, uh, cell phone and then you hired a, a photographer and they took pictures in the same day.
Nick Clason (12:34):
And, uh, the people could not really tell the difference between the cell phone photos and the actual like professionally graded photos. The point in the premise of that is that in your pocket you have the power of an incredibly strong camera that you can use to take photos of people in your church congregation. So take on a Sunday morning, on a Wednesday night, whenever your primary meeting time is, take those photos, post them and use them on the feed. That can almost be your entire content strategy for on the feed. Now there is a probably decent chance that you already have some sort of rhythm with a photographer, whether it be volunteers or whatever, who are regularly taking photos for you. Keep that going. I still think that pictures of people with smiling faces posted on your social media is still a relevant, meaningful, and purposeful content strategy in 2023.
Nick Clason (13:28):
Content strategy number two is repost your reels. So what I mean by that is, like we said, Instagram is all in on short form video content here in 2023. When you go to post a reel, you have an option to either add it to the feed or take or hide it from your profile grid most often, cuz I, you've heard me say in past episodes perhaps that I post three uh, TikTok slash reels a day. So I don't post all three of those to the feed, but I do choose one that I want to post to the feed. So for example, we will often have fun, silly, goofy content, um, but one of them is gonna be serious. And I often choose to post that one to the feed so that more of our church people are seeing it. So use the Instagram post to feed option as a way to supplement your Instagram strategy, especially on your Instagram feed.
Nick Clason (14:20):
Also use some funny content. We talked about this in the YouTube trends report, but essentially 63% of Gen Z followed a meme account in the last year. And, um, gen Z and and people on social media are looking for brands and people to repurpose and use funny meme based silly kind of content like that. So use that stuff. Use memes on in short form video, use static memes. Um, we do a meme Monday and I think that there's a market for that even if you're not youth ministry. So don't be afraid to be funny. Don't be afraid to lean in and try and create a laugh moment. Here's some things to avoid on Instagram. Avoid announcements and graphics. Okay? Those just simply don't perform very well and people do not get on social media to be announced at or have been told what's coming up next.
Nick Clason (15:14):
If all you're doing on your social media is announcing things and reminding people about events, change your strategy. There is a way to incorporate announcements but still use the medium of the day. So, for example, you can do trending meme sounds, dances, things like that, that are reals, that are tos. However you can do those that are funny about like the upcoming event. So for example, last summer or spring as we were leading into summer camp, there was a, a trending sound that I found that is something like, it smells like a public restroom in here. And I just created a thing with like a green screen background, like a cabin type vibe, right? And I said, P o v, which stands for point of view pov middle school boys cabin at camp. And then I posted it, right? That's a, that's a camp adjacent announcement.
Nick Clason (16:03):
It's different than just a graphic for hey Santa for summer camp, right? But, uh, it still gets to point across. So don't just post graphics and announcements. Also with whatever you do, avoid stock footage. You may now have photos of people send someone this week to take photos of people in your church and boom, you'll have photos of people. Please while you are getting things up and running on your website or your Instagram, avoid photos of people because it's disingenuine. It's not who your church is. It's not true representation of the people in your church. It is a paid version of the people in your church. So do not use stock footage, especially on the Instagram feed. What do we do about stories? I would still use stories. Um, and I used to be all in on a story strategy and try and posting something every single day.
Nick Clason (16:50):
Uh, you still can be, but with as many reels as I post now I can supplement kind of some of that content. We'll get that to that in a minute. Um, bond stories I would recommend using the just the Instagram stories editor. You can use things like the question sticker. You can use things like the poll sticker. The link sticker, which is an amazing resource to have. The emoji slider tool. Like how much do you like this? All the way up, all the way down countdowns. You can do takeovers, like I said. Uh, you can spam your stories during big events. Spam is just a turmoil, like you just overwhelm it and you have so many little dots across the top. Um, you can give it over to a friend, a volunteer, a student to, to post to, to make it feel like you are in the moment of the event.
Nick Clason (17:34):
You can also kind of create a little bit of FOMO with that. So I definitely recommend still using and utilizing your Instagram stories feature. It's a place where you can post content that doesn't have to go on your feet and kind of like live there forever. Finally, Instagram reels. You know that my preferred strategy personally is to post three Instagram reels a day. And when I say Instagram reels often I post it in TikTok first, then I copy the link, then I go to a browser that says download, um, download TikTok video without watermark, paste the link in there, download it, and then I go post it over to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube shorts. Yes, there's a lot of manual work and very recently, and we're gonna do a review on this here soon, I've come across a, um, posting tool for you. And so right now I'm trying a third party service and I don't like it very much.
Nick Clason (18:29):
And I'll tell you why in a minute. In a future episode, I'm gonna also try posting some stuff through the native apps, um, of TikTok of the Meta Business suite, uh, to see if that does anything for me. However, I'm just gonna be honest with you, I like posting in live time. Yeah, sometimes it's annoying cuz it, you know, I'm reminded I have to do it and it pops up at a very inconvenient time, but I still like that idea and I can edit things right on my phone that way. Otherwise I have to do all of my editing, a hundred percent of my editing in like, uh, computer software and, and save it to a hard drive somewhere to access it later. And, and that's sometimes a little bit inconvenient, but you should be leaning into Instagram real content. You can use it to supplement what goes on your feet.
Nick Clason (19:13):
You can use it to supplement what goes in your stories and I would definitely recommend, um, going all in on it. So just a quick reminder and recap. What I do and what I use on my personal Instagram at our church is we do a me Monday, which are photos on the feed. We do a Tuesday message recap from the previous Wednesday. Remember, we're a student ministry. That's a reel. I also post that to my feed Wednesday night. I do a either a carousel post of 10 photos of students or a highlight video, um, of that night and post that to the feed. If I don't post a video to the feed, it's cuz I posted photos, but I'm still posting the reel. Uh, Thursday we do a recap video of the message from the night before. And then on Friday I like to do, um, a photo dump of the Wednesday.
Nick Clason (20:00):
So that's, if I, if I don't do it on Wednesday, I'll save it for Friday and do a photo dump there on Friday. Then I'll inter intermix, uh, different, uh, story stuff, like mostly just real, uh, stuff, things, honestly, I go to reels, things that don't perform super well, and I repost 'em to my story so that people still see them. Uh, and then I'll do a takeover once a week. And that's primarily our Instagram strategy for now. So most of it's kind of built out and happening over in Instagram reels, a few things on feed to make sure that we're still showing up and stories, but the most, most of it's all kind of happening reels. And you, you look here, like we do, uh, a photo dump and a meme post. And that's basically it for like static photo posts. Hey, well once again, thanks for sticking around to the end of the episode.
Nick Clason (20:46):
Hey, to all of you on YouTube, hello to all of you listening and your earbuds on a run. So glad that you joined us. We are done with social media. We have one final, uh, area. We're gonna focus on website and, uh, text messaging and email and how do those all work together with social media. And then we're gonna put it all together. So join us in the next episode. So we have done, uh, YouTube, we have done TikTok, we've done Facebook, we've done Instagram. We will do those other platforms, website, social media, uh, website, texting and email. And then finally, part six, we're gonna put it all together and say, Hey, here is your church content, social media strategy for 2023. So glad you joined us. Hey, if you have not grabbed your e-book, how to create a TikTok from start to finish. As you heard in this episode, it, Instagram is still very much in on reels.
Nick Clason (21:37):
So if you need to create some reels, uh, you can do that and learn how to do that through the TikTok editor and by posting a TikTok and do it all on TikTok, download it. Boom, go over post it on a reel. So there you go. There's your ebook. Go check that out at our website, link in the description below. Subscribe wherever you're listening, subscribe maybe wherever you're watching. So good that you joined us, we would love it if you could drop a five star rating or review just to help us get the word out. We want more people to become aware of the incredible message of Jesus, how important it is to be leaning into the hybrid hybridization of your church. I'll just add some friends over last night from our, from the church I work at, they're all a little bit younger and every single one of 'em was like, yeah, we want more hybrid. We're all trying to think and lean into that direction. So, uh, it is the wave of the future, so don't shy away from it. Try to lean into it. Try something new this week and don't forget, and as always, stay.
23 min
March 23, 2023 Episode 037: The Third Step of the Church Social Media Framework: Facebook
Does Gen Z even care about Facebook? The assumption of course is no, but is that accurate? And why does Nick recommend facebook ahead of Instagram? Finally, what are the 3 ways in which you should be utilizing facebook as a church in 2023?
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/037
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
FREE EBOOK: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook
SHOWNOTES
How to Run a Successful Ad: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/009
TIMECODES
00:00-03:35 Introduction
03:35-09:00 Facebook.. Does Gen Z care about Facebook?
09:00-15:11 The History of Facebook and what it is today
15:11-18:36 Reason 1) Create a Facebook Page
18:36-20:59 Reason 2) Link your Facebook & Instagram Accounts
20:59-24:00 Reason 3) Create a Facebook Group
24:00-25:55 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:02):
Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode in addition of the hybrid ministry show. My name is Nick Clason. I, as always, I'm your host, excited to be with you. And in this episode, we are going to be diving into our third platform that you should be focused on as a church in building out the six step framework for social media or churches in 2023. Now, this one, um, is gonna be a little bit of a zig or a zag because my guess is if you, uh, know me, you know my story. I am a youth pastor and so I'm gonna be, I do this a lot from the realm of and um, position of being a youth pastor. And so this one you're gonna be like, wait a minute, what is he recommending before? What other one? Cuz you know, so far we've done YouTube and we've also done TikTok.
Nick Clason (01:01):
And so probably your assumption would be that we would be moving on to Instagram and if I were to rank platforms in the order of importance, it would go TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and then Facebook. But today we are going to talk about Facebook and there's a few reasons why and we're gonna get to that. So make sure you stick around to the very end of the episode cuz we're gonna talk about the three primary reasons why you should start with Facebook as opposed to Instagram, especially if you're starting from scratch. And those three reasons are also relevant and prevalent. If you are already on both of those platforms. There's just gonna be some things and, uh, some technical, uh, linking things that you're gonna need and want to do that are gonna help you optimize your performance on both of those platforms, Instagram and Facebook.
Nick Clason (01:49):
All right, um, real quick, let's talk about, uh, before we dive in, you know, too much. I want to remind you, you can head over to our YouTube channel. If you are listening on a podcast, hit the link in the show notes and give us a subscribe there that would help us out tremendously. If you're discovering us and watching us on YouTube, hit the link in the show notes over to hybrid ministry.xyz. That is the homepage and home base for our podcast. And every single episode, including this one, which will have a link to the show notes, has a fully flushed out transcript. So you can go and you can grab the fully flushed out transcript for this episode and any of our past episodes as well as that's where you can get the free download called, have I already Ruined my Church's TikTok account?
Nick Clason (02:32):
And that is your complete guide to handing your phone to someone and say, Hey, post me a TikTok. And if they have no idea what they're doing, that will walk them through step by step. All of that is available, um, in our show notes. That's also available on our website. So give us a subscribe, give us a rating or a review, we would love it. And follow us in all the places. I personally, uh, am on TikTok and I am on YouTube and I'm trying to grow on both of those places to just the word out to help more people like you, church content communicators, church social media managers, youth pastors, part-time college students who got handed a phone from your pastor and said, Hey, we should probably be on social media. Yes, I am here to help you. And that is my entire goal is to help show you one of the ways that you can approach this in your church, in your life and in your ministry.
Nick Clason (03:24):
So without any further ado, let's hop into this episode of Facebook, the platform that Gen Z doesn't care about or do this. All right, so Facebook, does Gen Z care about Facebook? So there was an article back in 2015, um, by Pew Research that found that 71% of teenagers from the age 13 to 17 say that they used Facebook. And at that time they easily beat out platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. That's an encouraging number. And so for a lot of youth pastors, a lot of people working with Next generation, a lot of people doing social media, um, it kept the impetus and the importance of making Facebook a priority, making it something that you continually should be investing in. All right? However, back in 2022, which is not that long ago, from the drop of this, uh, podcast or the drop of this videos only a year or so ago, it tells us a different story.
Nick Clason (04:26):
So that number in 2015 was at 71%, but it has now dropped to that same age demographic. 13 to 17 year olds is now dropped to 32%. Then you might be thinking then like, why in the world are we making this a priority? Obviously it's tapering off with younger people, it's really only relevant for older generations. And while our church may have a good crop of people in older generation who are still using and active on Facebook, the reality is like that is dropping more and more. And that is true, and I will a hundred percent affirm you. And if you do decide that you don't want to take on Facebook as a platform, I totally get that. Um, especially if you wanna trend younger and be more relevant. Because the reality is this is like even Gen Z, or I'm sorry, gen X, uh, millennials, boomers, they use some of the other platforms that we're talking about here.
Nick Clason (05:16):
They're active on YouTube, some of them probably do have a TikTok account. And so if you want to abandon Facebook altogether, you can. The thing is, reality is probably you as a church, you probably already have a Facebook account. It's already probably been established and it's probably been active for years. And so what do you do and how do in this, you know, ever shifting landscape, do you continue to even use and reinvest in Facebook? I do think that there's a spot for it. I do think that there are some pertinent things that are worth you understanding and noticing. Um, and I'm gonna talk about those and especially in the very final episode of this six step kind of framework, we're gonna, um, put all of these platforms back together, right? And we're gonna gonna say here with all these different platforms, all these different like things we talked about, what is a full fledged church social media framework and strategy, taking all these pieces and putting 'em together.
Nick Clason (06:09):
So you're gonna see where Facebook fits into that. Um, but the answer to this is why we think we should continue to, um, participate in Facebook. The answer is twofold. So part number one, like we said in the last episode about TikTok, if you only have time to invest in one, invest in TikTok, I say that primarily for younger ministries, youth pastors, but quite honestly, uh, I think I would still say that the purpose for that is, uh, true, uh, for even like a church, not just a youth ministry like church, trying to reach people for their, you know, their community, their town, whatever. Like nothing wrong with just investing in TikTok. Uh, and a lot of the things today that we're gonna talk about are gonna feel like a lot of groundwork. And so that might be boring and you might not yield as many returns on it.
Nick Clason (06:52):
And so you're probably gonna have to spend a day or a week slow out some of these things, figuring out some of the things. Um, however, if you do wanna build out a fully robust holistic social media strategy, like I said, we're gonna put that together in the final episode of this little mini-series that we're doing. Facebook needs to be a part of it, not necessarily for the reasons that you might think. However, I will caveat this and say in the ranking of importance for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, Facebook is very last on my list for the specific platforms to invest in, right? Like I've, I've said, okay, however, your usage on Facebook on meta is gonna be for three primary reasons. And starting with Facebook's GI gives you an easier road, uh, to launch some other social media or, and this part's important or marketing endeavors that you may be interested in or your church or your pastor or your executive pastor might be interested in you carrying out, overseeing and executing.
Nick Clason (07:48):
All right? And so we're gonna look at this as more of a, um, foundation building as opposed to like a v going viral and, and drumming up a lot of interest and reaching a lot of people. Okay? So be that as it may, Facebook still plays a pretty crucial and important role. Before we go too much further, I do wanna share one last stat with you. 32% of users on Facebook are teenagers. That isn't a lot, but that also isn't nothing. And those teenagers are still users of Facebook. They may not be contributors, but they are as some social media people have dubbed lurkers, which means they are viewing what's going on on Facebook, and they will grow up and they will become, um, the age of the, uh, adults in your church. And in addition to that, a lot of families have parents who spend a lot of their time on Facebook.
Nick Clason (08:38):
And so if you're a demographic, if you're a church reaching families, you may not be reaching their teenagers, but you may be catering to and reaching their parents and there's um, uh, there is a benefit to doing that. All right, so let's dive into Facebook before the history of it and what it is now. Okay, Facebook before and now let's go back to the beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Okay, maybe not that far back. Let's go a little further. Okay, let's go to 2004. In 2004, you probably heard of a guy by the name of Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg launched and started Facebook as a social media platform. He launched it in 2004 on Harvard University's campus. He was a sophomore, and his primary purpose there was to connect Harvard students to other Harvard students. And so back in the very original OG Facebook days, it was built primarily for college campuses so that you could see the faces of other college students, know their names, get to know them, but by the end of the year, the almost unimaginable had happened for Zuckerberg and over 1 million users, 1 million users were on Facebook, and the reach had then expanded beyond just his simple campus.
Nick Clason (09:55):
And the spread was like wildfire. And Facebook changed the game forever. Facebook is often thought to be one of the major contributors of ushering in the, uh, the, the, what am I looking for? The setting or the, the, the, gosh, why is this word so hard for me? I don't know what I'm trying to say, but ushering in the idea of Web 2.0. So Web 1.0 was just basic HTML website's, text on a screen, web 2.0 allowed the users to actually be contributing, formatting, crafting what was being said. We are now, by the way, in a world of Web 3.0 where users can create their own reality. Right now it's primarily through things like vr, but the algorithms which are less social graph and now more discovery based are helping you sort of find and create your own reality, which by the way, I think is a little bit dangerous, especially if you are a pastor and you are anchored in the truth of God's word.
Nick Clason (10:53):
However, as opposed to bucking that and saying that you need to just ca cast your phone into like a fire, um, and not look at TikTok, I think you need to help people steward that, that they've been given because now honestly, the reality is social media is not very social like it was back in the day. Uh, we've seen that Gen Z has watched millennials and Gen Xers use and, and lean into their community being all digital, and it has honestly yielded not very good results. So I honestly see a good pendulum shift in some of our Gen Z students and people that I interact with because they lean into more real authentic community. So why are they spending so much time on platforms like TikTok and YouTube? They're, they're, they're honestly there for entertainment more than they are for like social connection. And that's the thing, Facebook was built as a platform of social connection.
Nick Clason (11:43):
And so now it is a legacy platform and it's been around forever and it is still a major player and a major contributor in the game. However, they are having to, having to adjust to TikTok and YouTube have been ushering in, in these last several years that they've seen the younger generations adapt. And because Facebook knows that great Aunt Betty is going to eventually no longer be a user at some point because she's not going to be living on this planet of earth, they need to start catering to the younger generations if they want anyone to even adopt their platform. The reality is a lot of people are not huge fans of Facebook altogether, but whether they know it or not, they're using platforms under the Facebook umbrella. So all that being said, Facebook still remains the number one social media platform to this day based on, uh, based on number of users according to an article, which we will link in the show notes of backlinko backlink.io, I always get that one messed up.
Nick Clason (12:38):
Backlink io Facebook presently has 1.9 billion daily users, which is 6.89% increased year over year. In addition to the massive usage that is found and seen by Facebook users and contributors. Uh, Facebook has been acquiring more and more products, uh, over their lifetime and life cycle. Here are some of the products that they've acquired. You may be have heard of them, Instagram, WhatsApp, gfi, Oculus, and many more. In fact, if my counting and calculations are correct, Facebook has a total acquisition of over 88 different products, um, or companies or tech like focused things, okay? And the total cost of those acquisitions is estimated to be north of 23 billion with a B dollars. So I will link that, that article as well because honestly, uh, I didn't read all of them to you because you get really bored. There's really only like four or five that you probably actually recognize by name, WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus gif, you the rest are like, what?
Nick Clason (13:46):
And they just absorbed these companies into them and, and stole their intellectual property, not stole, bought their intellectual property to use for their, their behalf and their betterment. Okay? And so as I was first, uh, sitting down to record this podcast and thinking about all this Facebook stuff, um, the reality is this, fast forward to October, 2021, Facebook announces this is the big shift here from Facebook back then to Facebook. Now, Facebook announces a change in their name from Facebook as the parent company to the name Meta. You probably know that if not, you've probably seen it and been unaware that that is, that is where that comes from. All right? And so the name reflects as the company says, um, the name reflects the company's growing ambitions to be relevant beyond just social media. They want to build technology that will help connect people. That's what they say their ultimate goal is.
Nick Clason (14:38):
Uh, I'll link that article in the show notes, but with the announcement of the name change from Facebook into Meta, this giant conglomerate of products that Meta has acquired over the years, it leads us specifically now to how you in your church can and probably should be using Facebook in your context here in 2023 as a part of the six step Church social medium framework. So without any further ado, let's hop in to reason number one, why you should be using Facebook. Reason number one, and the way in which you should be using Facebook in your church and in your ministry is to create a Facebook page. Now, Facebook page is the corporate side of Facebook. It is where businesses and corporations go to have their hours. It's where they link their website. It's, it's where they, at some point in time, we'll run ads and your church more than likely has a corporate company Facebook page.
Nick Clason (15:37):
I would recommend that you start with a Facebook page, not necessarily, because I think it's a great strategy for reaching people organically anymore in 2023. However, it is going to help sort of be the anchor for everything that you do on Facebook. And if you start there, especially if you don't have anything already launched right now, but if you start there, then sort of from there, the rest of everything else can kind of spread, which is one of the reasons why I have jumped Facebook over Instagram, for example, because Facebook is the owner of Instagram. And so if you start with that Facebook page, then you can sort of build things out from there. One of the things that you need to know about Facebook is it's not just a simple username and password sort of login. So if you're inheriting a Facebook page, what you need to do is you need to discover who the admin is on the Facebook page.
Nick Clason (16:24):
The person who has a personal specific profile, their first name and last name, they are an admin to an account. And that is who runs or who is kind of doing the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, um, managing of Facebook pages. That's how Facebook works. So for example, I just moved to a church about six months ago. They had a a Facebook page, and everyone that I asked, I kept asking to try and get login information for it. They're like, oh yeah, the username password should be on this password document sheet that we have. And, and I just was like, no, that's, that's not how it works. Like, it's not just like I log into Facebook, I have to log in as myself, Nick Clason on my Facebook page, and then I have to be made an administrator or an admin or an editor or a moderator or whatever the case might be, whatever the role is that is decided that has to happen to me, my account, not a login into a specific place.
Nick Clason (17:20):
Okay? So when you start on this place, everything else can sort of be driven from that. The other reason that you would wanna start with a Facebook page is that some point you may want to run ads on your Facebook page. Um, and you may, you can do that either on Facebook, you also can do that through Facebook to your Instagram count if you find Instagram more beneficial to your audience. But you do that through the business suite, the meta suite. And so, um, learning to run an ad is probably one of the most maddening processes, especially if you have no idea what you're doing, what some of the language means or whatever if you're a complete nbe. And so one time I interviewed my friend, former co-host of this podcast, Matt Johnson. He is a marketing freaking guru, uh, and he has done some incredible things, marketing, especially in the ministry space, if you are or have ever heard of or are familiar with the company, dare to share.
Nick Clason (18:16):
He was behind a lot of what they did and a lot of what got them out, uh, visible to a lot of people out in the world. And so, um, he walks us through in a former episode, not link that in the show notes of how to step, how to set up an ad, step by step, uh, running a Facebook ad. So that's there for you. Hopefully that's helpful to you. All right? Step number two is beyond the Facebook page. You should also link your Facebook and Instagram accounts. This is probably one of the most obvious or low hanging fruit reasons why you should start with Facebook, because once you link them, then it's really no extra work, especially if you start on the Instagram side, which we'll get to that in the next episode. But if you start on the Instagram side posting something, all you do is simply toggle on a switch that says also post to Facebook, and boom, you're posting the same content in two places.
Nick Clason (19:08):
That used to be a no-no. That used to be something that you shied away from. But now it's actually something that I and many other church social media marketing managers encourage, especially with the current thing that every social media is focusing on short form video content. It doesn't matter if it's also posted on Instagram, on Facebook, I did a thing the other day, we do this stupid game on our, uh, Instagram, on our TikTok, on our YouTube shorts called, um, , it's called ABC Cheese. So we have a little craft singles and we try to bite like just two of us and try to bite out a letter. And the other person was trying to guess what it's, and so I just was like curious and I was like, how many views did this video in total get? And so I, I looked on YouTube, I looked on TikTok, I looked on Instagram reels, and I looked on Facebook reels, and in total we had somewhere between seven and 800 views on just that one stupid video alone by posting it to all those different platforms.
Nick Clason (20:05):
You know, like one had 600, one had a hundred, one had 300, one had 200, you know what I mean? That kind of all adds up. And you start to think about it, you're like, dang, that's like seven, eight, 9,000 hun. You know, thou not a thousand hundred, 900, a thousand people reach. Like it's a lot, man. Like that's, that's, that's something that churches, youth ministries would've been begging for in years past and before with Facebook pages, primarily as the marketing tool and engine, you had to pay to do it. And you, I mean, you still do if you wanna market stuff, but you can kind of like punch your lottery ticket with any of these reels or short form video and just blow up, or not even blow up, but just get a hundred views across four platforms that adds up to north of 500, north of 700, north of 900 views on any single video.
Nick Clason (20:56):
I think most people would say that that's worth it. All right? The third and final way and, and um, path that I think you should take on Facebook is create a Facebook group. According to a 2021 study, there were approximately 233 million Facebook users in the US alone. 18.2 of those users belong to the 18 to 24 age group, while 18% of those users are 35 to 34 years old. So in total, you're looking at, almost 40% of your users are between the age of 18 and 44. So while your teenagers, your youth ministry might not be spending a lot of time on Facebook, other platforms, um, other people, older demographics definitely are. And I think that you, one of your largest wins as a church is to create a group because that is where you can make community on social media feel intimate and in, in fact, it's probably one of the only platforms that offers a close sort of intimate community style feel.
Nick Clason (21:56):
And so I do think of all of the features that Facebook does have to offer. You can have a group. And so again, if you start with a page, then out of that you can create a group that's connected to that page and you can post as the page admin or you can switch your profile and you can be interacting as yourself in the group, and you can make that that switch. And they've started to make that a lot easier. If you go onto the page on your phone or on your browser, it'll give you a little notification in one of the corners somewhere that says you're interacting as the, the brand, you're interacting as the page or you're interacting as yourself. And then it just gives you a button there. Do you wanna switch? And you click switch and it switches over between yours or your page.
Nick Clason (22:37):
And so you can make some of those things. You also have the opportunity to go to the business suite and schedule some stuff. You can also link and schedule that over to your Instagram. And they now offer scheduling for reels. They offer scheduling for stories, which were not things that they offered previously. All the schedule tools really only posted like static images to pages, um, and your Instagram grid feed. But now they're starting to offer more. Uh, they do, in my personal experience, I've really only been experimenting with schedulers for a little bit here now, but they do seem to choke down your organic reach all of those platforms like it, when you post live time, there really is no way around that. No matter how much you try, no matter how, how much these like schedulers promised you, you're gonna just have better performance on all of your stuff if you are posting it.
Nick Clason (23:26):
Um, and that, but that's a value proposition that you have to weigh through, especially if you have a million other responsibilities. Is it worth it to peace of mind, have it scheduled and you don't have to worry about it? Or is it something that you should, you know, wade into and navigate choice is yours? It's kind up to you. Um, so one of the best things that can do though as a church is to run a Facebook group. And over time you don't even have to be supplying that with a lot of content. The content hopefully will be generated by the users that are already a part of your Facebook group community. Well, everyone, once again, thank you so much for hanging out for this entire episode. I hope that you found this episode helpful. Like I said, the Facebook, uh, episode's a lot more focused on nitty gritty groundwork, building up some stuff so that you can build up a more robust and full social media strategy.
Nick Clason (24:18):
We are going to be diving into that in the future episodes. But coming up next, we are finally moving on to Instagram. We're gonna talk about some strategies and some reasons behind how you can be using Instagram effectively as a church in your 2023 social media framework. In addition to that, before we, we get to the very final piece where we put it all together, we are gonna talk email and texting and website. And so those three things are also critically important, I think to sort of serve as a backdrop and or as a lead generator for some of these other social media platforms to your already existing church audience that you have access to through a database and Excel spreadsheet or whatever the case might be in your particular context. Again, excited to be with you and excited to be right here now on the downhill slide of our six part church miniseries on church social media in 2023.
Nick Clason (25:13):
If you found this episode helpful, do me a favor and please send it to a friend, share it, rate it, review it, all those things are incredibly helpful to me, and they're a free for you to just give back in a very small way to our podcast and the work that we've been doing here at Hybrid Ministry. You can also check out free transcripts that we provide for you for every single episode, and that's over http://www.hybridministry.xyz. Hit the show notes for all the articles that we mentioned for all the other, uh, episodes that we reference for all the other social media places that you can follow me. And until next time, and as always, stay hybrid.
26 min
March 16, 2023 Episode 036: The Second Step of the Church Social Media Framework for 2023: TikTok
In this episode Nick talks about the social media platform that you should most be focusing on in 2023. If you don't have time to do any other social, you should be leaning into this social platform, TikTok. He lays out the current state of TikTok, why you should go in on it, how you should go in on it, and gives links and resources to other episodes or resources to help you flesh out your social media calendar for your church in 2023.
Entire Episode with Complete Transcript:
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/036
Watch this Podcast Episode:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
Follow Nick on TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
SHOWNOTES
Is Digital a Valid Method of Preaching?
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/029
9 TikTok and Reels Videos to use at your church this week!
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/023
The Ultimate 2023 Social Media Calendar, Strategy and Posting Guidelines
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/025
TIMECODES
00:00-02:12 - Intro
02:12-08:40 The Current State of TikTok
08:40-13:35 What does all of this mean?
13:35-18:52 What content should my church post?
18:52-23:40 The Nitty Gritty of Posting to TikTok with Hooks, Captions and where to place your text on screen
23:40-24:59 Conclusion and Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:02):
All right. 3, 2, 1. Well, hello there, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason. So thrilled to be here with you, uh, on this episode. And we are going to be continuing on in our journey of the sixth Step Church social media framework. But today, in this episode, I am gonna talk about a social media that if you don't have time to go in on any of the other things that we talk about, this is the one that I highly, highly recommend as a youth pastor myself. Um, I recommend this primarily for student ministries. Um, however, I wanna be very clear that, um, this is a, the number one, uh, social media for Generation Z. And you might think, oh, I'm exempt from that. I don't have to worry about Generation Z. And that's just simply not true.
Nick Clason (00:58):
You do. Um, and it will become more and more of a prevalent, uh, problem, so to speak. Not that Generation Z is a problem, but, uh, more and more of a prevalent, um, uh, demographic in your church congregation. More and more, they're graduating every single year, and then they're soon becoming a part of the church or not a part of a church. If we're not willing to speak their native language, and if we're not willing to, uh, reach them where they are soon as youth pastors, we are no longer going to have Generation Z even as a part of our ministry because Generation Alpha is right now sitting in our sixth grade, our fifth grade, our fourth grade, they are the soon to be new generation. And so Gen Z, this digital strategy matters for them. And yes, you guessed it. We are talking about TikTok.
Nick Clason (01:44):
So all that, and more on this episode, as always, show notes, hybridministry.xyz, subscribe on YouTube. Follow me personally on my TikTok, uh, give us a light, give us a subscribe. A subscribe. And please, we would love it if you would give us a rating, especially if you find this information helpful, share it with a friend. But without any further ado, let's dive into why TikTok matters. All right, well, let's talk about the current state of TikTok as it stands in 2023. So, uh, TikTok in just 11 years, so starting back in 2011, all the way now to, um, 2023, so I guess 12 years, uh, TikTok has grown from zero users all the way up to 1 billion estimated users ranking it fourth in social media usage and platforms. So it's only behind Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and then TikTok is fourth. Facebook is at 2.9 billion.
Nick Clason (02:48):
YouTube is at 2.2 billion. Instagram is at 1.4 billion, and TikTok is at 1 billion. Now, keep in mind that I think that, uh, Facebook and Instagram both play a role, but if you're going to go all in on one, I think you should go all in on TikTok. Facebook often is, uh, really popular with the generation of generation X. Instagram is much more popular with my generation, generation of millennials, and TikTok was made famous by our favorite, um, generation, generation Z and TikTok is driving what these other legacy platforms of Facebook, of Instagram, and even YouTube are doing. So all of the players ahead of TikTok in the, um, estimated users, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, all three of those, if you notice, have a TikTok feature, uh, element woven into 'em reels, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, and YouTube shorts, and they're all three trying to compete and catch up with the wild craze that is TikTok.
Nick Clason (03:49):
So what even was TikTok, you might remember that TikTok originally started as a brand called a musical dot l wire or Musical Lee, and it was branded and started much as a lip syncing app. I remember as a youth pastor, there were students that would just lip sync and do the musical Lee, uh, type of deals. And so, uh, it was rebranded as TikTok, and it has come around and it has shot up in a meteoric eyes of popularity to become the almost number one. Um, and not like number one downloads, like I just read through the stats, but like number one in, uh, just desirability, right? Of like entertainment apps and social media switched right from being like this social, legitimately social like connection of like human people. I'm friends with my grandma and I'm friends with my aunt to a, uh, platform of entertainment.
Nick Clason (04:43):
You get on there to watch, to be entertained, to be informed, to be inspired, to be encouraged, to learn something, to laugh, all right? That's what TikTok has kind of become. And so, TikTok, um, was historically thought to be adopted and used by teenagers primarily. And that's why, again, when we think of Generation Z, we think, oh, those are teenagers, right? But I wanna read for you something. Um, some of the most recent data says this, 10 year olds to 19 year olds make up 32.5% of the users on TikTok, where 20 to 29 year olds make up 29.5% of the users on TikTok. 30 to 39 year olds make up 16.4, 40 to 49 year olds make up 13.9 and 50 plus make up 7.1. So if you do some quick dirty math, you're looking at greater than 60% of your users are anywhere from the age of 10 to 30.
Nick Clason (05:36):
And if you do a little bit more math, 75% of the users on the TikTok app are under the age of 40. Now, let me ask you, is this something that youth pastors only need to be worried about? And I would contend that the answer is no. Yes, the greatest use is of the younger generations, but 10 to 19, that 19 year old's gonna be 20 pretty soon. And my guess is you wanna reach a 20 year old. Like, my guess is you wanna reach a 25, a 27, a 32 year old, and so start going where they are. So according to an article from, uh, September, 2022 in the New York Times, uh, this is what it has said. It said, TikTok is now becoming the new search engine for Generation Z. Here's what the quote says. This is a powerful tool for teenagers, for students, and for the people in your congregation.
Nick Clason (06:30):
So according to this Afor engine, New York Times article, more and more young people are using talk's powerful algorithm, which personalizes the videos that are shown to you and your for you page, which is based on your interactions with the content. And so to find, uh, information that UNC candidly caters to their tastes, the tailoring, that tailoring is then coupled with a sense that there are real people on the app and are synthesizing and delivering information rather than just simply faceless websites. So there, right there is where you find the social component, but greater than 80 to 90% of the content that most people interact with on TikTok comes from people that they have never met. So pair in mind that the, the usage is meteoric and it is rising faster and faster. And also that now Generation Z is going to TikTok as one of their pry Mary places for search.
Nick Clason (07:31):
And what did we talk about was the reason in the last episode that YouTube was such a crucial, uh, ground for you to be diving into as a church, as a church creator, is you could create very custom howto content. So that's also now the case with TikTok. One last thing that is, uh, important for you to know about TikTok, while the, while TikTok does, uh, have is only fourth, right? In the overall ranking of, um, social media apps, there was a term, um, coined as power users and 29% of TikTok users are considered power users, and they're the ones who will use the app every single day and further study on that TikTok users spend wait for it on average 95 minutes per day. That's over, that's an hour and a half of their day spent on the app, which does rank number one amongst all of the social media apps for most time used on the TikTok app.
Nick Clason (08:34):
So that is where we are. What does all of this mean? All right, so what does all of this mean? Like we said, TikTok is beginning to trend older, and even the users themselves are just simply getting older. And it is right now the leader, right? The leader for Generation Z, um, and I think probably soon to be millennials, and those, uh, people are soon to be square in the main demographic of people that your church is likely going to be focused on reaching. The other reason, like I said earlier, consider the fact that Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube have all recently adopted a TikTok algorithm, reels, shorts, right, to make as a cornerstone of their social media, um, strategy moving forward. And so they're, they are responding to this social media app over here, which is why I don't think it's it's necessarily worth, uh, your, I don't know that you need to be ignoring it or that you should be ignoring it, right?
Nick Clason (09:34):
These other social media platforms, I feel like, oh, we're gonna be all in over here on YouTube, on Instagram to perform well on YouTube and Instagram right now. You need to go all in on the TikTok feature that they have implemented. It's not called TikTok, it's called reels, it's called shorts. But you need to still be all in over on that. And so the legacy platform that made that famous, you should start there. Those are reasons why I think TikTok is currently the most important of all the things you might be wondering. Well then why we talk about YouTube last week, and we're gonna talk about this in the very final episode, but just as a sneak peek of this little, uh, series that we're doing, um, you always want to be able to take your short form content and point it back to something more longer form, and that's where that can live over there on YouTube.
Nick Clason (10:16):
That's the short answer to that. Okay? So I also want to consider some of the theological implications for this, okay? Acts chapter one, verse eight, very famously, the Great Commission, Jesus says, but you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit. He'll come upon you, and then you'll be my witnesses telling people about me in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and then ultimately to the utter most parts of the Earth. You might be thinking, well, yeah. So why does me posting a dancing video of my senior pastor on TikTok accomplish the mission of reaching people? Talk's? Algorithm is largely a mystery. People have been trying to crack that code. Obviously, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube are all studying it to try and create their own versions of it. However, there is one thing that we do know is that what, the way that TikTok spreads the message is very much in the same concentric circles that we see described by Jesus in Acts chapter one.
Nick Clason (11:08):
Verse eight starts by sharing it to your followers. And if they respond well to it, it'll share it to more of their followers. And it starts even geographical. It starts around where you are. You can geotag yourself in your TikTok when you post them. And so it, it does accomplish the mission of helping spread that message until you, more and more people, hundreds, thousands of people can get to hear the message of Jesus every day. Consider this. Let me just give you an anecdotal example. I have a, uh, I'm a youth pastor in an ministry where on average, on a given set, like Wednesday night, we probably average anywhere between a hundred and 150 students, okay? If I post a TikTok about, uh, just a clip from a message or a, a message on there that has something to do with God or theology, or I'm helping share and spread the good news, I'm helping teach people, encourage people, equip people an average video, that that does not perform very well to my standards on TikTok, we'll get somewhere between two and 300 views.
Nick Clason (12:14):
That is literally double the number of people that see that content then come to my, uh, regular in-person gathering. So why does this matter? I think it matters because we have an opportunity to reach far beyond just the people that have their butts in their seats in the ministry that I lead. And the same is true for you. You have the ability to help get the message out there. Now, you might be thinking, well, why don't, our church doesn't wanna do that? Every church has been tasked by Jesus Christ himself. Acts chapter one verse eight, Matthew 28 18 through 18 through 20, to help fulfill the great commission. And there's an element of discipleship in there where, yes, you have to teach them to obey everything that he has commanded us to do, but also there is a reach component. Get the message of Jesus out there.
Nick Clason (13:04):
Can that be done via digital means? I would contend that yes, it, it can, and we talked about that early on. Um, we talked about that, uh, actually a couple episodes ago in, uh, the can, can the, can the message of Jesus be done and shared digitally? And, uh, you can go back and listen to it. I'll link to it here in the show notes. But yes, I would contend that yes, it can be done that way. Uh, and you'll see why, and you'll be, you'll have an explanation of why that matters. All right? So this is the age old question, right? What do I post? You might be wondering that you might be asking that. Well, uh, I'll link to an episode that I did at the end of 2022 on this podcast, but it, it's titled, I think, nine TikTok and Short Form Video Ideas that you Can Post on your Church social Media this week.
Nick Clason (13:58):
I also, uh, laid out for you my complete weekly strategy in another episode. Um, I think it's episode 25, the Ultimate 2023, uh, social media calendar strategy and posting schedule. I'll post both of those if those are something that you find interesting, but they're just chock full of ideas, and honestly, they're very like boots on the ground for me, uh, and stuff that I post every single week. But real quick, uh, a high overview on some of those is, uh, there are really, they're like 3, 4, 5 different categories of things that you can post. The first one is trends. If you spend any time on TikTok, on TikTok app, just yourself personally, I use that save feature incredibly liberally. It's the little like bookmark looking thing on your app. And then I can go back to my personal profile and see things that I've saved. And, but you gotta jump on those trends fast.
Nick Clason (14:51):
So I always, on my, my posting calendar, um, I don't schedule myself out so much. I leave just some space to do some trends. And so two or three times a week I say post a trend and I go into my saved things, and I'm like, what is going on right now on TikTok? And if there's a certain song or a certain cap cut template or something like that, I just use it and I try to find a, think of a creative, fun, relatable way to use it, and I just use it. Another thing is, um, you can just, you can film like custom content, you know yourself. So like, uh, let me give you an example of, of just that thing I'm trying, um, and you can go check it out on our church, uh, TikTok right now. I I don't wanna, um, give you the link verbally here, so go to the show notes because I'm working on changing the name to it.
Nick Clason (15:39):
I don't know if, if by the time this post, uh, if the name will be changed or not. But anyway, um, I, I made this game. Um, I'm an author on download youth ministry.com. Um, so I made this game called gif flashback, where you watch a gif for like, uh, seven seconds, and then, um, immediately you're asked a question to just recall what you saw. And so I tried something where me and another, uh, member of my team are named Bailey. We went around all different places in the church, and that's intentional. Uh, as far as TikTok is concerned, we'd, we'd swap out like, uh, outfits and we'd go to different places in the church. And so we shot them all at the same time, but they're in all different pockets and corners at the church. Some are outside, some are inside, some are, you know, whatever.
Nick Clason (16:20):
At my desk, her desk in the, in the Gaga pit, whatever. And, uh, one of us would run in and be like, quick, Bailey, give flashback, and we'd watch the, the game, all right? And while we're watching it on one of our phones, I would then edit where I'd put the game in on top of the phone. And so I, or she would be playing it by answering the questions and giving the, the answers, but the user, while they're watching it can also, um, watch it and interact with it and play the game as well, right? And so that's a way to use a game that's made for social, um, but also like post it on your TikTok and just have some fun, right? Um, you can do like emoji bible guessing games, which by the way, go to my D ym, uh, link. Uh, I'll drop that in the show notes here as well.
Nick Clason (17:04):
And you can buy, I have all kinds of like, uh, a game called Emoji phraseology, and every single one of them has a vertically formatted video or, uh, wide screen, or, I'm sorry, uh, video or static, uh, slide that you can post as well as you, uh, interact with or as you, um, edit your video so you can play like emoji guessing games, get flashback, all those things. Um, but yeah, po uh, post some of those just different like fun game type things to do. I also like to do like a lot of minute to win it style games, right? And I just film those, and then I clip 'em up, I edit 'em, um, have fun with them. Other things I like to do post educational videos, like, not, not like, here's some math, right? But like theologically educational videos. So the entire month of January, I posted a, I talked a lot about habits.
Nick Clason (17:51):
We were in a series of habits, and so I talked about the psychology of building a good habit. And then the entire month of February, I answered some deep theological like questions or just some core tenets, like of the faith. And I walked through, you know, salvation and the Holy Spirit and sin and the problem of evil. And I just like, I, I posted those, you know, occasionally. Um, also, you can always post message clips. And this is why, if you go back to the last podcast that I posted, um, about YouTube as the first step of the strategy, if you're pre-filing or if you're live streaming, you can find two to three short message clips, and you can edit them with a good hook in where you resolve a good hook and you have some good music behind it. And you can post, uh, some of those message, uh, clips on your, on your TikTok, and then you can point those back to the longer form video or audio content for people to find and consume.
Nick Clason (18:45):
So speaking of hooks, speaking of archetypes, speaking of how to build it, let's dive into that. Next, let's do it. Let's get nitty gritty here. Posting best practices. Number one, you want to have a good hook. You can use the text on screen option, or you can use the text to speech option as the narrated, uh, the narrated, uh, AI sounding voice. But essentially, you need to tell your audience within the first three seconds what this video is going to be about. Because, you know, swiping habits, people are not hovering on videos for very long. If it's not interesting, boom, they're onto the next thing. Boom, they're onto the next thing. This often requires a mindset shift for pastors who hold their hook or who hold their, like, ace up their sleeve usually until the very end of a sermon. Get it out at the very beginning.
Nick Clason (19:35):
What are you talking about in this video? The other thing is use onscreen captions. They're not for just people who are hard of hearing at this point. Captions are useful because a lot of times people can't watch videos in public places with headphones in. So if your video has captions, they can still watch it, even if their phone is v is, uh, volume is turned all the way down. In fact, check this up. 69% of people say that they view video with their sound off in public places. 69% is almost 70% of users and 25% watch with sound off when they're even in private places. So if you have captions on your videos, people can still watch wherever they are. TikTok will has an auto trans transcribed feature. It works really well. Just pop that onto every single video that you use. All right? You need to make sure you have a call to action.
Nick Clason (20:23):
So as you're building your audience on TikTok, make sure that you give them a call to action. Tell them to follow for more, save or view this video for later, or head to the Lincoln bio to watch the full message. Again, this is why if you are using our six step framework and you have your YouTube channel linked in your bio, you can send people who are watching message clips to go on and watch the full message to link in bio. And just remember that more than just going viral and building an audience, um, is not just for vanity metrics, right? Is that if you have something significant and meaningful to say, people will want to dial in and listen to longer versions of what you have as they're in their discovery algorithms, finding things on their phone and online. Also, watch where you're placing your text in a TikTok video.
Nick Clason (21:07):
The top, the bottom and the right side are all off limits. So you really need to hit right in the middle and more, uh, left of center. Uh, I hate when I see people who post things and they, they post it behind the natural places that TikTok covers things. TikTok screen is incredibly busy. So, uh, just look and know where you can and cannot post your text on screen and make sure it doesn't get covered up. Uh, captions and hashtags, I recommend no more than a one sentence caption and no more than three to five hashtags. And if your caption, um, has a word in it, you do not need to hashtag that same word later, right? Like we said, gen Z is using, uh, TikTok, and TikTok is also building on the back end of more searchability. So, um, if, if one of your words is already in your caption, you do not need the hashtag to find it, it will, it will search all of the text on your screen, which again, use text on screen, use their text editor.
Nick Clason (22:09):
Um, I actually use TikTok. Um, if I'm, if I'm editing on my phone, I'd probably do 50% edit on my computer, 50% edit on my phone directly. Um, if I'm editing on my phone, I edit in the TikTok app, then I download that without the watermark and I post out to all my other content. But TikTok is the, the starting spot for me. And so, um, all the texts on screen, all the things I use natively, they will search my video and find those things and, and help index that in their search back out to other people. Um, and then finally, audio. If you are a business account, your audio options on TikTok are going to be far more limited, which is why if you can do an edit in a computer, it's gonna be better for you. Um, if you're not a business account, and I talk about this in my ebook, which will link to that in the show notes as well.
Nick Clason (22:57):
Um, there are pros and cons to whether or not you want to be a business account or not. I still, to this day, have not converted ourselves to a business account, but that, that day is probably coming to an end here soon. The biggest disadvantage is I can't just lazily use trending audio. Um, that almost always is, you know, you know, not royalty free and I, you have to pay royalties on it or whatever. There are workarounds to it where you just, you edit the video with that audio in a, like, Adobe Premiere Pro or something like that, and then it's like an original sound for you. It's, but it's not being indexed in search based on that audio. Um, less and less. I think that the quality of the content is gonna be more important than the actual, like, hacking of the system by finding the certain audio things.
Nick Clason (23:42):
All right. Well, thank you so much for hanging out this entire episode. Like I just said, if, uh, you have not yet grabbed our free e-book, this episode in particular on how to post a TikTok from scratch, the question that the, the title of the e-book is, have I already Ruined My Church TikTok account? And will help you answer that. So go grab your free e-book. Also a rating or review will be incredibly helpful to subscribe over, over on YouTube if you wanna watch this video. We got blower thirds, we got custom graphics flying in. Some of the things I talked about, uh, are gonna be visible on screen that you just have to listen to in your earbuds. And if you heard anything that you're like, that was interesting, I need to go, uh, unpack that a little bit more. We have three transcripts for you over at hybridministry.xyz head there, check it out. But we're so glad that you're on this journey with us. I hope that you are finding this six step social media framework helpful. This was just step number two. Next episode we're step three, which is Facebook. So excited for that. Join us. We'd love to have you there. And until next time, and as always, stay hybrid.
25 min
March 09, 2023 Episode 035: The First Step of the Church Social Media Framework: YouTube
In this episode, Nick unpacks step 1 out of 6, of the church social media framework. He explains why we should start with YouTube, what the best practices are for youtube, including things like compelling hooks, titling, meta descriptions and thumbnails. And how to get started in the event you don't even have a YouTube channel started yet, how to go about doing that. All that and more!
All you need and more at: http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Follow along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick
Keep up with what's happening on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/user/@clasonnick
SHOWNOTES
MY STUDENT MINISTRY YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/@crosscreekstudents
CHURCH YOUTUBE STARTER KIT: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/033
TRENDS SITE: http://www.trends.google.com
TIMECODES
00:00-02:30 Intro
02:30-08:05 Why you should begin with YouTube when building out your Social Strategy
08:05-11:35 Optimal YouTube video lengths and watch time analytics
11:35-14:33 Make your intros compelling
14:33-17:42 The importance of titling and metadescriptions
17:42-18:07 Thumbnails on YouTube
18:07-18:44 How to find keywords based on trending topics
18:44-19:10 Comments and shares on YouTube
19:10-20:38 YouTube Conclusion
20:38-22:15 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
Well, hello there and welcome everybody to the Hybrid Minister Show. As always, I am your host, Nick Clason. So excited to be with you. And if you did not hear the trailer that we dropped earlier this week, we are going to be diving into a full fledged social media strategy. And this is part one of the six part series of putting an entire social media framework and strategy, um, in place for the, for your church, for your ministry, um, and for the people that you are attempting to reach. This is aimed at churches and pastors of what can probably be used and adapted for other places in marketplace and whatnot. And so on. Today's very first episode, we are going to be launching and starting with the platform of YouTube. Yes, we most recently dropped a, uh, episode called Don't Sleep on YouTube, A link to that in the show notes.
Nick Clason (00:57):
But we are going to be specifically looking at the strategy, um, the social media strategy. And we are starting with YouTube. And you'll see why here in just a minute. But before we dive in, do not forget a rating or review would be amazing. You can head over to our YouTube channel and see this live with some lower thirds and some graphics woven in to maybe help, uh, support some of the arguments that we're making. So if you find that, uh, helpful or interesting, make sure that you head there. Also, as always, you can head to hybrid ministry.xyz, both for our ebook. Have I already ruined my Church TikTok account, which is a complete guide to post any TikTok from start to finish. If you have no idea what you're doing, here're just getting started, this ebook is for you. And if you are a TikTok veteran, probably still for you cuz honestly, I learned some things as I made it.
Nick Clason (01:49):
Um, and then the other thing is that as always, we provide free a hundred percent free transcript, um, show notes to every single episode. So you can head to hybrid ministry.xyz.xyz. Yes, it is a suffix to a website despite what people might think. Just I like, I actually think it's a creative one, an interesting one. It's very, very like unknown. Um, so if like a.com is taken, I often opt for a.xyz cause I just think it's, it's cool. So anyway, uh, head to those places and, uh, without any further ado, let's dive in. Little break. Let me get some coffee. Let's dive into why we should start with YouTube. Here we go. All right, so why should we start with YouTube? I believe if done optimally, your church social media strategy to borrow from marketing, if you will, um, I'm gonna attempt to create this with my hands.
Nick Clason (02:46):
So if you're watching on YouTube stream, it's gonna make sense to you, but it's like a funnel, right? And so, especially now in the days of the algorithms where it's discovery, discovery focused as opposed to just following your friends like it used to be, um, you are going to want to, uh, catch people at the top of your funnel. And the top of the funnel is very wide now because of YouTube shorts, because of Instagram reels, Facebook reels, and because of TikTok, you can reach and catch people that you would've never otherwise interacted with. Maybe they're people that are local to you geographically, maybe not. But the reality is, is that you're going to be finding people in the top of that funnel that you never would've had that relationship with before. That's amazing. So that's what churches have been looking for and asking for social media for years.
Nick Clason (03:36):
How can we expand our reach? How can we share the gospel of Jesus? How can we find different people that we might want to minister to or share the, the truth or love of Jesus with them? However, what are you going to do with them once you get them? And I think, uh, for me, a lot of the, a lot of the question I was even asking, um, Matt, who was former co-host of this podcast, I was even asking him early on, like, okay, great, that's awesome. So we go viral on TikTok, then what? And, and he didn't even know. So that's how new all of this is. It, it all lives within the life of this podcast, which is under a year old, um, by the time of this posting. And so, so once that funnel, once we start catching people who are finding awareness, we need to drive them to something, what are we driving them to?
Nick Clason (04:24):
I think, and I would propose that the best thing to drive someone to, especially if they're just finding you on social media, is to drive them to listening to longer form, uh, pieces of content. There was, uh, we talked about it in the, the YouTube, uh, trends, the YouTube trends, uh, not trends report. The YouTube Trends podcast I dropped a couple of weeks ago. Um, and I'm trying to look it up right here. Lifetime. So that's why I'm fumbling around. Um, let's see if, uh, I can find it, but I'm probably not gonna be able to find it. But there's a stat that says, um, some percentage that's, that's the sta I'm looking for. I don't know the number, but some percentage of people look up, uh, or use like short form videos in order to find longer form video content or longer form content of some sort.
Nick Clason (05:20):
So, so, uh, especially the generation, um, that's coming. Gen z, gen Alpha, they might spend time on TikTok, they might spend time on YouTube shorts, see a short snippet of something, and then that might prompt them to go watch something longer. Now here's the thing. Um, no offense, sermons are not, not that new and not that interesting. And so therefore, that may not be the most captivating thing that someone's gonna want to be driven towards. But if they find their way to something creative, something different, or just your pastor's interesting, or the topic that your pastor preached on is interesting, then yeah, I think you are gonna get people to drive towards it. So that's why I say start with YouTube. Now, I I, when I wrote this, I had a very different view of YouTube. We hadn't even started when I, when I wrote this, I wrote this, uh, for a, uh, youth ministry company.
Nick Clason (06:15):
And so when I wrote it, I, I had not even started practically using YouTube in my ministry yet. And, um, what's crazy is even if you listen back to last, last week's episode on Don't Sleep On YouTube, I said, we now have over 70 subscribers to our YouTube. Since the time of that posting, which, or recording from then to now, which is only a week gap in time, we have grown our YouTube to up to 106 subscribers. So we've had 36 or so subscribers join us on YouTube, which is just bonkers crazy. So why start with YouTube? Obviously, YouTube, uh, is owned by Google, so it has a search engine component to it. Um, in addition to that, it's got long form video content and now short form video content. So you can use the short form to get discovered and gain subscribers to then support and supplement and push to your long form video content.
Nick Clason (07:15):
I'm gonna recommend that all the other platforms also PO point to YouTube just as a place where your videos and your containers live. And so, um, that is, that is what I think is optimal, opening the top of the funnel, driving them another step deeper. Obviously, the lowest part of the funnel is them making a decision to follow Jesus, maybe becoming a, a full, fully devoted follower of Jesus, um, integrated into the life of your church and attending regularly in person. But going from watching a 62nd clip to a several minute video, that's a big jump. That's a big step. Let's, let's chat through the elements and purposes and, um, reasons why we should start with YouTube and what we know about it today in 2023. Let's go. All right, so let's talk about watch times. We've talked about this a fair bit on this podcast and other, uh, episodes and whatnot.
Nick Clason (08:12):
But according to backlinko.com, they surveyed 1.3 million YouTube videos, um, to try and better understand the YouTube search feature. And they determined this, uh, fact from their survey. Longer videos significantly outperform shorter videos. Now we're talking long form, wide screen, like typical YouTube videos, not YouTube shorts. It's a completely different section and platform, but longer videos significantly outperform shorter videos. The average length of a first page YouTube video that is indexed on the first page is 14 minutes and 50 seconds. So you're looking in that sweet spot of, I would say anywhere from 12 minutes to 18 minutes is a good length that you want to be shooting for, for your YouTube videos. Now, the question that you might have is like, well, what if I live stream my sermon and my pastor preaches for 35 minutes? Well, that's great, and you can continue to use that and you should continue to put that up on YouTube if you have the live streaming capabilities and whatnot.
Nick Clason (09:18):
However, in some context, if you're starting from scratch, one of the things that I have been pushing and recommending, and one of the things that we have been doing over at our church Cross Creek students, which by the way, if you want, I'll drop a link to our YouTube channel on the show notes. You can see what I'm talking about when I recommend pre-filing your content. So you don't need a lot, I mean, we use a cell phone, which is the same cell phone I'm using to shoot this YouTube video here. So you can check that out, um, on our YouTube channel. Um, we use that to shoot, I grab the couple of like external microphones just so that the audio quality is above average and that is it, you know, some basic lighting stuff, but nothing crazy. Uh, and that gives us a, a multiple different, like, things to do.
Nick Clason (10:06):
Like when we preach live, we're probably preaching that 30 plus minute thing or, or at least bumping up right against it, which is not optimal for the YouTube, um, search length. The other thing is that it does give us extra time with our content. If, if we deliver it once to a phone and then once live in the room, like by the time we're live in the room, like we're pretty well versed with what our content is going to be, it's not gonna be a shock to us. We're not gonna get up there and be like, what is this again? Um, especially if you're using curriculum pre can pre-canned curriculum, you can, um, you can fall under the, the habit of not really reviewing it very well and you get up there and you're, you're much more stuck to your notes than you maybe wanna be, or you wrote it a long time ago and you're dusting it off for a new environment.
Nick Clason (10:52):
Maybe that's exactly what I'm doing all the time. Uh, you know, so, so once YouTube kind of came up with that conclusion, um, that's how, that's how YouTube, uh, chooses what videos get promoted. All right? So the way that they do it is a combination of both overall watch time paired with average percent viewed. So, uh, if it's a 10 minute video and they watch seven minutes, that's 70% of the video viewed. So it turns out that the videos in that 14 to 16 minute range really index well, uh, a couple other factors to help make your videos compelling. Let's check it out. All right, so make the intro of your video compelling. Let's play out a couple scenarios. Scenario number one. Hey everyone, welcome back to church. Excited to be here. Hey, real quick before we dive in, tonight's message, I do wanna remind you about the Churchwide Bake Sale.
Nick Clason (11:52):
It's coming up this Sunday. If you are interested in earning money toward the mission strip, don't forget you have to be in attendance. If for some reason you can't make it, please make sure to talk to, uh, dear Aunt Betty in the back, she's waving her hand, she's got her plaid apron on, let her know that you won't be at the bake sale. So, to dive into tonight's message, we're gonna be in John chapter one, or scenario number two. What would you do if you won a million dollars? Like, think about it, right? Like if I told you that the message that Jesus is giving supersedes the benefit of winning a million dollars, would you be interested in hearing what that message is? All that and more in this video, make sure that you stick around to the very end, cuz we're gonna give away the $1 million checklist.
Nick Clason (12:46):
Like see how those are two completely different things when you pre-lim, that's how you can start your video. When you get up live in a room, you, you might get stuck into giving the announcement about Aunt Betty's bake sale. And, and that's not a bad thing. Like that's, that's not, uh, making you a bad communicator or anything. That's part of what it is to be a pastor, to keep people informed and whatever and whatnot. So make the intros of your video compelling. Now what if you are live streaming already and you, you do get the amp Betty Bake sales stuff? I think that you can drop a minute, 32nd to a minute, uh, separate video in front to do that hook stuff. Um, someone who's already maybe previewed or seen the message or someone who knows what's gonna come and you drop that in before you, uh, drop drop in the rest of the, the sermon video.
Nick Clason (13:40):
Um, now you might be asking like, well, what about worship? I do think that there's pro, there's value in li actual like live, live streaming, like on Sunday morning. But once that's over as far as like posting and indexing to YouTube, I would recommend posting the sermons separately in a separate playlist or a separate video. And when you do that, that's when you can drop that intro video in refrain from the habit of what churches are going to be notorious for, which is like pre-filing one, um, and using it every single week to save on time. I, I would recommend making it custom to what is actually being preached, what is actually being taught so that the hook, the intro is actually relevant to what the actual content of the message is. Not just a generic, Hey, welcome, glad you on our YouTube channel, blah, blah, blah.
Nick Clason (14:29):
No one cares about that, that's not interesting. They're swiping away to the next one. What are some other YouTube best practices? Uh, titling, titling really matters. So for the longest time I was working at church where we, um, were in different, like we would call them seasons, uh, to, to do the video thing, which was at least good, but we would just title it like, um, our show was called Unscripted. So we were titling it unscripted season two, episode four, um, you know, rubber ducky Night or whatever it was. And that titling sucked . It didn't help, it wasn't searchable, right? YouTube is built by Google. So YouTube is a search engine type of content. So a title like, is Hella Real Place dealing with crippling anxiety or is rest even possible in 2023? You see, all of those are much more captivating titles. And so just, uh, a lot of times you gotta think about this, a lot of times churches create a sermon series, um, with a name that's like got some mystery sort of woven into it.
Nick Clason (15:38):
Think about the way that pastors communicate, pastors communicate, where they try to hook you in. They try to hook a live studio audience alive, you know, seated, uh, uh, in auditorium type audience in, but they hold their, they hold their main point. They hold the ultimate thing that they're gonna try and the ultimate truth that they're trying to share till the very end. It's like sort of this like grand reveal. That's, that's a strategy for public speaking. However, think about the videos that you watch online. They tell you instantly right at the top what the video is gonna be. They, they leave some mystery still, yes, some intrigue, but they, they don't mess around. They don't start out slow with some story about their dog from the night before, whatever, whatever it is that, that pastors are notorious for doing. And I can say this cuz I'm a pastor, I was trained that way.
Nick Clason (16:33):
I lean that way. Uh, that's my natural inclination to teach that way. So I'm trying to get better at putting things on the front end as well as titling it. And so, but you'll even see churches like Elevation do this. Um, they'll clip Pastor Steven's message cuz he'll preach for a long time. They'll clip it down to that good window. Um, and then they'll retitle it, even if it's different from the sermon series. Because what you gotta understand is your sermon series may be a good title for an in-person congregation audience, but that may not, that may not index well on YouTube, which is a search platform. So retitling is a helpful, helpful thing. The meta-description matters. So just like the title, the meta description is pulling out keywords and words that you have in there. It plays a huge role in your, your rankings.
Nick Clason (17:20):
And if you link to things like your church's website or your social media or maybe even some products or things that you talk about in your video, that also helps. Tags are important. Um, they recommend tags that, that are included in your video that can relate back to the topic of your video. So all three of those factors, tags, titles and meta descriptions help your YouTube search content thumbnails. Uh, if you're on YouTube, I'm gonna put the, this screenshot right here. Look at Mr. Beast's, um, thumbnails. Okay? Um, so he actually spent some time crafting these, creating these. Obviously he has a team, but you can put more effort into your thumbnails that is also gonna help the clickability and the search rate. Uh, those, those things matter. Another thing is trends. And you can use a free tool like trends.google.com, uh, to look up some more searchable type words.
Nick Clason (18:15):
And so, uh, you can take some words and start, uh, playing with them and see how they rank with, with searchability and whatever and whatnot. And that's gonna help you title it. That might also help you, um, as you're titling it, then putting those words on your thumbnail. And so, um, I'll, I'll show a screenshot of what it looks like, um, and, and how that, how that works. But, um, it's just a pretty basic, like, it's just a basic tool where you can compare the searchability of two different types and styles of words. Uh, last thing is, uh, comments and shares. They have a positive corollary effect on your video. So the more that you can, um, encourage and ask for comments and maybe even drum some up is gonna be helpful. So those things help with your videos. Uh, also embedding your videos if you embed your YouTube video onto like, say your church website or something.
Nick Clason (19:04):
Videos that are embedded YouTube indexes and rates really well. So those things also help a lot. So what's our conclusion? Only conclusion. Uh, according to state of Mobile, 2020 two.com, users spend 23.7 hours a month using the YouTube app. So people in your church are spending time on YouTube. They may not be spending time on YouTube for the purposes of your church and maybe spending time on YouTube to change out faucets and sinks in their house. But nonetheless, you putting your message on YouTube puts you in a, uh, position to be discovered and, um, people to come across your content because we have been tasked with the mission of spreading and sharing God's word and his message to the ends of the earth. And so this me, this method helps really bring your, um, church's message into a hybrid space. Now, beyond just your Sunday sermons, don't forget there are other options of content.
Nick Clason (20:05):
There are, um, some, you know, like there are some other ideas, there are some other classes, there are some other types of, uh, uh, content that you can produce and create. But I would start at a bare minimum. If you just can start, I would definitely start getting your, your regular messages, the things that you're already spending time doing, as opposed to creating another thing or another piece of content. But the things you're already doing in the regular flow and rhythm of your week. Get that stuff created, get that stuff, um, out there for the world to see. Well, hey guys, once again, thank you so much for sticking around to the end of this video. I hope you found this helpful. Hey, listen, if you did, it would mean the world to me if you would give us a rating or a review or even better share it with a friend and make sure that if you have not yet go pick up our free ebook.
Nick Clason (20:56):
Have I already ruined my church's TikTok account? A complete guide to posting a TikTok from Scratch. Make sure you grab that. That would be an amazing gift to us. We would love it if you, um, used that and found that helpful in your context, whatever the, your context might be. And finally, make sure you head over to YouTube, subscribe to our YouTube channel There link is gonna be in the show notes because it is under my personal name. It's not under the ministry that is, um, we're just trying some stuff out. We may convert it, we may not. I dunno. We'll see. Uh, I'm not, I'm, I'm not that deep into it yet. Uh, finally, don't forget every single episode we have Transcript Hybrid Ministries, XY Z for that. Excited to be with you on this journey. In our next episode, we are going to be diving in to, uh, I believe gonna be diving into TikTok and talking about that. Uh, and that's where the inspiration from my ebook came from. So excited to have you in for that. Uh, excited to explain to you and talk to you about the ups and downs and the, the wide swirling things of the crazy app and platform known as TikTok. But hey, until next time, my friends will talk to you. Stay hybrid.
23 min
March 07, 2023 Episode 034: The Trailer to Preview the Complete 6-Step Church Social Media Framework for 2023 and Beyond
COMING SOON! Nick will soon be unveiling his complete 2023 church social media framework. In this short trailer episode of a podcast, Nick previews what is on the horizon!
Be sure you're subscribed so as soon as those podcasts drop, you're grabbing them in your podcast catcher!
SHOW NOTES
THE SHOW: https://www.hybridministry.xyz
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick
TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
3 min
March 02, 2023 Episode 033: Starting and Maintaining a Church YouTube channel in 2023
Ready to take your church or youth ministry to the next level? This is the video channel is for you! We believe that a strong online presence can make a significant difference in inspiring and connecting with people, and that's why we're here to share our expertise with you.
No expensive camera gear or elaborate setups required! With just your cell phone and less than $100 worth of accessible equipment, you can create compelling and professional-quality videos that will captivate your audience.
Together, let's harness the power of hybrid ministry to spread your ministry's message far and wide, making a positive impact on the lives of countless individuals.
Subscribe now and embark on this transformative journey with us!
START YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL WITH YOUR PHONE FOR LESS THAN $100
//Microphones For Android: USB-C
BLUETOOTH WIRELESS 2 MICROPONES:
https://amzn.to/43PSY4Z
(SAMPLE OF THIS MIC BEING USED: https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscreekstudents/video/7262687279548747050)
SHOTGUN MICROPHONE:
https://amzn.to/3qqgEyW
(SAMPLE OF THIS MIC BEING USED: https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscreekstudents/video/7257907545296162091)
//Microphones For iPhones
SHOTGUN MICROHPONE:
https://amzn.to/44RNPKX
BLUETOOTH WIRELESS 2 MICROPHONES:
https://amzn.to/45dRFhf
Tripods:
TABLE TOP TRIPOD:
https://amzn.to/455Cgzw
FULL TRIPOD:
https://amzn.to/3qfYVdy
BASIC LIGHTING
//Ring Light:
https://amzn.to/3Krn2wF
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Watch this Episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
Full Transcript and Links at: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/033
FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook
TIMECODES
00:00-01:46 Intro
01:46-08:50 Don't Sleep on YouTube
08:50-12:26 Recommended YouTube Strategy in 2023
12:26-16:45 Editing your YouTube Video
16:45-18:04 2023 Church YouTube Channel Gear Starter Kit
18:04-21:00 Turning your long-form content into social clips
21:00- 22:18 Turning viewers of Shorts into Subscribers and viewers of longer form videos
22:18-24:45 Utilizing YouTube videos for Hybrid Ministry
24:45-26:05 The added benefit of Pre-Filming
26:05-27:53 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:02):
Well, what is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode and YouTube video of the Hybrid Minister Show. Hop in the show notes to subscribe or check out the other platform. If you're not on YouTube or if you're not listening on a podcast. Excited to be with you today. My name is Nick Clason, and I, as always am your host. You know what we are going to be talking about today? Do not sleep on YouTube. We're gonna dive into that in just a minute. But before we do, make sure you hit the show notes hybridministry.xyz, episode 33. So at http://www.hybridministry.xyz/033 for all the show notes, especially in this episode, I'm gonna share some actual product links to some things that we're using. I'm not an affiliate or anything like that, but just, this is what we've done. This is what we've used, so make sure you go check that out as well as if you have not head to the, have I already ruined my church's TikTok account, A complete guide to posting a TikTok from Scratch.
Nick Clason (01:09):
And the reason I made this is because I want this to be a guide for anybody who's never even opened the TikTok app to a first be able to shoot and edit a TikTok, but then be able to cross post it to all the different platforms. Um, so go and check that out. That's a free gift from us to you. Hit the link in the show notes for that. Alright, everyone, glad to have you. Thanks for being here. If you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe and bell button. If you're on podcast, I'd love, we'd love to also ask you to hit that subscribe button. But let's dive into, don't Sleep on YouTube, episode 33. Here we go. Well, hey there everybody, and, uh, in this episode, like I said, I want to talk about Don't sleep on YouTube. Now, what does that mean? I think, um, at least in my sphere or whatever, like I think YouTube is like a little bit the forgotten child of social media.
Nick Clason (02:05):
I was talking on the phone this week to my brother, um, who's just getting started at a church and just getting started on his social media accounts. And he's like, so should we do TikTok? And I was like, yeah, for sure, but he is a youth pastor. Should we do Instagram? Like, yeah, yeah, you can do Instagram. Um, anything else is like YouTube. And he's like, YouTube, really? And I was like, yeah, YouTube, uh, here's why. YouTube is the either second or third, depending on how you look at it. Largest search engine. So, I mean, if, if it's not second, uh, behind Google, the argument is that it is third behind Google, Google Images, and then, uh, YouTube is third. And so, um, also YouTube is owned by Google. And so, um, all three of those are owned, you know, by the same person people place.
Nick Clason (02:53):
And so the search engine is going to, um, be tied to a Google, uh, a strength of a Google type search engine. So it's, it's not going to be a small bananas like TikTok is trying to, uh, acutely turn themselves into more of a search engine type platform. And like, that's fine, but it's not powered by Google. You know what I mean? It's powered by by TikTok. And so TikTok was good at making vertical viral style videos. YouTube is owned by the largest, best and most powerful search engine in the entire world. So YouTube has some strength and some weight behind it. In addition to that, uh, YouTube has recently, um, burst onto the scene with shorts. I don't know the last time you logged into your mobile app on YouTube, but there'll be a couple of widescreen long form classic YouTube video recommendations, um, in one, two, or three of the first spots.
Nick Clason (03:52):
But then right beneath that is a list of shorts. It's similar to the Instagram app. Now if you're scrolling through all the square pictures, but then it'll suggest some reels. That's what YouTube is now doing with shorts. And about a year or so ago, I, um, I gave up on YouTube shorts cuz I posted a few and they got like one or two likes and or views, like just, it was useless. And, uh, it was the clunkiest between TikTok, Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. Of those four, it was the Clunkiest, uh, to post of all of them. And also it has the shortest window for shorts. So like TikTok now, um, will offer like an up to three minute video. And for some people creators or something, I'm not sure who gets this. Um, some people can post up to like 10 minute videos. So Rios has now got a longer length on Instagram.
Nick Clason (04:44):
However, on Facebook it's shorter, which doesn't make any sense why like those two who are both owned by Meta wouldn't communicate and talk to themselves. Uh, YouTube still only has a one minute, um, clip option. So anytime I'm making any sort of vertical video content, if I want to post it to YouTube, I need to ensure that it's a minute or less. Um, but that's usually not that hard. Um, and so like even yesterday I posted on our, um, TikTok, we did one of those blind rankings. I had, uh, a girl, um, who's one of our worship leaders at our church that leads a lot in our ministry. I had her do a blind ranking of NFL teams based only on the logo. Cause she doesn't know anything about sports. And, uh, I'm dating myself a little bit, but we posted that on Super Bowl Sunday thinking that'd be, you know, like a funny thing to kind of play off of like the Super Bowl thing, vibe or whatever.
Nick Clason (05:35):
Um, and when she recorded it on TikTok, she recorded it for like a minute and 30 seconds. So I had to go and I had to cut it and shave it down. I did that all in the TikTok app. Um, but then when I was able to then take that link and post it on YouTube, it was less than a minute. So I was able to go on YouTube shorts and I had a decision moment there. Do I just post this on, um, TikTok and Instagram reels or do I do the work, cut it, chop it down to be able to get it over to, to YouTube. Here's the interesting thing about that particular video, you never know because especially when you're posting the four platforms, one might like blow up on one and get like one view over on another platform, but in this case, that video performed best on YouTube, believe it or not.
Nick Clason (06:20):
And so from about a year ago when I first started, um, posting on YouTube, they are much more, uh, they've done a lot more work, I think, on their backend to make shorts a little bit more viable. When I first started posting shorts on our churches student ministry YouTube page, we didn't do that until the very first of this year. We were changing our name in 2023. And so I already had the YouTube channel for Cross Creek students. Um, and I didn't want to start a YouTube channel for first Colville students and switch them over. I just, I wanted to get a clean start from everything, logo, handle, the whole thing. Cuz YouTube's the one i, I know the the least, right? I didn't want any issues. And honestly, even like right now, our TikTok is still under at first Colville students because TikTok holds, um, those names longer, um, to let them become available.
Nick Clason (07:14):
I, I already had a Cross Creek students account on TikTok. I owned it. Um, and I deleted it hoping that within 30 days they would give it to me part, not hoping only for hop's sake, but also because that's what they said that they would do. But then when I did more research, if someone deletes their account, they hold it for four months until it becomes available again. Or at least that's what someone said on Reddit somewhere. So we're gonna see, um, one day we'll change that over. But nonetheless, I digress. I didn't start posting on YouTube until January 1st, 2023, uh, because of the name change thing. And it is now, again, dating myself when this was, uh, recorded versus when it's gonna be aired live. But it's February 13th and we have over 70 subscribers on YouTube. We post a once weekly long form video clip.
Nick Clason (08:04):
Um, and so we have maybe 10, I wanna say something like that. Um, long form longer than 10 minute video clips. Um, the rest we just post are normal three day, three a day, um, short form video content that we also posted, TikTok that we also posted to reels we posted over on YouTube. And we have over 70 subscribers that is easily the fastest growing social media platform of all the other platforms that we're using. Um, we are reaching new and different people on YouTube than we are on TikTok than we are on Instagram. TikTok is probably the second fastest growing. Um, and by far the slowest are Instagram and Facebook. They're just, they're not there yet. So what do we do on YouTube? What is my recommended YouTube strategy? Now and foremost, if you're a church and you're already using YouTube as a container or a holder or a storage platform for your live stream Sunday sermon, uh, Sunday services, uh, that's great.
Nick Clason (09:07):
I would recommend continuing to do that. If you're just getting started and you don't have the money or the gear or the infrastructure or the desire or the know-how, or whatever other myriad of reasons why it might be difficult for you to get your service up onto YouTube, then here's what I recommend. Pre film your messages sitting down in front of a camera, very similar to what I'm doing right here. For those of you who are not subscribed to our YouTube channel, we're watching it there. What I am doing now, sitting in front of a camera, talking directly into it, pre film your content, why I talked about this in previous episodes, and so I'll, I'll ensure that I go link to that. I think it was in like a three part episode, so it'll be behind some other stuff, but I'll link to it.
Nick Clason (09:51):
Um, YouTube indexes videos that, uh, and and videos that perform the best are those videos that are between, uh, 12 minutes and 17 minutes. Um, a Sunday sermon, typically 30 to 45 minutes, um, somewhere in that range. And if you're including the worship and the announcements and all the other stuff, you're church service is probably somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. Um, and YouTube measures and tracks watch time and retention rates and drop off rates. And so the longer your video, that's, that's good. Okay? It's good to have a long video, but if people aren't staying for the whole video, it's gonna actually be a ding against you. The other thing that you get to do with, um, a pre-filed message, uh, is that you get to, you get to make it accustom and, and tailor the message for people online only you all know, and you've all been there, especially as we've moved from Covid d whereas like digital only into back to in person.
Nick Clason (10:56):
You've all probably noticed and known the hybrid struggle that there's been where you're talking to, you know, during Covid, you're talking directly to a camera that worked really well, but then you're talking to a room and also some people behind the camera, and now you're probably talking to a room and less people behind the camera. And so when you pre-filed, you're able to talk directly to the people that you know that are gonna be watching and consuming this on YouTube with your in-person sort of being the secondary or sitting in the back seat of the purpose of that, that video, right? And so, uh, YouTube, you guys know this. You've watched it before. They even like probably make fun of it or make memes out of it, right? But the whole thanks for being here, watch it like it subscribe, make sure you hit that bell.
Nick Clason (11:40):
You can do all of those things when you prefill the message. Why do we do those things? Why do YouTubers do those things? Because they actually work. Believe it or not. Uh, if you just watch a video or someone just as a video versus if you tell them to and subscribe, like comment below, you'll actually see a, a noticeable uptick in those things happening if you just ask them to do it. And so that's one of the advantages of sitting down pre-filing your message. You can make it shorter. Uh, you can make it fit into what's preferred for YouTube. You can speak directly to an online audience, someone that you know is going to be consuming your message in an online forum, an online first type forum. And you can, uh, tailor your message in that that way. All right, so let's get nitty gritty.
Nick Clason (12:28):
So what do I do? What do I use? Uh, so for phones, believe it or not, I'm an Android guy. Um, and so I am filming this video and, and, um, I film all of my other, uh, videos that I pre-filed people with on a Google Pixel Pro seven. That's the one that they, uh, you know, put on, you know, commercials and stuff where you can do the magic eraser, take people out of the background, stuff like that. I tried that last night actually for the very first time I was watching the Super Bowl and they're advertising for it. And I was like, oh yeah, I have that phone. Let me see if I can actually do that. And so I did. Um, but the camera is top of the line for cell phone cameras. Um, it's, it's not a camera camera, right? Um, and so it's, it's got its limitations for sure.
Nick Clason (13:14):
Uh, but it's the phone I also use for my personal use. And so because I use it for my personal use and I use it for my, uh, filming and stuff, I, I invested in it personally so that I can use it for things both at work and stuff like this I'm using for the podcast or whatever. So I just use my cell phone for church has, um, a budget and they're not willing or able or whatever to invest in livestream. Look no further than the camera in your pocket. It is probably better than most, uh, most like most cameras that we had access to even like five years ago. It's crazy. So what do I do after I film it? Well, I use the Adobe Suite Creative Cloud. My church, uh, pays for that. It's like $55 a month. Um, I think for a business license, and let me just say, I think it's worth it.
Nick Clason (14:04):
There are other free programs and you can nickel and dime your way away from those things, but for like editing purposes, it's really helpful and useful. Now, most computer softwares have a free video editing, um, service and you, you can get by with some stuff. Uh, but they're just like, all those free, all those free things are all those things that are not like a part of the, you know, like industry standard. They're just, they're gonna have shortcomings and they're gonna have things that you wish they had that they don't have, or services that they offer that they just aren't able to offer because they're not free. I always think about the time, one of the churches I worked at that I got, I got really into design, um, and like making graphics. That was like one of the things I, I kind of became the Sunday morning slide graphic maker.
Nick Clason (14:50):
Um, and I, I learned how to do all of that in PowerPoint, but then there were just shortcomings. Like I, for example, I couldn't make a round background with transparent outlines around it. Why? Because that's a Photoshop thing, right? And there's some free programs out there that do it. And now even with things like Canva and whatnot, um, that are even much more prominent than when I started doing it. But I remember asking my, my boss to ask the finance committee if we could please spring for the Adobe Creative Cloud, um, Adobe Creative Suite. Um, and he just, he was unwilling to pay the money at the time. And so I was doing a lot of things, but I just, I, there was always limits to what I could do in PowerPoint versus in Photoshop. And so that's what I'll say, yes, you can, Jimmy Rig and Jerry rigger way around a lot of things.
Nick Clason (15:40):
But, um, and sim this is the same conversation by the way we're just having with the camera. Like my cell phone does a fine job, but like, there are still limitations to it. And so there's always a, an upgrade that you can always make. So you just gotta figure out where and how you wanna spend the money. And so, um, we use Adobe Creative, the Adobe Creative Suite in many more facets and, and you know, places than just, uh, for YouTube videos. But I use Adobe Premiere Pro because it, it links really well with the Adobe Photoshop in Adobe After Effects. Um, and I don't use After Effects for every edit. I use it for like, some initial things for some lower thirds and some animated graphics and stuff like that, that I just store and have and put, you know, places when I'm editing.
Nick Clason (16:27):
Um, so I'll, I'll use it like for the first time or for the first few videos to get a a, a library of some things. But for the most part, when I'm editing, I'm just using Adobe Premier, um, pro and Adobe Photoshop. And they, they talk really well together cuz they're both in the same creative cloud. So what did I get? So in addition to my phone, I have like a ring light. Um, I, I bought a tripod, a desk tripod as well as a full standing tripod. Um, and I bought two style microphones. I bought two lapels that connect via Bluetooth. They just plug right into my phone. Um, and I bought a shotgun style microphone that plugs into like the charging port of my phone. And I'll tell you what, what I'll do is I will throw all of those links into the show notes.
Nick Clason (17:16):
Now, keep in mind they are for, um, like Android connections and so if, if you don't have one of those and you have an iPhone or whatever, there are all the same things for iPhones as well. So you can see what I got and you can then, uh, take that and, uh, adjust your recommendation toward, uh, an iPhone thing. And so that microphone, uh, is probably the best investment, I would say of all the things. It just, it has really good quality, it's really easy to use. Um, and it just makes the video sound just a little bit better and a little bit more professional using the microphone. That way it's, it's not a microphone like this, uh, like this podcast mic that I have for those of you watching, um, it plugs directly into my phone and I can shoot it right at whoever, um, is looking at my phone or at the camera.
Nick Clason (18:05):
All right, so then how do I use, uh, then how do I use that strategy for social? So when I'm editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, um, I find two spots to create just vertical video message clips. Um, I clip 'em out. I, I try to find a good hook. If the person, myself or any of our other, uh, people on our team don't have a good hook, I will have them talk for a little bit, pause and I'll fly in some text and I'll do an AI voiceover. Um, and the place that I've been using for that AI voiceover is, um, a place called V V E E V E E d.io, uh, v and also I'll drop that in the show notes as well. Um, and I, all those AI ones similar to what I was saying earlier, uh, they, they require a payment, right?
Nick Clason (18:56):
They require you, like you can get one, but then you gotta start paying if you want more than one per one per week or something like that. I can't remember. Uh, but v do IO so far has been working well, I'm gonna anticipate it one day, it's not gonna work, and I'm gonna have to pay for an AI voice generator. Um, and that's just that classic, like, that's really popular on TikTok right now. I don't know how long that will be, but for right now, that works well as a hook. So like, I might be talking pause, AI voice come in, and then it keeps, uh, and then it plays the rest of the thing and the AI voice works as a hook. And then the rest of the video in under 60 seconds hopefully delivers when you're editing an Adobe Premier Pro, you can create an in and an out by just clicking the I while you're in your sequence and an o for I in and o for out.
Nick Clason (19:44):
And then you can just render that out, um, just that little section. So in that little section, I'll chop it up real a lot. You know, like, I'll make it real quick. Jump cuts, I'll zoom in, zoom out, like for emphasis and whatnot, I'm able to add captions directly in Adobe Premier Pro, um, and, and use it that way. So, uh, that I will chop that up. I'll chop up two of those, and then I'll also do one of those videos I've talked about and, um, with just like stock motion video background in the background, um, motion video background thing with like a tweet tweet looking screenshot over top of it as, as like a quote from the message or a bottom line. And so I'll, I'll use three different sermon style clips, um, sprinkled in and woven in through our social media throughout the week.
Nick Clason (20:32):
So like, we meet on Wednesday nights. So I have one that goes live on Thursday morning from the pre-recorded YouTube video content. I have one that goes on Sunday morning. I usually do that as like the, the quote post. And then I have one that goes on Tuesday, uh, the day before next message would be preached, or our video goes live in the room on a Wednesday night. So that is my, that's how I use my social media strategy. Um, and how I weave that into our schedule. On the end of those social media videos, I use just a YouTube subscribe ender screen. And so this is probably my favorite part is because we pre-filed and have longer form, uh, YouTube messages, if someone does in a discoverability algorithm stumble across our message, it will then, uh, fade to a screen that says, watch the full message on YouTube.
Nick Clason (21:24):
I like that because I think that when there is an actual like strategy or place to push people to, if they do discover you, um, we talked about it in the vi in the u in the podcast last week that a lot of Gen Z more than more than 50% say they use short form platforms to find short form videos of things that they may want to watch longer form of later. And so, uh, I use that and say, Hey, go watch the full message over on YouTube, then go click the link link bio, you know, something like that, uh, to take them to the full message of the short clip that they just watched. And so that's one of the ways that it's not just about going viral, it's not just about vanity metrics. It's not just about getting a lot of views, but it's hopefully about taking people from an awareness of us to consuming some more messages of us or that we are able to produce.
Nick Clason (22:19):
Now, this is my favorite part because our podcast is called Hybrid Ministry, but what are ways that we use this in a hybrid style? So I say we pre-record, um, and so we do a message on Wednesday Night Live. We pre-record it, um, post it on YouTube when we meet on Sunday mornings, uh, well actually first when we meet on Wednesday nights, we provide a you version live events, uh, event on, on their phones so they can navigate and interact in you version that can take notes, they can read the, the scripture, they can follow along with the outline basically. But then at the end of it, you can push and produce some external links. So a lot of times I will link to a short, a YouTube short, um, or a long form YouTube video that relates to the topic that we're teaching with.
Nick Clason (23:07):
So that's a way that something that we're do, that someone's experiencing in the room, they can experience a hybrid relationship with us, with our social media, with our platforms, um, through that YouVersion events. The other thing that we do is on Sunday mornings, um, our students all come in for a big into the auditorium for a big look announcement time, real quick, five, 10 minutes, not, not much longer. And then we break them out into the small groups all throughout the building. Um, what we're able to do, because our Sunday morning small group ties to our Wednesday night message is now that we're pre-filing, I've been pulling a minute or two clip from the message, um, and playing it. And so like I've told you before, we have a team of three. And so oftentimes whoever is teaching on Wednesday is not the person doing announcements or, or hosting the room on Sunday morning.
Nick Clason (24:01):
Um, and so, and like yesterday, uh, my boss, he preached on Wednesday and we played his clip and he's on vacation, but he was still able to, you know, uh, tee up the morning and, and still give a moment of spiritual influence to the entire room because we're using this message, uh, that we've already, we already have in the can. We already pre-filed it, it already exists somewhere. So for those kids who don't get, don't come on Wednesday and don't get to hear him speak ever, um, it's an opportunity to to introduce them to him, to introduce him to, to introduce them to his style, for them to hear from him. Not just in giving announcements, but also in giving the actual message content. Finally, my favorite reason for not sleeping on YouTube and the added benefit of pre-filing is it gets you into your content sooner and it gives you, uh, just an opportunity to prep, um, before you're gonna take it live to your room before you're gonna stand up and preach it.
Nick Clason (25:04):
And so I think it's valuable that you're not flying in hot on a Wednesday, having, uh, just printed something from a pre-canned curriculum and then just grabbing the outline notes. I think it's good to have ingested it, digested it, um, wrestled with it, interacted with it, and so then by the time you get up there, you're more familiar with it, it's gonna probably be delivered much more naturally because you have a familiarity with your outline and with your message as opposed to just you seeing it now for the first time. And doing it this way, we've pre-filed our messages on the Thursday before they're preached. And so our people are interacting with the message, um, the whole week before they even get up and preach live. And so by the time they get up there, it's gonna be locked in, in their brains and their hearts, hopefully at a lot better level, uh, just by the forced nature of needing to be ready to pre film their YouTube content.
Nick Clason (26:05):
Well, hey everyone, I am thrilled that you stuck around to the end. Thanks so much for hanging out. Uh, if you found this helpful, please share it, rate it, drop a like, uh, all kinds of stuff. All those things help us do better indexing on YouTube in the podcast algorithms and whatever and whatnot. Uh, and so that would be greatly appreciated out of us as a token of our appreciation, we have created a couple of free resources for you. So if you head to the link in the show notes and go grab the, uh, TikTok, uh, have I ruined my TikTok account for doing that. We will also throw in our completely free social media checklist, what you need to be asking yourself every time you post to every platform. Um, but what we don't have on that one is YouTube. You know why? Because when I created it, I was sleeping on YouTube.
Nick Clason (26:53):
Don't sleep on YouTube. It's gonna be helpful, beneficial, it's the largest search engine of all the social medias that we have out there. And it is, it is worth investing in. So regardless of where your church is big, small, have a lot of money, have a lot of gear, don't like, there is a way to make it happen. So I would recommend getting in there, create it, make it hybrid. There are more ways to flush even that hybridization out. But for now, go back and listen to everything I just said for what we're doing to live and lean into a hybrid, digital, physical environment to help point our students closer to Jesus. Again, thanks so much for hanging out. Uh, follow me on, uh, TikTok, follow me on YouTube, uh, subscribe to this podcast and we will be sure to talk next time. Don't forget, stay hybrid.
28 min
February 23, 2023 Episode 032: The YouTube Trends Report and What Churches need to do about it for 2023 and Beyond
In this episode, Nick combs through the 2022 YouTube Culture Trends report and dissects interesting things that YouTube discovered. To add onto that, we discuss what the digital and hybrid ministry implications should be for churches as they move deeper into 2023 and the future.
How does the church shift the way it approaches ministry, not to diminsh or downplay the unchangable truths or things of Scripture, but to best set them up for relevance with Gen Z, Millenials and the next Generation of Church attenders? Listen or watch to find out!
SHOWNOTES
YouTube Trends Report: https://www.youtube.com/trends/report/
Nick on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
Nick on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Nick's Podcast: https://www.hybridministry.xyz
Full Transcript of this Show: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/032
TIMECODES
00:00-00:54 Intro
00:54-03:27 2022 YouTube Trends Report
03:27-06:22 What does all of this mean?
06:22-11:35 The Pop Culture Formation Formula
11:35-18:07 Creating Community Creativity
18:07-23:11 Multi Format Creativity
23:11-25:18 Response Creativity
25:18-28:26 The Future Exists in Dialogue of Digital Communities
28:26-32:09 The Digital and Hybrid Implications for the church moving into 2023
32:09-34:18 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:03):
Well, what is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast, and now on YouTube. Excited to be with you all. We're gonna test out a couple of video options here. See how these go. I know it'll go fine. Mostly I'm testing to see how much extra work it's gonna be. But would love to have you join us over there if you want to check out for video stream as well. Something that is just another option. So we have audio, we have video, um, but everything, the home base for it is hybridministry.xyz of course, cuz hybridministry.com was taken. So I'm your host, Nick Clason, excited to be with you. And in today's episode, what I actually wanted to discuss was this idea of why should churches even care about digital and hybrid ministry? Like what is the purpose?
Nick Clason (01:03):
We all saw the pitfalls downfalls and the reasons why digital ministry was not a good example. Um, it was not a good thing, um, during Covid. And so we are now past Covid. We're able to live in a more semi-normal world. Why in the world should churches even care about digital? So let's go ahead and let's get this episode underway. So let's talk about some assumptions, right? Like, I think that there are some general social media specific assumptions that say that social media is void of relationship, right? Like, the point of it is, I, I I don't know, right? Like the point of it is maybe to to post, uh, post some announcements, um, and try and drum up some external, some marketing, um, marketing, so to speak, uh, examples of people who might not go to our church and we want to get them connected to our church.
Nick Clason (02:08):
But there's an assumption that like the real, the main thing that's gonna work is gonna be relationships of people to people inviting one another. Let me just say that, um, I've been doing student ministry social media now for 12 years, and never once has anyone of the accounts that I've ever run really gone viral, so to speak. Like we've never had more than like an inordinate amount of followers, never had more like a thousand followers. I have had a couple Instagram accounts with more than a thousand followers, but honestly like, that was not from anything that I, or we were doing. That was more an inherited thing where the Instagram account already had a high level of followers and we were just sort of like the beneficiaries of that account already having a lot of followers. So my point is nothing we did really drummed up a lot of outside interest.
Nick Clason (03:03):
Okay. And so this assumption that social media is not relationship based and you know, the purpose of it is to, you know, get people from the outside looking in. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that is, I think that's, I think that's a benefit. I think that, um, like we said in the last episode, the church is in a unique intersection where what you post can be both discovered by the people that go to your church, but also because of the new discovery algorithms, which this is probably why in my 12 years we haven't seen this, because these new algorithms that are being made famous by TikTok and then adopted by Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube on reels and shorts are, um, new. Like this is a new territory for churches because previously your people followed your pages and your accounts, and if you wanted more people to follow it, you had to pay for it.
Nick Clason (03:52):
And I've, I have never done that. And so my accounts never really did that, where there were like a lot of people coming to discover our accounts. And so now we are in a unique intersection where people might actually discover your church. And what's more interesting is that all of these algorithms, there's a uniqueness where they start out geographically local. So first the algorithm from what we've learned is they're pumped out to your followers, which are then pumped out to their followers, which are then pumped out to the, uh, like your geographical region, which is why a lot of times you can geotag your posts on Instagram, on TikTok, and so you can put your city, and so the people in your city might be exposed to your information first, and then beyond that it'll, you know, go to the state and viral and whatever the case might be.
Nick Clason (04:44):
But, but the reality is, the, the closer that you are, the more likely that the people around you are gonna find it. And so therefore, if people in your geographical region are discovering your videos, there is an actual chance that they might hear the message of Jesus from you and then take a step to become a visitor or a first timer at your church. I mean, wouldn't that be amazing? Wouldn't that, wouldn't that be one of the goals that we're looking for here? Um, and again, like I said, I haven't experienced that in a lot of cases, and I think that's because that really wasn't an option up here until very recently. Um, however, there's still the argument that like, no one's gonna come to our church based off of that. And that might be true. And I think that it depends on your style of church, if you're, um, a more of an outreach centric church that you want that.
Nick Clason (05:34):
And so you're gonna be more gung-ho about this idea. And if you're more of a discipleship centric church, which tends to be a little more inward facing, um, not because you believe that that's more valuable and more important, but that just tends to be the vibe, um, that comes with it, then you are gonna prioritize some of those relationships more over, um, like, like cold leads or, or, you know, top of a funnel marketing type of terminology to borrow from the secular world. So, um, all that to be said, there's this assumption, there's this notion that social media, um, and social ministry is void of real relationships. And I would just, I would debunk that and say that I think that that's not entirely true. Um, I agree to a point that it can be done that way and, um, that, that this ministry, that this focus in your church needs some very particular and very, um, deliberate attention.
Nick Clason (06:34):
Like it cannot just, in my personal opinion, it cannot be put on autopilot anymore. It cannot be put on the back burner. There needs to be a person more than a volunteer and more than someone's like, uh, section of their full-time hours devoted to social media. Like you probably need a full-on person, um, not someone to do double duty. Like, like even right now, um, I am a youth pastor, but I'm like on a team of three and of the three, I'm the one tasked with digital and video and social media, website, whatever, right? Like that in and of itself is a full-time job. And sometimes my youth ministry duties have actually, like, you know, this week I had to make calls to interview students about baptism, um, and we're onboarding a bunch of new students to volunteer. Like sometimes those things feel like they're in the way of my digital stuff and that, that's out of balance for me personally.
Nick Clason (07:34):
Um, but that's my point in saying that this digital of it's all consuming, it just takes up such a gigantic portion and it it is vast and it is huge. And, um, and there's a lot of opportunity and there's a lot of potential. And so to just dump it on someone as like a, hey, 10 hours of your week, like it's, that is so hard. It's gonna be very difficult for that person to be able to, you know, to make, to make, uh, that 10 hours work for them the way that you're probably hoping that it would work. So in Covid, right, we learned that we're not built to be completely isolated. And so just social, um, and that's, that's the whole, that's the whole origin of this podcast is I felt like we were debating, um, when I started this podcast in late 2022, I guess mid 2022, um, we were debating between in-person ministry and digital ministry, especially where I was, we had, we were still working and operating out of a lot of the rules that we had built for C O V with the show that we had made for C O V D.
Nick Clason (08:38):
Like, we hadn't let that go. We were still producing it weekly. Um, and we had found a way to pivot from strictly online to a more in-person model where groups watched it in host homes. Um, and then they discussed the, the message afterwards. And I thought it was incredibly ingenious and innovative. Um, but there were a lot of people in our church that that didn't, and they were ready to just quote unquote go back. And, you know, we had a, a marketing guy, and if you listen to some of our first, I think like seven episodes, um, Matt was actually the co-host of this podcast. Uh, we both made cross-country moves. And, um, I, I don't know what happened to him. I never got him back, really. I mean, we still talk, but he would keep saying like, yeah, yeah, I just gotta get my computer set up, gotta get my computer set up.
Nick Clason (09:22):
And eventually I was like, all right, Matt's not getting his computer set up. I'm just, I I got a produce weekly episode, so I can't wait on him anymore, right? So, uh, here we are and I'm just kinda doing this thing. Anyway, besides point Matt marketing, honestly, genius guru in my opinion. He said, the world we live in is now hybrid. In fact, Barna did a study, we did a couple episodes on it, I'll link to them in the show notes, um, did a couple episodes on the findings that we found from Barna study, and they, they titled it the, the state of hybrid church or something like that. And what it said, what it found was that especially the younger generations, the generations that are going to be filling our pews and churches here in the next couple years, gen Z and millennials said a hybrid, um, version of church is going to suit them very well.
Nick Clason (10:11):
What that often scares us with on two fronts is, number one, it feels like we're shifting away from in person. And I think a lot of times in person, and I've talked about this multiple times, I think a lot of times in person, room or moment or feeling is for the, the vanity of the pastor, and not even in like a sinful or bad way, but just like, man, getting up in front of a room full of people feels really good and you feel like you feel like you've done something and you've been somewhere and there's, there's a shot of like adrenaline into your like arm every time you get up there to preach. Even I, I find myself like finding more value from preaching to a live room of, of humans with interaction, um, like just, you know, face-to-face interaction. Um, then I, then I do from a, a TikTok video that goes viral wave over like 3000 something views.
Nick Clason (11:02):
Like, it just, it doesn't feel the same. And I get it. And you know what? I don't know that it is the same. I think you have a much more captive audience, even in a room of a few hundred than you do, um, with a, a short form under 62nd video that that has over a thousand something views, right? All that to be said, I'm not proposing that, that you throw one quote unquote baby out with a bathwater. We live in a hybrid world, right? So I found this stat incredibly fascinating. 76% of American surveyed ha uh, have a friend that they've met online only they've never met in person. Right? Now, you might be thinking, how is that possible? Again, if you're older, think younger generations gaming and, and you know, chat rooms and whatever and whatnot. Like of course in the nineties chat rooms were pedophiles want to hang out, and they probably still do, right?
Nick Clason (11:55):
But, but 76% of Americans have a friend in some way, shape or form gaming social media that they've never met in person. Like I have an anecdotal real example. I have a friend named Dan that, um, for the first three to six months of our life, or not life of our relationship life, , uh, it was strictly online. Uh, many of you know I've told this story, but I started at my last church on day one of Covid and went immediately into lockdown. So the number of real live human beings at my church that I met was very, very small. The number of real life human beings that I met on Zoom after that was very, very large. And, um, you know, I had met a decent number of the staff, at least from my interview or on my first day on the job, but then to meet other people.
Nick Clason (12:49):
And Dan was a, just a regular church attender volunteer who led a, a hybrid, not hybrid, actually strictly online small group. I had a relationship with Dan. Um, and, and he even said, he's like, you are like the poster child for me, or the poster example of what it looks like for somebody who, uh, says like, you can't make friends with someone online. He's like, we totally made friends, you know, with each other online. And so these are examples, both empirical data. 76% of Americans say, I have a friend with someone who's completely online. And even in my own life, like I would say I had a real relationship with him, um, it would've been great to be sitting in the same living room or whatever, but at the same time, you know what, every Tuesday night, I just got my laptop out in the comfort of my own home brew, a cup of my own coffee that I personally enjoyed more than like a cake cup that someone was gonna gimme at their house.
Nick Clason (13:49):
And we sat down for small group. And you know, what was funny was like our church would do this thing where like you'd watch the live stream on YouTube, and this was the archetype for our student ministry. The group's team of course, stole it, but we'd watch the video on YouTube, and then everyone would log in to their campus specific zooms via a link in the description, and then a moderator there would break everyone out into breakout rooms. So they would sort of have control over the entire call, and then they would give a warning after like an hour or so that all the groups would, uh, be, be closing down by the moderator who's just literally sitting there out in the waiting room, just kinda waiting for people to be kicked out of their breakout rooms and reassign them or whatever. Super boring job I've done a million times youth ministry.
Nick Clason (14:33):
Uh, so a couple times those ended and we, our entire small group just jumped off and got into our very own room, and had group until like 11 or 12. We weren't, you know, at that point we weren't talking about spiritual stuff. We were just joking around, goofing off, having fun, whatever, right? My point is, relationships can exist in an online space. You just have to be deliberate. You just have to be intentional, and you have to be able, willing, willing to massage those relationships. So let's talk about, um, some hybrid ways that relationships can exist.
Nick Clason (15:14):
So some of you might know this, um, but a couple weeks ago, my, my wife's mom, my mother-in-law, uh, passed away from a two plus year long battle with cancer. It was, it was rough, man, like, not gonna lie, but, um, the thing I wanna kind of extract or highlight is the moment that the day that she passed away and that it became more public because of social media. Again, another example, um, my phone was flooded with text messages. My wife's phone was flooded like threefold, tenfold with text messages. Um, every single one of those people were people that we had met in person at one moment in time or another, whether they be a family member, whether they'd be a friend, whether they'd be a former colleague or work associate from another job that we'd been at. They'd all been people we'd met in real life person before.
Nick Clason (16:12):
However, the relationship at that moment existed in a hybrid space. Very few people in that exact moment were with us. I mean, I, I had to drive from Texas all the way back to Ohio, so the only people with me were me and my two kids. Um, and her, she was with her sister and with some family friends, and then everybody else reached out and provided love and care and support via text message that that is an example of a hybrid relationship. You know what I mean? Um, and, and some people were people that I work with now at the church I'm at at now. Other people were people I worked, worked with in the past that reached out either way, right? Like they're all people I knew, but they're all showing up for me in a hybrid way. So, uh, I wanna talk about a few, uh, examples of like other businesses that we might interact with in the world in with hybrid sort of interactions.
Nick Clason (17:22):
Let's dive in examples of real life hybrid interactions. My favorite of this is Home Depot, right? I interact with Home Depot at the store level. I drive up, I go into the store, I grab 98 cents of plumbing tape, right? Uh, that's an example of me interacting with Home Depot at a physical level. Okay? All right. So another example of course is me interacting with Home Depot at an online level. I might go on the website and I might see how much of a certain item is in stock that, but I'm not in the store. I'm completely in my house. I'm looking at all my computer on the app, but the, the app actually is my favorite feature. When I'm in the store. I almost never, like, if I walk around in the store for like more than two minutes and I can't figure out where an item might be, I immediately pull up the app, which often I've uninstalled from my phone, so I reinstall it.
Nick Clason (18:25):
Then I like, almost, the first thing I do when I walk into Home Depot is begin to reinstall the Home Depot app, find my local Home Depot, the one I'm physically standing in, and then I look that item up, whatever it is, to try and find it, and then it'll tell me exactly where it is, what aisle, what bay, and how many more they have in stock. I love that feature. That's hybrid. I'm in person, I'm in the store, but I'm interacting with a digital piece of technology, uh, you know, for my relationship with Home Depot. Another o another example is a dentist office, right? You go to a physical visit. But I love when a service like this has a great website, especially for being able to book appointments or being able to reach out. This last week, I brought my car to an auto mechanic shop.
Nick Clason (19:13):
I called them, not there, called them, right? That's an example of me from my house calling them. That's old school technology. You get it right? Then I show up, I'm in their office. But then when I was done, you know what they did? They sent me a text message to let me know that my car was ready. You see all these things, and I, I think like in a lot of ways, like when we talk about digitization or hybridization of church and of ministry, we don't even know what that looks like. So right now, in a lot of ways that's social media, that's video content, but the reality is like, some of this is uncharted territory. So for 2023, for right now, for someone just starting out, what are some examples? What are some ways that your church can live and exist in hybrid ministry?
Nick Clason (20:01):
All right, so like I said, I think a little bit of this is like pioneering uncharted territory, pilgrim's progress. Like, we don't know some of these answers, but, um, what are some examples of ways that your church can, uh, live and and be hybrid? So the first one is probably the most obvious one, and probably the easiest one, I would say is your Sunday sermon. Okay? So what are ways that your Sunday sermon can exist in a hybrid space? Well, first and foremost, right? You can, while someone is sitting in the auditorium, they can interact with and engage with your sermon notes, or they can interact and engage with, um, some self-guided like outlines or ways for them to take notes. So, like in my church, my pastor puts his notes on our church app. Um, it's honestly, it's essentially probably the manuscript that he's up there preaching with as I've looked at it.
Nick Clason (20:58):
Like, it's very thorough. Um, and my guess is that that's like a, that's a workload decision, right? Like he already built this. So if he just copy, if, if they or someone just copy and paste and put this into the app, uh, that's not that much more work for him. My personal favorite example is the you version events feature. So in everyone's you version Bible app that most people have downloaded on their phones, if not, definitely recommend it. Cause again, it's another way to interact with people in a hybrid way. Um, there's an events tab that you can create, like a self-guided sort of outline, and then people can, can take and add notes to certain headers or certain bible verses, um, that, that are related to or interact with the passage. And then they can also link out to like videos or other, like further discussions.
Nick Clason (21:51):
One of the things I try to do is I try to challenge myself to add one option of a, a link out from a u version event for deeper study or for more information, or for a longer YouTube video that I didn't, you know, didn't have time to show or didn't have time to look like fully, you know, unpack. I try to challenge myself to do that every week. Again, to just think hybrid, right? Brady Shearer has made this phrase famous, but the other, the additional 167 hours of somebody's week. So then beyond that moment, beyond that Sunday service, um, you can of course rip out the audio. Um, if you're already live streaming, um, you can have live stream, you can post those videos to YouTube. You can, uh, long form podcast content on a podcast feed. That's a way for it to be hybrid.
Nick Clason (22:45):
And then finally, ways for that to live on and, and find its way into that, that intersection of your church, people being reminded of the message and people from outside your church may be discovering and stumbling upon your message are short form Instagram reels, TikTok videos, YouTube shorts. Um, if you're already live streaming your content, you're sitting on a goldmine of social media content. You don't have to, uh, come up with as much social media content as you did in the past. You already have it. You have the short, or you have the long form video. Clip it up into minute segments. Find a good hook, get a good editor. And, uh, hey, if you don't have a good editor, but you're interested in it, reach out. Um, I'm interested in, uh, starting something, you know, kind on the side for myself to be doing this and serving churches in that, that way.
Nick Clason (23:38):
Um, I don't exactly have a framework for that or what that looks like. Hit me up on dms, on TikTok, or, you know, reach out to me via YouTube, all those links in the show [email protected]. What about groups? What about relationships? How do you hybridize relationships, right? Because that's sort of the basis for this whole thing, is that social isn't, isn't built on relationships. And I would agree with that in the nitty gritty. Like when, you know, when my mother-in-law passes away, I want someone to really show up for me or really call me or really, you know, text me, um, not just, you know, interact with them at a, at a digital or social social media type level, right? But for a lot of people, the discovering of groups or finding their place or finding their people, that's half of the battle. And so if your church does not have some sort of group finder, I, I would highly recommend doing that.
Nick Clason (24:36):
If your church is about groups in some way, shape, or form that are open that people opt themselves into, then get yourself a group finder, a catalog, if you will, of the options available at your church for people to find and discover real authentic community. Because you and I know that community is really what changes things. It's what takes a church from their church to my church. So get on a group finder of some way, shape, or form. And then once you're in those groups, here are other ways that, that those groups exist and live in a hybrid sort of sense. You might use a infrastructure like Facebook group, you might use a GroupMe, you might use a group chat, or you might use some other tool feature that someone's gonna develop down the road. Maybe I'll do it and get rich, I don't know.
Nick Clason (25:23):
But, um, for the groups to have some sort of calendar of events, a place for them to have message boards with announcements, um, text messages to interact back and forth, prayer requests, all kinds of different stuff, but a place for the group to live beyond when the group meets, right? Again, the other 167 hours of that group's relationship. When is that? Where is that? When does that take place? The last area, so we talked about sermons, we talked about relationships. Now let's talk about information. You know, uh, churches more than just information people are distilled down to more than just the information that they, uh, put into their brains, okay? But like another example of ways that, that things can exist in a hybrid sort of way is some classes. So you already have your Sunday morning service. You probably already have groups. People probably can't devote too many more hours to the church, but maybe they do want to grow.
Nick Clason (26:24):
Maybe they want to grow in their knowledge of theology, or maybe they want to grow in, in a specific topic. Um, a dating marriage, right? Whatever the case might be. Your church with the 40 hours a week in your office can film some content and, and put up a catalog or a library of courses, like on a website or on an app, six week course, eight week course, something like that. So again, if someone's really committed, they may not have the time to drive back over to your church and sit through a class, find childcare, all the things. But once the kids go to bed, if they wanna pull up in their laptop and learn more, grow more in the area of theology, love, dating, marriage, spiritual gifts, right? Like you name it, you can offer a library of some of those content. I mean, products already sort of exist for that right now for churches, right now.
Nick Clason (27:14):
Media is an example of it. Um, but again, I've found that to be more small groupy content. So you can create something, you, if there's a need, you can scratch that itch, a leadership type academy. And you might even have like a leadership academy for high level leaders in your, in your, um, organization in your church that come together every so often in person. But then after they come together, if the primary goal of it is, is information and knowledge, um, and then, and information transfer, you can accomplish that for sure. You can accomplish that in a hybrid sort of way. Um, more than just short form video sermon content. You can provide short form, social media, TikTok, YouTube type content. Um, like about any topic right now, I'm doing like a little bit of a theology 1 0 1, like a deep dive into like certain areas and elements.
Nick Clason (28:06):
Um, and I'm putting posting on TikTok two times a week. It's a little mini-series that people probably just like randomly scrolling through, aren't gonna notice that they're all like interwoven and connected together. But in my mind they are. And so anyone who sees it, they're, they're gonna learn something more about God or about Jesus, or about creation or about salvation, or about the Holy Spirit or whatever the case might be. Um, because I don't have time to always get into all that, right? Like whatever our series is that's sort of driving and dictating, um, what's, what's being taught from the platform. But there are other necessary things that I think people, my students need to know that I don't have time for it, but this is a way that I can create time for it in the other hours of the week. Um, there are also examples and ways to do longform, you know, uh, styles not just short form.
Nick Clason (28:57):
So audio podcasts are huge. A lot of adults, something like 80 something percent of adults listen to three hours of podcasts a week. So, um, I think, um, Mariners, like Eric Geiger out of Mariners is doing a phenomenal job because the thing I love about him is he's conservative theologically for sure. Um, and so he's not just like out there trying to like get vanity metrics or whatever, right? But the thing he's doing is he's, he's finding ways to use the technology to teach deeper, more robust, you know, truth. And so he's doing a thing like, uh, a podcast called like the, the things that didn't make it into the sermon. Basically, if you're a pastor and you've done this before, you know that you, you prepare a load of content, but then you have to start cutting to get it down to a certain minute mark, right?
Nick Clason (29:46):
So he's doing a podcast on all the things he had to cut from his sermon, um, once a week to just dive deeper into more information. Um, and I, I think that that's brilliant. You know, I think that's a brilliant way, uh, to just add more value to the, the people in your church's, you know, life. Um, and if they're interested in it, that's great. A couple years ago, we, back when Facebook Live was a really big thing, me and another pastor on my staff, we sat, sat down for a thing called Tuesdays at two, and we just, uh, unpacked the sermon from sort of our eyes and our, our vantage point, you know? Um, and we would just have a conversation, um, as sort of interview style. And I mean, he was a licensed biblical counselor, so, uh, he was just a wealth of knowledge.
Nick Clason (30:31):
And so I, I almost operated more like as the host, and I would just toss him questions and let him sort of like unpack and untangle, you know, take the, the theology or the, the preaching and, and bring it down to more of like a boots on the ground level. At least. At least that was the goal. So all kinds of like ideas out there of ways that you can service and serve your congregation in a hybrid sort of way that is not void of relationship, that is meaningful and that people in your church will take advantage of. You just have to think hybrid. So I'd encourage you lean into it. Like I said, we're on the, a little bit the pioneering front because we had solutions for digital pre covid. It was mostly live streaming your service. Then in C O V I D, we all went full bore into it, and it was uncomfortable and unfamiliar.
Nick Clason (31:24):
So once restrictions lifted, we went back to what was familiar. Many of us went back to what was familiar, and I'll just encourage you to not abandon some of those things, but, but listen for and look for ways that you can show up in the other hours of your church members weeks. Those are gonna be what's important and valuable to them. Well, hey everyone, if you found this, uh, podcast helpful, please share it with a friend. Help us get the word out, hybrid ministry.xyz. We provide complete full show transcripts for every single episode that we've ever produced. Also, head to the blog section of that and you can grab our free social media checklist, what to do every time you post a social media, and our free complete guide to posting a TikTok from scratch, from start to finish. That is on there. And again, we are on YouTube now at this episode being the first one. Hey, to everyone on YouTube, check that out if you will get a link for that as in the show notes. And until next time, talk to y'all later. Stay hybrid.
35 min
February 16, 2023 Episode 031: Why should churches care about digital ministry in 2023?
In this episode, Nick explores if there's value in digital ministry. What exactly is Hybrid Ministry? What are ways that the church can live out digital expressions that add value to in-person moments and in-person relationships? What are ways that the church can be more Hybrid?
Everything you need at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Follow Along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
Or on TikTok at: http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Hybrid Ministry Discussion on the Barna E-Book Episode: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/006
TIMECODES
00:00-01:31 Intro
01:31-08:03 Assumption: Social Media isn't relational
08:03-15:13 Let's define Hybrid Ministry
15:13-17:24 How are real relationships hybrid?
17:24-20:00 The Best Hybrid versions in our culture
20:00-31:48 The Best Hybrid Ideas for Churches in 2023
31:48-33:00 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:03):
Well, what is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast, and now on YouTube. Excited to be with you all. We're gonna test out a couple of video options here. See how these go. I know it'll go fine. Mostly I'm testing to see how much extra work it's gonna be. But, um, would love to have you join us over there if you want to check out for video stream as well. Something that is just another option. So we have audio, we have video but everything, the home base for it is http://hybridministry.xyz of course, cuz hybrid ministry.com was taken. So I'm your host, Nick Clason, excited to be with you. And in today's episode, what I actually wanted to discuss was this idea of why should churches even care about digital and hybrid ministry? Like what is the purpose?
Nick Clason (01:03):
We all saw the pitfalls downfalls and the reasons why digital ministry was not a good example. It was not a good thing during Covid. And so we are now past Covid. We're able to live in a more semi-normal world. Why in the world should churches even care about digital? So let's go ahead and let's get this episode underway. So let's talk about some assumptions, right? Like, I think that there are some general social media specific assumptions that say that social media is void of relationship, right? Like, the point of it is, I, I I don't know, right? Like the point of it is maybe to post some announcements and try and drum up some external, some marketing, so to speak, uh, examples of people who might not go to our church and we want to get them connected to our church.
Nick Clason (02:08):
But there's an assumption that like the real, the main thing that's gonna work is gonna be relationships of people to people inviting one another. Let me just say that, um, I've been doing student ministry social media now for 12 years, and never once has anyone of the accounts that I've ever run really gone viral, so to speak. Like we've never had more than like an inordinate amount of followers, never had more like a thousand followers. I have had a couple Instagram accounts with more than a thousand followers, but honestly like, that was not from anything that I, or we were doing. That was more an inherited thing where the Instagram account already had a high level of followers and we were just sort of like the beneficiaries of that account already having a lot of followers. So my point is nothing we did really drummed up a lot of outside interest.
Nick Clason (03:03):
Okay. And so this assumption that social media is not relationship based and you know, the purpose of it is to, you know, get people from the outside looking in. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that is, I think that's, I think that's a benefit. I think that, um, like we said in the last episode, the church is in a unique intersection where what you post can be both discovered by the people that go to your church, but also because of the new discovery algorithms, which this is probably why in my 12 years we haven't seen this, because these new algorithms that are being made famous by TikTok and then adopted by Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube on reels and shorts are, um, new. Like this is a new territory for churches because previously your people followed your pages and your accounts, and if you wanted more people to follow it, you had to pay for it.
Nick Clason (03:52):
And I've, I have never done that. And so my accounts never really did that, where there were like a lot of people coming to discover our accounts. And so now we are in a unique intersection where people might actually discover your church. And what's more interesting is that all of these algorithms, there's a uniqueness where they start out geographically local. So first the algorithm from what we've learned is they're pumped out to your followers, which are then pumped out to their followers, which are then pumped out to the, uh, like your geographical region, which is why a lot of times you can geotag your posts on Instagram, on TikTok, and so you can put your city, and so the people in your city might be exposed to your information first, and then beyond that it'll, you know, go to the state and viral and whatever the case might be.
Nick Clason (04:44):
But, but the reality is, the, the closer that you are, the more likely that the people around you are gonna find it. And so therefore, if people in your geographical region are discovering your videos, there is an actual chance that they might hear the message of Jesus from you and then take a step to become a visitor or a first timer at your church. I mean, wouldn't that be amazing? Wouldn't that, wouldn't that be one of the goals that we're looking for here? Um, and again, like I said, I haven't experienced that in a lot of cases, and I think that's because that really wasn't an option up here until very recently. Um, however, there's still the argument that like, no one's gonna come to our church based off of that. And that might be true. And I think that it depends on your style of church, if you're, um, a more of an outreach centric church that you want that.
Nick Clason (05:34):
And so you're gonna be more gung-ho about this idea. And if you're more of a discipleship centric church, which tends to be a little more inward facing, um, not because you believe that that's more valuable and more important, but that just tends to be the vibe, um, that comes with it, then you are gonna prioritize some of those relationships more over, um, like, like cold leads or, or, you know, top of a funnel marketing type of terminology to borrow from the secular world. So, um, all that to be said, there's this assumption, there's this notion that social media, um, and social ministry is void of real relationships. And I would just, I would debunk that and say that I think that that's not entirely true. Um, I agree to a point that it can be done that way and, um, that, that this ministry, that this focus in your church needs some very particular and very, um, deliberate attention.
Nick Clason (06:34):
Like it cannot just, in my personal opinion, it cannot be put on autopilot anymore. It cannot be put on the back burner. There needs to be a person more than a volunteer and more than someone's like, uh, section of their full-time hours devoted to social media. Like you probably need a full-on person, um, not someone to do double duty. Like, like even right now, um, I am a youth pastor, but I'm like on a team of three and of the three, I'm the one tasked with digital and video and social media, website, whatever, right? Like that in and of itself is a full-time job. And sometimes my youth ministry duties have actually, like, you know, this week I had to make calls to interview students about baptism, um, and we're onboarding a bunch of new students to volunteer. Like sometimes those things feel like they're in the way of my digital stuff and that, that's out of balance for me personally.
Nick Clason (07:34):
Um, but that's my point in saying that this digital of it's all consuming, it just takes up such a gigantic portion and it it is vast and it is huge. And, um, and there's a lot of opportunity and there's a lot of potential. And so to just dump it on someone as like a, hey, 10 hours of your week, like it's, that is so hard. It's gonna be very difficult for that person to be able to, you know, to make, to make, uh, that 10 hours work for them the way that you're probably hoping that it would work. So in Covid, right, we learned that we're not built to be completely isolated. And so just social, um, and that's, that's the whole, that's the whole origin of this podcast is I felt like we were debating, um, when I started this podcast in late 2022, I guess mid 2022, um, we were debating between in-person ministry and digital ministry, especially where I was, we had, we were still working and operating out of a lot of the rules that we had built for C O V with the show that we had made for C O V D.
Nick Clason (08:38):
Like, we hadn't let that go. We were still producing it weekly. Um, and we had found a way to pivot from strictly online to a more in-person model where groups watched it in host homes. Um, and then they discussed the, the message afterwards. And I thought it was incredibly ingenious and innovative. Um, but there were a lot of people in our church that that didn't, and they were ready to just quote unquote go back. And, you know, we had a, a marketing guy, and if you listen to some of our first, I think like seven episodes, um, Matt was actually the co-host of this podcast. Uh, we both made cross-country moves. And, um, I, I don't know what happened to him. I never got him back, really. I mean, we still talk, but he would keep saying like, yeah, yeah, I just gotta get my computer set up, gotta get my computer set up.
Nick Clason (09:22):
And eventually I was like, all right, Matt's not getting his computer set up. I'm just, I I got a produce weekly episode, so I can't wait on him anymore, right? So, uh, here we are and I'm just kinda doing this thing. Anyway, besides point Matt marketing, honestly, genius guru in my opinion. He said, the world we live in is now hybrid. In fact, Barna did a study, we did a couple episodes on it, I'll link to them in the show notes, um, did a couple episodes on the findings that we found from Barna study, and they, they titled it the, the state of hybrid church or something like that. And what it said, what it found was that especially the younger generations, the generations that are going to be filling our pews and churches here in the next couple years, gen Z and millennials said a hybrid, um, version of church is going to suit them very well.
Nick Clason (10:11):
What that often scares us with on two fronts is, number one, it feels like we're shifting away from in person. And I think a lot of times in person, and I've talked about this multiple times, I think a lot of times in person, room or moment or feeling is for the, the vanity of the pastor, and not even in like a sinful or bad way, but just like, man, getting up in front of a room full of people feels really good and you feel like you feel like you've done something and you've been somewhere and there's, there's a shot of like adrenaline into your like arm every time you get up there to preach. Even I, I find myself like finding more value from preaching to a live room of, of humans with interaction, um, like just, you know, face-to-face interaction. Um, then I, then I do from a, a TikTok video that goes viral wave over like 3000 something views.
Nick Clason (11:02):
Like, it just, it doesn't feel the same. And I get it. And you know what? I don't know that it is the same. I think you have a much more captive audience, even in a room of a few hundred than you do, um, with a, a short form under 62nd video that that has over a thousand something views, right? All that to be said, I'm not proposing that, that you throw one quote unquote baby out with a bathwater. We live in a hybrid world, right? So I found this stat incredibly fascinating. 76% of American surveyed ha uh, have a friend that they've met online only they've never met in person. Right? Now, you might be thinking, how is that possible? Again, if you're older, think younger generations gaming and, and you know, chat rooms and whatever and whatnot. Like of course in the nineties chat rooms were pedophiles want to hang out, and they probably still do, right?
Nick Clason (11:55):
But, but 76% of Americans have a friend in some way, shape or form gaming social media that they've never met in person. Like I have an anecdotal real example. I have a friend named Dan that, um, for the first three to six months of our life, or not life of our relationship life, , uh, it was strictly online. Uh, many of you know I've told this story, but I started at my last church on day one of Covid and went immediately into lockdown. So the number of real live human beings at my church that I met was very, very small. The number of real life human beings that I met on Zoom after that was very, very large. And, um, you know, I had met a decent number of the staff, at least from my interview or on my first day on the job, but then to meet other people.
Nick Clason (12:49):
And Dan was a, just a regular church attender volunteer who led a, a hybrid, not hybrid, actually strictly online small group. I had a relationship with Dan. Um, and, and he even said, he's like, you are like the poster child for me, or the poster example of what it looks like for somebody who, uh, says like, you can't make friends with someone online. He's like, we totally made friends, you know, with each other online. And so these are examples, both empirical data. 76% of Americans say, I have a friend with someone who's completely online. And even in my own life, like I would say I had a real relationship with him, um, it would've been great to be sitting in the same living room or whatever, but at the same time, you know what, every Tuesday night, I just got my laptop out in the comfort of my own home brew, a cup of my own coffee that I personally enjoyed more than like a cake cup that someone was gonna gimme at their house.
Nick Clason (13:49):
And we sat down for small group. And you know, what was funny was like our church would do this thing where like you'd watch the live stream on YouTube, and this was the archetype for our student ministry. The group's team of course, stole it, but we'd watch the video on YouTube, and then everyone would log in to their campus specific zooms via a link in the description, and then a moderator there would break everyone out into breakout rooms. So they would sort of have control over the entire call, and then they would give a warning after like an hour or so that all the groups would, uh, be, be closing down by the moderator who's just literally sitting there out in the waiting room, just kinda waiting for people to be kicked out of their breakout rooms and reassign them or whatever. Super boring job I've done a million times youth ministry.
Nick Clason (14:33):
Uh, so a couple times those ended and we, our entire small group just jumped off and got into our very own room, and had group until like 11 or 12. We weren't, you know, at that point we weren't talking about spiritual stuff. We were just joking around, goofing off, having fun, whatever, right? My point is, relationships can exist in an online space. You just have to be deliberate. You just have to be intentional, and you have to be able, willing, willing to massage those relationships. So let's talk about, um, some hybrid ways that relationships can exist.
Nick Clason (15:14):
So some of you might know this, um, but a couple weeks ago, my, my wife's mom, my mother-in-law, uh, passed away from a two plus year long battle with cancer. It was, it was rough, man, like, not gonna lie, but, um, the thing I wanna kind of extract or highlight is the moment that the day that she passed away and that it became more public because of social media. Again, another example, um, my phone was flooded with text messages. My wife's phone was flooded like threefold, tenfold with text messages. Um, every single one of those people were people that we had met in person at one moment in time or another, whether they be a family member, whether they'd be a friend, whether they'd be a former colleague or work associate from another job that we'd been at. They'd all been people we'd met in real life person before.
Nick Clason (16:12):
However, the relationship at that moment existed in a hybrid space. Very few people in that exact moment were with us. I mean, I, I had to drive from Texas all the way back to Ohio, so the only people with me were me and my two kids. Um, and her, she was with her sister and with some family friends, and then everybody else reached out and provided love and care and support via text message that that is an example of a hybrid relationship. You know what I mean? Um, and, and some people were people that I work with now at the church I'm at at now. Other people were people I worked, worked with in the past that reached out either way, right? Like they're all people I knew, but they're all showing up for me in a hybrid way. So, uh, I wanna talk about a few, uh, examples of like other businesses that we might interact with in the world in with hybrid sort of interactions.
Nick Clason (17:22):
Let's dive in examples of real life hybrid interactions. My favorite of this is Home Depot, right? I interact with Home Depot at the store level. I drive up, I go into the store, I grab 98 cents of plumbing tape, right? Uh, that's an example of me interacting with Home Depot at a physical level. Okay? All right. So another example of course is me interacting with Home Depot at an online level. I might go on the website and I might see how much of a certain item is in stock that, but I'm not in the store. I'm completely in my house. I'm looking at all my computer on the app, but the, the app actually is my favorite feature. When I'm in the store. I almost never, like, if I walk around in the store for like more than two minutes and I can't figure out where an item might be, I immediately pull up the app, which often I've uninstalled from my phone, so I reinstall it.
Nick Clason (18:25):
Then I like, almost, the first thing I do when I walk into Home Depot is begin to reinstall the Home Depot app, find my local Home Depot, the one I'm physically standing in, and then I look that item up, whatever it is, to try and find it, and then it'll tell me exactly where it is, what aisle, what bay, and how many more they have in stock. I love that feature. That's hybrid. I'm in person, I'm in the store, but I'm interacting with a digital piece of technology, uh, you know, for my relationship with Home Depot. Another o another example is a dentist office, right? You go to a physical visit. But I love when a service like this has a great website, especially for being able to book appointments or being able to reach out. This last week, I brought my car to an auto mechanic shop.
Nick Clason (19:13):
I called them, not there, called them, right? That's an example of me from my house calling them. That's old school technology. You get it right? Then I show up, I'm in their office. But then when I was done, you know what they did? They sent me a text message to let me know that my car was ready. You see all these things, and I, I think like in a lot of ways, like when we talk about digitization or hybridization of church and of ministry, we don't even know what that looks like. So right now, in a lot of ways that's social media, that's video content, but the reality is like, some of this is uncharted territory. So for 2023, for right now, for someone just starting out, what are some examples? What are some ways that your church can live and exist in hybrid ministry?
Nick Clason (20:01):
All right, so like I said, I think a little bit of this is like pioneering uncharted territory, pilgrim's progress. Like, we don't know some of these answers, but, um, what are some examples of ways that your church can, uh, live and and be hybrid? So the first one is probably the most obvious one, and probably the easiest one, I would say is your Sunday sermon. Okay? So what are ways that your Sunday sermon can exist in a hybrid space? Well, first and foremost, right? You can, while someone is sitting in the auditorium, they can interact with and engage with your sermon notes, or they can interact and engage with, um, some self-guided like outlines or ways for them to take notes. So, like in my church, my pastor puts his notes on our church app. Um, it's honestly, it's essentially probably the manuscript that he's up there preaching with as I've looked at it.
Nick Clason (20:58):
Like, it's very thorough. Um, and my guess is that that's like a, that's a workload decision, right? Like he already built this. So if he just copy, if, if they or someone just copy and paste and put this into the app, uh, that's not that much more work for him. My personal favorite example is the you version events feature. So in everyone's you version Bible app that most people have downloaded on their phones, if not, definitely recommend it. Cause again, it's another way to interact with people in a hybrid way. Um, there's an events tab that you can create, like a self-guided sort of outline, and then people can, can take and add notes to certain headers or certain bible verses, um, that, that are related to or interact with the passage. And then they can also link out to like videos or other, like further discussions.
Nick Clason (21:51):
One of the things I try to do is I try to challenge myself to add one option of a, a link out from a u version event for deeper study or for more information, or for a longer YouTube video that I didn't, you know, didn't have time to show or didn't have time to look like fully, you know, unpack. I try to challenge myself to do that every week. Again, to just think hybrid, right? Brady Shearer has made this phrase famous, but the other, the additional 167 hours of somebody's week. So then beyond that moment, beyond that Sunday service, um, you can of course rip out the audio. Um, if you're already live streaming, um, you can have live stream, you can post those videos to YouTube. You can, uh, long form podcast content on a podcast feed. That's a way for it to be hybrid.
Nick Clason (22:45):
And then finally, ways for that to live on and, and find its way into that, that intersection of your church, people being reminded of the message and people from outside your church may be discovering and stumbling upon your message are short form Instagram reels, TikTok videos, YouTube shorts. Um, if you're already live streaming your content, you're sitting on a goldmine of social media content. You don't have to, uh, come up with as much social media content as you did in the past. You already have it. You have the short, or you have the long form video. Clip it up into minute segments. Find a good hook, get a good editor. And, uh, hey, if you don't have a good editor, but you're interested in it, reach out. Um, I'm interested in, uh, starting something, you know, kind on the side for myself to be doing this and serving churches in that, that way.
Nick Clason (23:38):
Um, I don't exactly have a framework for that or what that looks like. Hit me up on dms, on TikTok, or, you know, reach out to me via YouTube, all those links in the show [email protected]. What about groups? What about relationships? How do you hybridize relationships, right? Because that's sort of the basis for this whole thing, is that social isn't, isn't built on relationships. And I would agree with that in the nitty gritty. Like when, you know, when my mother-in-law passes away, I want someone to really show up for me or really call me or really, you know, text me, um, not just, you know, interact with them at a, at a digital or social social media type level, right? But for a lot of people, the discovering of groups or finding their place or finding their people, that's half of the battle. And so if your church does not have some sort of group finder, I, I would highly recommend doing that.
Nick Clason (24:36):
If your church is about groups in some way, shape, or form that are open that people opt themselves into, then get yourself a group finder, a catalog, if you will, of the options available at your church for people to find and discover real authentic community. Because you and I know that community is really what changes things. It's what takes a church from their church to my church. So get on a group finder of some way, shape, or form. And then once you're in those groups, here are other ways that, that those groups exist and live in a hybrid sort of sense. You might use a infrastructure like Facebook group, you might use a GroupMe, you might use a group chat, or you might use some other tool feature that someone's gonna develop down the road. Maybe I'll do it and get rich, I don't know.
Nick Clason (25:23):
But, um, for the groups to have some sort of calendar of events, a place for them to have message boards with announcements, um, text messages to interact back and forth, prayer requests, all kinds of different stuff, but a place for the group to live beyond when the group meets, right? Again, the other 167 hours of that group's relationship. When is that? Where is that? When does that take place? The last area, so we talked about sermons, we talked about relationships. Now let's talk about information. You know, uh, churches more than just information people are distilled down to more than just the information that they, uh, put into their brains, okay? But like another example of ways that, that things can exist in a hybrid sort of way is some classes. So you already have your Sunday morning service. You probably already have groups. People probably can't devote too many more hours to the church, but maybe they do want to grow.
Nick Clason (26:24):
Maybe they want to grow in their knowledge of theology, or maybe they want to grow in, in a specific topic. Um, a dating marriage, right? Whatever the case might be. Your church with the 40 hours a week in your office can film some content and, and put up a catalog or a library of courses, like on a website or on an app, six week course, eight week course, something like that. So again, if someone's really committed, they may not have the time to drive back over to your church and sit through a class, find childcare, all the things. But once the kids go to bed, if they wanna pull up in their laptop and learn more, grow more in the area of theology, love, dating, marriage, spiritual gifts, right? Like you name it, you can offer a library of some of those content. I mean, products already sort of exist for that right now for churches, right now.
Nick Clason (27:14):
Media is an example of it. Um, but again, I've found that to be more small groupy content. So you can create something, you, if there's a need, you can scratch that itch, a leadership type academy. And you might even have like a leadership academy for high level leaders in your, in your, um, organization in your church that come together every so often in person. But then after they come together, if the primary goal of it is, is information and knowledge, um, and then, and information transfer, you can accomplish that for sure. You can accomplish that in a hybrid sort of way. Um, more than just short form video sermon content. You can provide short form, social media, TikTok, YouTube type content. Um, like about any topic right now, I'm doing like a little bit of a theology 1 0 1, like a deep dive into like certain areas and elements.
Nick Clason (28:06):
Um, and I'm putting posting on TikTok two times a week. It's a little mini-series that people probably just like randomly scrolling through, aren't gonna notice that they're all like interwoven and connected together. But in my mind they are. And so anyone who sees it, they're, they're gonna learn something more about God or about Jesus, or about creation or about salvation, or about the Holy Spirit or whatever the case might be. Um, because I don't have time to always get into all that, right? Like whatever our series is that's sort of driving and dictating, um, what's, what's being taught from the platform. But there are other necessary things that I think people, my students need to know that I don't have time for it, but this is a way that I can create time for it in the other hours of the week. Um, there are also examples and ways to do longform, you know, uh, styles not just short form.
Nick Clason (28:57):
So audio podcasts are huge. A lot of adults, something like 80 something percent of adults listen to three hours of podcasts a week. So, um, I think, um, Mariners, like Eric Geiger out of Mariners is doing a phenomenal job because the thing I love about him is he's conservative theologically for sure. Um, and so he's not just like out there trying to like get vanity metrics or whatever, right? But the thing he's doing is he's, he's finding ways to use the technology to teach deeper, more robust, you know, truth. And so he's doing a thing like, uh, a podcast called like the, the things that didn't make it into the sermon. Basically, if you're a pastor and you've done this before, you know that you, you prepare a load of content, but then you have to start cutting to get it down to a certain minute mark, right?
Nick Clason (29:46):
So he's doing a podcast on all the things he had to cut from his sermon, um, once a week to just dive deeper into more information. Um, and I, I think that that's brilliant. You know, I think that's a brilliant way, uh, to just add more value to the, the people in your church's, you know, life. Um, and if they're interested in it, that's great. A couple years ago, we, back when Facebook Live was a really big thing, me and another pastor on my staff, we sat, sat down for a thing called Tuesdays at two, and we just, uh, unpacked the sermon from sort of our eyes and our, our vantage point, you know? Um, and we would just have a conversation, um, as sort of interview style. And I mean, he was a licensed biblical counselor, so, uh, he was just a wealth of knowledge.
Nick Clason (30:31):
And so I, I almost operated more like as the host, and I would just toss him questions and let him sort of like unpack and untangle, you know, take the, the theology or the, the preaching and, and bring it down to more of like a boots on the ground level. At least. At least that was the goal. So all kinds of like ideas out there of ways that you can service and serve your congregation in a hybrid sort of way that is not void of relationship, that is meaningful and that people in your church will take advantage of. You just have to think hybrid. So I'd encourage you lean into it. Like I said, we're on the, a little bit the pioneering front because we had solutions for digital pre covid. It was mostly live streaming your service. Then in C O V I D, we all went full bore into it, and it was uncomfortable and unfamiliar.
Nick Clason (31:24):
Um, and so once restrictions lifted, we went back to what was familiar. Many of us went back to what was familiar, and I'll just encourage you to not abandon some of those things, but, but listen for and look for ways that you can show up in the other hours of your church members weeks. Those are gonna be what's important and valuable to them. Well, hey everyone, if you found this, uh, podcast helpful, please share it with a friend. Help us get the word out, http://hybridministry.xyz. We provide complete full show transcripts for every single episode that we've ever produced. Also, head to the blog section of that and you can grab our free social media checklist, what to do every time you post a social media, and our free complete guide to posting a TikTok from scratch, from start to finish. That is on there. And again, we are on YouTube now at this episode being the first one. Hey, to everyone on YouTube, check that out if you will get a link for that as in the show notes. And until next time, talk to y'all later. Stay hybrid.
34 min
February 09, 2023 Episode 030: The Advantages that Churches FINALLY have on Social Media in 2023
In this Episode, Nick breaks down the advantage that churches have on social and with digital media in 2023 and beyond. And how your church can lean into that advantage, not only to train, equip and raise up your own members, but also to reach those around you with the message and hope of Jesus.
For complete transcripts head to http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Follow along on social https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sonicsman8/featured
TIMECODES
00:00-00:32 Intro
00:32-03:23 The Church has the Advantage on Social Media in 2023
03:23-05:50 The History of Social Media
05:50-06:50 The Stars have aligned in 2023 for churches on social media
06:50-09:53 - Advantage #1: Content Creation is at the Core of a Church's Weekly Work Routine
09:53-12:51 - Advantage #2: Content Creation is at the Core of the Senior Leader's weekly job
12:51-19:05 - Advantage #3: Content Creation, and the sharing of it, hits at a preferred intersection for churches
19:05-20:52 - Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
What is up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason. Excited to be with you wherever you are. Listen, I was gonna stay excited to be with you on this morning. I just got done with a little morning run, drinking a little morning coffee. Uh, but you might be listening to me in the evening. You might be listening to me while you're doing dishes. You, you also might be listening to me on run, wherever you are listening, said to have you with us, uh, this morning. Today, I wanted to talk about the three distinct advantages that churches have on social media in 2023. If you are anything like me, uh, the people that you follow, the algorithms that you're in especially if you've listened to the Pro Church tools or anything that Brady Shearer produces.
Nick Clason (00:52):
You have heard this before but in the event that you're not and I have some unique twists to it as well. I just think that wherever, wherever you are, wherever your role is, whether if you're like a ministry leader, a, a student pastor, a senior pastor, a church marketing person, a church communications person, whatever your role is, I think it's important to note that the church today in 2023 has a distinct advantage on social media, an advantage that they haven't had in, I would say, years. Um, in all my entire time as, um, a church leader, a pastor, youth pastor, I've never experienced or noticed an advantage much like what we have today. So, um, I'm excited to share that with you Before we dive in. Um, anything that you need show wise, you can head to hybrid ministry.xyz. Um, if you click on the, uh, articles or the blog section there of the website, that is where you can access our completely 100% free ebook and our 100% free checklist signing up for either one of those will get both of those resources into your inbox automatically for free.
Nick Clason (02:03):
So go check those out. We would love to have you there. And if you didn't know this, every single episode that we have, uh, has transcripts and is, um, put on, on the website into every episode's archive. And so that is a just completely 100% free resource that we make available to you so that you can go back and not have to listen back through, but you can read through. Um, and let me just warn you that because, uh, this podcast is still, you know, I'm still not making money on it. It's something that I am paying for out of my pocket. I have not, I have not paid Rev, who I use rev.com. I've not paid them to do the human transcription. Yep. So I'm still doing ai. Uh, so even sometimes I go back to my own archives to look for things, but, uh, sometimes it's a little bit hard to muddle through because it's AI transcribed.
Nick Clason (02:53):
So sorry for that. If you're out there, sponsor us, and, um, maybe we'll start springing for the human transcription so it's got a little bit more level of accuracy. Um, but hey, uh, head to the show notes for anything that we mentioned today. Um, like I said, grab our free ebook on, have I already ruined my TikTok account? A complete Guide to Posting a TikTok from Scratch. 100%. All that being said, let's dive in the three distinct advantages that churches have on social media in 2023. Let's go. All right, so 2023 social media. Here we are. Let's think about it. The church has a distinct advantage, one that they have not seen in a lifetime. I think of a lot of social media. So, um, social media historically has been a social platform, right? That's where the, the term social comes from, because humans are connecting one-on-one with other people on the other side of the screen.
Nick Clason (03:45):
So think Facebook started as a college, uh, on a college campus so that people could get to know one another, that they maybe haven't met people that they recognize by face. So it's very, uh, it was very built as a, uh, human to human connection sort of portal. But over time, it's evolved and it's become sort of like an, an online photo album. Different social platforms have taken on different life forms, Twitter, sort of like a micro blogging, uh, place to kind of like listen and look at things live. Like I, I use Twitter a lot for sports. Instagram was a photo sharing app. Um, and you could, you know, at its inception, you could only share one photo and it could only be Square. And so, um, part of the problem was that Facebook would, would really recommend you creating like, full online albums, like share your entire trip to Brazil with us, where Instagram is like, share the best photo from your trip to Brazil.
Nick Clason (04:36):
And then Twitter was like, while you're there, live tweet, right? So all of those had u had unique and completely different, um, purposes. Then throw in YouTube, which is the second largest search engine in the world. Some would say three behind Google images, but either way, they're all under the Google umbrella. So, um, Instagram, or I'm sorry, YouTube being a search engine, um, and long form video, that's a completely separate piece and style of content that is needed from Facebook, from Instagram, from Twitter. And then, oh, by the way, here, bursting on the scene is this brand new thing called TikTok, short form video, where people just do dances and goofy silly stuff. So what are we supposed to do with that? So you got photo albums, you got groups and pages over on Facebook. You got micro blogging and live tweeting things. You got Instagram, single photo sharing apps, eventually stories added in.
Nick Clason (05:31):
And then you got YouTube long form video, and they're all different. And so if you're a church leader, and if you're like the senior pastor and you're also keeping your social media afloat, you're just doing whatever it takes to like serve each of the platforms at its bare minimum. But now in this weird aligning of stars in 2023, I would say, because of the, um, prominence and popularity of TikTok, churches have a unique and distinct advantage that they have not had in years. And that is this short form vertical video content is now being pushed across all of the major platforms. Yes, Facebook, yes, Instagram, yes, YouTube, and obviously yes, TikTok. So your core four, your main four players that I would recommend that you as a church be active on, on social media. You can have all four accounts, and better yet, you can post to all four accounts, the exact same piece of content across all four accounts.
Nick Clason (06:37):
And for the first time ever, you're not dinged. In fact, you're encouraged to do that. So let's take a look at reason number one, why the church has a distinct advantage on social media in 2023. So, advantage number one is that content creation is at the core of what a church's weekly work rhythm is. So think about this, your church every single week hosts a gathering where a piece of content is delivered to a group of people. Um, think like, and that is an, that is an amazing advantage that most people don't have, because most, if you're a plumber or if you're an auto mechanic, or if you are a big box store retailer, right? You also want to be on social media. It's part of marketing, it's a part of driving up business and getting clientele and people discovering you. But what in the heck is a plumber or what is a big box store retailer?
Nick Clason (07:39):
Or what is a, um, auto mechanic? What are they doing every single day? They're fixing leaky drains. They're selling things to people as cashiers at Walmart. They're, they're, they're, uh, they're fixing people's cars, timing belts, right? That's what the primary like, focus of their work is. And so if an auto mechanic wants to be active and vibrant and relevant on social media, that auto mechanic is going to probably either a, take his phone with him under the car and do some tutorial videos or something like that. But if that auto mechanic is any good, he's probably really busy and he has, doesn't have time to be posting, editing, putting captions over, you know, screens. So then what does an auto mechanic do? He hires his young Gen z uh, nephew to come in and run social media, but that nephew has never touched a car before.
Nick Clason (08:30):
And so that nephew is just trying to like, keep their Instagram feed posted, um, and keep it active and with like, graphics and things like that, okay? The point is, an auto mechanic is not in the business of content creation. Neither is a plumber, neither is a store. Now, the really good ones are, right? And those are the ones that you probably watch. You have a leaky drain, you go on YouTube or you go on YouTube shorts, you're gonna find a plumber who's done a tutorial that's a really good plumber who's creating some content. But the reality is not a hundred percent of plumbers are doing that. Not a hundred percent of businesses are doing that. Not a hundred percent of auto mechanics are doing that. The church weekly 52, sometimes 51 weeks a year. Cause some churches take that week between Christmas and New Year's and doing online only service, but even still, they're creating content.
Nick Clason (09:16):
So go, I digress back to 52, 52 weeks a year, 52 times in a year, you are creating content to be delivered to somebody that is age old, that has been a part of what the church has done for decades, centuries. Um, the, so the reality is this, right? The reality is that, um, short form video content loves content, loves created, custom curated content, and the church has a unique advantage because it already is creating that content within the rhythm of what it does. Okay? Advantage number two. So not only is content creation at the core of the church's weekly work rhythm, but content creation is at the core of what the senior leadership does within the organization. Let's go back to our plumber or automechanic mechanic analogy. Usually the head, the CEO of the business is not the content creator. So if you as a plumber wanna have a popin TikTok account, you probably have to hire somebody who's good at marketing to create a Popin TikTok account.
Nick Clason (10:27):
If you as a auto mechanic wanna have a Popin TikTok account, you gotta bring in your nephew, okay? Now, maybe your senior pastor isn't very tech savvy. Maybe your senior pastor isn't even very active on social media. But what your senior pastor does is your senior pastor sits down and weekly writes up content. And so the head, the most, um, the, the best figurehead of your entire organization is standing up and presenting a prepared piece of content weekly. We already, we already talked about that, right? But it comes from the very tippy top of your organization. So if you were to bring in your nephew and an auto mechanic shop, the nephew's like, Hey, you should do some tutorial videos. I would imagine the auto mechanics like, bro, I don't have time for that. I get outta here with your newf fangled social media, TikTok video, things like, I, I can't go under the hood with a phone.
Nick Clason (11:26):
I, I don't even know how to work this thing, right? That's the difference. The senior pastor gets up weekly to prepare or to present prepared content to a group of people, to a room full of people. So that bodes well for you. Why does that bode well for you? Because your, your, uh, social media accounts on your, on, um, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever, people probably follow your church because they go to your church. And so therefore, when they see your senior pastor on a video, that's a very recognizable face that's much more recognizable than your church communications person. No offense, that's you watching this, or your digital marketing specialist. Again, no offense if that's you watching this, or even your youth pastor who you handed your phone to and said, Hey, please keep us relevant on social media. They may see the youth pastor preach 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times a year, but they see the senior pastor preach almost weekly.
Nick Clason (12:21):
And so when they're scrolling through a feed and they see the senior pastor on your social media, he is going to be a very recognizable person. He's also probably your most skilled communicator. So also you can use that to your advantage. Put your most skilled, uh, oral, um, person, oral, uh, presenter out there for the, for both your church people to see, but also for other people to see, which leads us to our third distinct advantage for churches advantage. Number three is that content creation and the sharing of that created content hits at a unique intersection of what most churches are looking to do. So what are most churches looking to do? Well, you can go back to Matthew chapter 28, verse 18 through 20. Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.
Nick Clason (13:23):
And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age, baked within the great commission, we find something that comes from the greatest commandment. Matthew chapter 22, where Jesus says you are to number one, love the Lord your God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And second, love your neighbor as yourself. What is the church meant to do? The church is meant to help people learn the ways, the methods, the mission, the the content, the character, the competencies of Jesus to adopt those things. So for believers to grow more and more into the image and likeness of Jesus. And also the church is meant to go to make disciples, to reach out beyond our walls, to share and show the love of Jesus. And short form, vertical video content hits at the intersection where both your church people are, and people outside of your walls are living.
Nick Clason (14:19):
And so both are scrolling through social media, both are scrolling through some sort of discovery algorithm on one of the four core social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok. And boom, they're stopped with an inspirational message because it's a weekly thing curated by your senior leadership. And now they are stopping, scrolling and looking at a video and being encouraged, equipped, and discipled. All right, so now what? So with these three distinct advantages, now, what does this mean for you? Well, you might be watching this and you might be, um, a church leader who doesn't have any time to really do anything about that. You might be a, uh, marketing manager and you can't get your senior pastor to let you onto these platforms. So the first thing you need to do is you need to, uh, use a little bit of persuasion maybe, and show some analytics about the popularity of these discovery algorithm, um, apps, and the fact that every single social media platform is pushing and highlighting and promoting this type of content.
Nick Clason (15:21):
The other thing, if you're already live streaming your service, which Covid brought most people into that, um, then take clips, then watch through your sermon and, and take some clips and watch through them. If you are interested in, um, looking through some examples of ones that I have done in my own ministry and for other ministries of places that I am in partnership with, uh, hit me up, reach out to me. Um, you can DM me on Instagram at Clason nick or on TikTok at Clason nick to see some of those examples. Uh, but be looking through your live stream messages to, um, find two or three different clips that you can post and promote a week. Now, what if you're not live streaming? What do you do? Well, you can go back to another episode. I'll drop the, the episode link in the show notes.
Nick Clason (16:08):
But I gave my complete custom setup for it, creating YouTube content for churches on a budget. And the primary thing that I, I recommend is that I recommend that you, uh, pre film your talks. So I'll give you an example. I'm a youth pastor in a, a church with a fairly large auditorium, but we, the auditorium that I'm in is not the main auditorium. So we don't have all the bells and whistles to do a live stream. And so instead of us trying to jimmy rig a phone in the back or figure out a way to like drop $50,000 to retrofit our auditorium, uh, to do a good live stream, I take my camera on my phone, prop it up on a tripod and fill myself or any one of the other people on our team before we deliver the message live on a Wednesday.
Nick Clason (16:53):
So we use that to post on YouTube, and then we go back to that content to edit and, and clip out the things. So the other things that you need to be doing, um, as you're listening to sermons, is you wanna be listening to things that are good hooks. Uh, so yesterday I was sitting in a sermon, I was sitting in my, my church's sermon, um, and I heard my pastor give this analogy, this five finger analogy of how to learn and, and know and memorize God's word better. And I thought, boom, that's an amazing reel. So I'm gonna go find it and I'm gonna clip it up. Um, and so if you're interested in that, head to my TikTok or head to, uh, my Instagram to check out example of that or just DM me for the link, I'll show it to you Again, that's Instagram, TikTok.
Nick Clason (17:33):
Um, and my handle is at Clason, c l a s o n, Nick, n i c k. So, um, and then, uh, hone your editing skills. Here's the beautiful thing. If you don't have the, the best software to do it on a computer, you can do most of it on the TikTok app. So you can bring clips into your TikTok app and use the studio, uh, feature to edit that. Again, if you don't know how to do it. If you've never opened TikTok before and you're like, what in the world am I looking at? Head to the link in my show notes and grab our free ebook on how to edit and post a TikTok completely from start to finish. It will show you how to use the studio feature in TikTok, how to edit and how to, um, create clips that matter, that grab people's attention.
Nick Clason (18:22):
Um, and that stop the scroll. The biggest thing you're looking for when you're clipping things up is not just to put little clips of your pastor out there, but you're looking to find a good hook. And either your pastor says a hook creates a good hook in his talking, or if he doesn't, you can use that, that famous voiceover feature and say, um, you know, using like the AI auto sound thing, this is like five ways to memorize and learn scripture. Cuz I don't know that my pastor gave a good hook for that. So I'll do that, probably voiceover effect and then boom, I'll clip his thing up and I mean, he took probably five minutes on it and I'm gonna clip it down into under 60 seconds. So I'm just gonna make it quick, quick cuts fast, uh, memorable, and boom, it's gonna be out there.
Nick Clason (19:05):
So if you found this helpful, glad you're here. Thanks for jumping in. Listen, you have the message and hope that is available to the entire world. So don't be afraid or ashamed or shy to share it. Use social media. Um, lean in to hybrid to get the message of God's people out there, both to remind and remember, um, or to remind your disciples, the people in your congregation about the message from Sunday to be encouraged throughout the week, to continue to take steps more and more in their faith, to look more and more like Jesus and to reach those around us who maybe have not yet found the hope of Jesus, but can find that through the body and work of a local church. And you are directly in the intersection of that. Whatever your role is, pastor, youth pastor, digital specialist, church communications person, excited to have you with us on the journey.
Nick Clason (20:02):
We clip up little, uh, clips of these every single episode and drop 'em onto my personal TikTok at Cliff and Nicki can grab the link there in the show notes. Uh, we will have transcripts for this episode at http://hybridministry.xyz wherever you listen to this on whatever podcast platform catcher. Glad to have you with us. Glad you're listening in your ear holes. If you found this helpful, would you rate it, leave a comment, and maybe share with the, so that they also can, uh, learn about the importance people around. And we will talk to you next time. Stay Hybrid.
21 min
February 02, 2023 Episode 029: Is Digital a Valid method to Preach God's Word?
In this episode, Nick takes his listeners on a journey through his deep dive on asking the question "Is Digital a valid method to preach God's word to the world?" He explores what preaching is, the ways in which God has spoken over the years, the purpose of the church and then ultimately gives a conclusion!
SHOWNOTES
For all things Hybrid Ministry head to http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Hangout with Nick:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
FREE E-Book: "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook
The Best YouTube strategy for 2023 and Beyond!
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/021
TIMECODES
00:00-03:16 Intro
03:16-05:04 The Theology of Preaching
05:04-09:17 The high calling of being a preacher of God's Word
09:17-10:30 God has chosen to speak
10:30-13:58 God has chosen surrogate voices
13:58-18:45 What is preaching?
18:45-30:47 The purpose of the Church
30:47-37:31 Can you share the message of Jesus online?
37:31-38:47 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
Well, hey there everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. I am your host, Nick Clason, excited to be here with you. And I just wanted to invite you, if you have not yet, check out our website http://www.hybridministry.xyz. If you didn't know, we have complete show transcripts that we have created a hundred percent just for you. Um, those are a hundred percent free for you. They're not free to produce, but they are a free gift that we do for every single episode. So if you're like me, where you probably are listening while you're driving or running or exercising or cooking or biking, and then you hear something and you want to, uh, recall it or write it down or take a note or quote or something like that, you can do that through the transcripts. Now, full disclosure, the transcripts are AI and automated automatically generated.
Nick Clason (00:57):
And so sometimes they're not the most reliably transcribed, but they are still a good tool and you usually be able to figure out and get to the right place. with those other thing I wanna invite you to do is if you have not yet checked out our 100% free ebook that we created, called Have I Ruined My Church's TikTok account just yet? You know, there's a lot of speculation, um, and maybe worry when you log onto TikTok, like, am I doing this right? Is this how this is supposed to look? Did I do this thing wrong? And I just wanna encourage you to grab this ebook, and the answer is probably no. Um, but we'll help you, we'll help you, uh, take your first step post your first TikTok, because the world of vertical and short form video content is not going anywhere.
Nick Clason (01:51):
Um, in fact, it is so saturated in all of the major markets, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, that for the first time in a very long time, you can post identical content on all four of those platforms. And they will not ding you, they will not take away because you're posting something that was built for another platform while short form and vertical video content was made popular by TikTok. The other platforms are all trying to chase that down and bring that this discovery algorithm into their framework. And so they are Fran frantically trying to make that a reality and trying to make that happen. And so, um, the church has a unique opportunity to not only grow on social media, but take a medium and a platform that prioritizes this, uh, short form video content speaking directly into a camera. Um, which is something that the church has the ability to do quite easily.
Nick Clason (02:52):
Like if you think about it in the past, right? Uh, churches would have, uh, so like have to figure out a way to make graphics, figure out a way to have to get photographers. But now a pastor is actually probably someone who's pretty well versed in communicating to people, and that's what is happening in these short form video, uh, pieces of content. And so it's a really unique, um, and really unprecedented time in the church. So, with all that being said, excited to have you today. Today I want to talk about the theology of preaching. Now, you might be thinking this is not a digital topic. And the reason that I think it's a digital topic is because I think that, um, the teacher, the preacher has, um, the ability and perhaps even responsibility to use social media to spread and share the message of Jesus.
Nick Clason (03:46):
Um, and so the reason I wanted to do this deep dive into preaching is because I wanted to make sure that as I read through an examined different sections and pieces of the New Testament, that I was not speaking out of turn, um, and saying something that, uh, was not theologically accurate, you know, in the land of, well, per like, I guess the anticipated argument, and, and in fairness, I haven't really heard this from anybody, but I wanted to make sure that I, um, wasn't saying something that was not a hundred percent biblically or theologically true. Because again, like I said, I haven't said it yet, but I've circled around this idea. My anticipated idea or anticipated argument was that people might say preaching has to take place in the fabric and context of local church and local community. And so I wanted to examine cuz I wasn't sure that that's actually what was said, um, in the New Testament.
Nick Clason (04:50):
And so I wanted, but I wanted to see it for myself. Obviously, I wanted to look at the text and I didn't wanna just go off what I thought or believed or, um, was mostly sure to be true. So let's take a look at the Theology of preaching. So in 1980, a book called Biblical Preaching came out by Hadden Robinson. That was, that was my, um, textbook for, I believe it was Homiletics. Um, which homiletics is the actual, uh, practice or act of delivering a sermon. And so I went to that book, um, and the book is very much a, uh, pro dispositional preaching style verse by verse type of thing. And so he's, he's really building that case the entire way through. And so there's, you know, there's, um, a couple of introductory ideas in the first chapter about what is preaching. Um, but then after that it really dives into the, the ex dispositional side of things and how, how you should focus on that.
Nick Clason (05:58):
But one of the quotes that I found interesting that Hadden Robinson said was he said, Hey, one should think twice and twice again before nominating himself to that company of preachers. And, um, obviously, um, he's borrowing that from James chapter three, verse one, where James writes, dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church for me, or sorry, for we who teach will be judged more strictly this, this responsibility of, um, standing in the gap between God who has a message and his people as a preacher or as a prophet as they were in the Old Testament. That is a high responsibility, and those people are going to be judged more harshly. And so Robinson is saying you should think twice and maybe twice again before you, uh, attempt to step into this. It's not just something about glamorous, not just something about, um, you know, like being known noticed, like this is a really high calling.
Nick Clason (07:00):
And so I think that it's really important for whoever is listening to this, whether if you're like a social media manager and you are a person on camera a lot, or if you're pulling, um, audio clips or video clips from your pastor's sermons, the the fact remains the same that whoever that person is, and then if, if you are an actual pastor who's doing the, the recording, you will be judged more harshly. So, so take that responsibility for what it is worth, right? Like, it's very important. Matthew Simpson, um, he wrote this. He said, his throne is the pulpit, and he talking about the preacher stands in Christ's stead. His message is the word of God around him are immortal souls. The savior unseen is beside him. The Holy Spirit broods over the congregation, angels gaze upon the scene in heaven, and hell await the issue, await the sermon.
Nick Clason (08:00):
And so, uh, same thing, right? Like it's just talking about the, the priority. It's talking about the the level of weight that is on whoever is preaching. All right? And so, uh, I will, uh, throw, uh, a lot of notes, um, a lot of links into the show notes. I'll throw Had and Robinson's, um, link to that book if you wanna check that out. Um, I also found a bunch of articles online that I found pretty helpful. Um, one was from a ministry magazine article. And, um, I just wanna give you a couple of the highlights from that magazine that talk about the importance of preaching. Again, in almost all of these articles are almost all these books, the assumption is that preaching is done in a physical context behind a physical pulpit to a physical congregation. And by no means am I trying to build or make a case that says that that should go away, okay?
Nick Clason (08:51):
But what I am trying to build and make a case and open a door for is can preaching or can sharing the message of Jesus, can that also be done using different methods and mediums, such as an online medium, uh, like short form, video content, YouTube, TikTok, whatever the case might be. All right? So here's some of the high, uh, high level takeaways from this Ministry magazine article about preaching. All right? So the first thing at a very basic foundational level is this, is that God has chosen to speak. We see in Genesis chapter one, 10 different times it was recorded, it says, God said, we also see five different times in that same chapter of Genesis chapter one, that God called and so to God, words are very important. In fact, his entire creation was speaking. And then the thing, existing plants, animals, light, darkness, day, night, moon, stars, sun, all of that was given to us by the voice and word of God to God, words and breath and speaking, it matters, and it plays an, a pretty important role in the narrative of human history.
Nick Clason (10:08):
Furthermore, uh, God breathed into Adam and gave him his life. And Psalm 33, 6 says, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, the host of them and the breath of his mouth. And so, God, there is a very important and, and critical role in the fact that God has even chosen to speak. So God's chosen to speak. God has also called for surrogate voices to, to speak on his behalf. Preaching by the prophets was a, a way of warning the people to get their act together or to, to watch out for some sort of impending judgment that was going to happen because they had not been obeyed. See, God is love, and he's giving all, um, opportunity for mankind to experience and come to salvation. One Timothy chapter two, verse four says, who wants God? Who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth?
Nick Clason (11:08):
Romans 10 13 through 16 says this. It says, so everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on, on him to save him unless they believe in him? How can they believe in him if they've never heard about him? How can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? So that's why the scripture says, how beautiful are the feet of the messengers who bring the good news? But not everyone who welcomes the good news for Isaiah, the prophet said, Lord, who has believed our message? See, there's power in the words. There's power in being saved through the words. And God has a desire for humans to come to that understanding. The, the, the reality is this, is that the, the power comes from you and my and your preacher or whoever.
Nick Clason (12:00):
The power comes from that person's individual life. It's about the words that are said, but there's power and weight behind it. If there's authority, integrity, um, if, if, if the message is coming from the overflow of somebody's heart, of somebody's life, this, this message is not just about saying the message, right? There's obviously that, that verse where Paul says, uh, even if despite how the gospel is being preached, I rejoice because even if it's in vain, or even if it's not good or whatever, like it is still being preached. And that's true. But the, the more connected you and I and your pastor are connected to the vine, John chapter 15, if, uh, we are connected to the vine, you're reminded that Jesus says, um, apart from me, you can do nothing. Ian Bounds has a quote that says, the sermon is made in the closet.
Nick Clason (12:59):
The man, God's man is made in the closet. And so then at that point, you and I get to take this idea from Romans chapter 10 or for Timothy chapter two, um, and share it with other people. God desires for all men to come to an understanding. We, we get to be the feet that carry the message to the people who have not heard. How sweet are the feet of those who carry that message, however, is the person's personal life is our personal life, is our heart, is we have the gut check in place because it's really easy on social media, it's really easy on TikTok to get vanity metrics and vanity views and feel like we're actually doing something when in reality we maybe aren't doing anything and we're chasing after selfish gain or selfish motive. So like Ian Bound says, the real sermon, the real is made in his private life in a closet.
Nick Clason (13:59):
All right, so I got some more articles. Um, what is is preaching, um, I, I, I searched what is preaching, and a quote from, uh, thabiti on Yawe says this. He says, preaching is God speaking in the power of his spirit, about his son from his word through a man. Thessalonians chapter one verse form five says four, we know brothers loved by God that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. First Thessalonians two 13. And we also thank God continually because when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it as it actually is the word of God. God himself spoke through Paul's preaching, which is at, which is at work in you who believe power is in the word. Um, and also in the messenger, right?
Nick Clason (14:59):
First Peter, chapter four, 10 through 11, each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others faithfully, faithfully, admonishing God's grace in its various forms. And if anyone speaks, you should do so as one speaking the very words of God. And then Matthew chapter 10, verse 19 through 20, when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. Cuz at that time, you'll be given what to say for it will not be you, uh, speaking, but it will be the spirit of your, uh, father speaking through you had Robinson Hadden. Robinson says this, he says, preach means to cry out Harold or exhort, second Timothy, chapter four, verse two. So preaching should so stir a man that he pours out the message with passion and fervor. See, scripture already has authority. And so Robinson's argument, right, like I was saying, is one for expository preaching, which obviously he's speaking and writing this with a mindset of, uh, really I feel like he's arguing expository versus, uh, like topical or whatever.
Nick Clason (16:10):
And he's also arguing it with the assumption that this is taking place within the context of a local church with a pastor who's standing behind a pulpit who has the word of God open in front of him, and he's preaching out of it. And he's saying that the authority comes from the word of God. And so if we're going to take that and transfer this to a digital format, the same is true. You see, it's really easy, especially on TikTok. It's all about quick and the hook and about capturing attention. And I think those things are true. And by the way, those things are still true for live preaching in the room sermons, um, capturing people's attention, making sure it's relevant, taking what is true in God's word, and also making it true in their life or relevant in their life. However, the authority, the intersection there between, uh, the word of God and the relevancy, um, of the, of, uh, the message, the intersection of that needs to be God's word.
Nick Clason (17:01):
That is where the authority falls and comes from. All right, so back to Robinson, right? An expository definition. Um, he says this, he says, so, so the passage, uh, governs the sermon. The expository communicates a concept. The concept then comes from the text. The concept is applied to the expository. And then, um, the concept is then applied to the hearer. Okay? And so oftentimes a complaint about expository preaching is that it's not very relatable, it's boring, it's dry. Okay? Check out this quote from Robinson. I found it incredibly eye-opening, especially as I'm doing this research in light of, can this be a digital means a digital format? He said, seldom do normal people lose sleep over the, the jutes, the Canaanites or the, the parasites. Uh, or even about what Abraham, Moses or Paul had said or done. He said, what they do lie awake, wondering is about grocery prices, crop failures, corals with a girlfriend, the diagnosis of malignancy, of frustrating sex life, the rat race where the rat only seems to ever win.
Nick Clason (18:10):
So if a sermon does not make much difference in that world, they wonder if it makes any difference at all. And I would say, and I would make the argument that the same is true if you're going to try and preach and share the message of hope of Jesus online, cuz people are, are not scrolling through TikTok worried about the JB besides Canaanite pairs, that's Abraham, Moses, or Paul. But what they will care about is when you can take those things and make them relevant and apply them back over to the worries, the frustrations, the day-to-day life, things that are causing them concern.
Nick Clason (18:47):
So all of that is about preaching. All of that is about good fact that God chose to speak, he uses surrogate voices and preaching must inspire, um, and be relevant for people, uh, to take the message and apply it back over to their lives. The question then is, what is the role of preaching in the church? And is preaching an exclusive thing that can only happen in the context of a local church body, right? Then that would be, that would be, um, pretty important to, to figure out, um, especially in light of, of this argument. And, you know, in a lot of cases, I, I feel as though my audience, and if this isn't you, that's obviously fine. You're obviously welcome here. You can, can learn and from what we're talking about, but I feel in a lot of ways my audience is aimed at a person who is already in a local church, um, who's working for a local church and who's already seeing a lot of these things sort of like happening and take place.
Nick Clason (19:48):
The question I have then is, what is the purpose of the local church? You know, we went into that a little bit in the last episode, so I'll drop the link to that in the show notes. Uh, I also then looked up, um, an article I found on, um, desiring god.org, which is John Piper's website, and he has seven qualifications for the church. So he has seven qualifications and a averse or two that sort of like, uh, support it. And so I also look those verses up and I'm gonna read those verses when I'm done, um, so that you understand where he's getting his, his basis for. So he's, he's making a statement, um, and tying it to a, a scripture. And I'm gonna read the actual scripture so that you hear that scripture, um, as well, not just like the reference to, okay, so the first thing that he says, he says that people must give evidence in the remember, uh, the basis for local church.
Nick Clason (20:39):
Um, so number one basis for a local church, or what is a local church, that people must give evidence that they are believers, that they, they trust Jesus as their savior and Lord, the New Testament makes it very clear that we are adopted into the family of God through our faith. And that comes from John chapter one, verse 12 and 13, but to all who believe him and accept him, he gave the right to become children of God. They're reborn not with physical birth resulting from human passion or pl or a plan, but a birth that comes from God. The second basis, the second qualification of a local church is that people must be baptized. Jesus commanded a Matthew chapter 28, verse 19, that the way to make disciples was to baptize them and to teach them. And this was the uniform practice in the early church.
Nick Clason (21:21):
Matthew 28 19 says, therefore, go make disciples of all nations, baptiz them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The third basis for the local church is that there must be a regular assembly. A group of people who only came together, say once a year, could not rightly be called a local church because they are a central activities of the church, which lose their meaning when not done corporately. So therefore, Hebrews 10 25 commands us not to neglect meeting together to hear. Hebrews 10 25 says this, let us not neglect our meeting together as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. Uh, just a quick pause here. I would say in a lot of ways, I think the gathering together, um, a lot of it is not, um, at this point in 2023, is not necessarily for information transfer.
Nick Clason (22:11):
I think, um, that that has been solved through means like podcasting and YouTube videos and, um, people can even listen to worship music on Spotify. Now, I think one of the major factors of the local church is for this is for encouragement. I think that life is hard. I think that people are lonely. And I think that coming together in a gathering, in a regular gathering is for encouragement. Um, that complicates things a little bit when most churches gather together to sit down in rows and look ahead and watch a person talk for a half an hour. And I think that's where I can make the argument that you can take that same content that you're delivering in a 30 minute sermon and distribute it and disseminate it out online. You can also do it in that format. But I think that there should be something meaningful there for the regular assembly, that there should be some sort of encouragement.
Nick Clason (23:04):
A lot of churches have Sunday school classes or small groups that meet to do that and to fill that, to fulfill that function. And I just think that, um, we have made that a second tier priority, um, in the church. And I think in 2023 and beyond, with information and all-time high and an all-time level of availability, I think that what people really want and need and are looking for is that encouragement. So I'll continue going on. Uh, the fourth marker of a local church is, it says, among these meetings, there must be, um, gathering for worship. This follows inevitably from the ultimate value placed on Jesus Christ who calls us together from our rela uh, relation to God. Through him, the church is destined to live, uh, to the praise of God's glory. Ephesians chapter one, verse six, 12 and 14, and therefore, it will contradict our nature not to assemble for worship.
Nick Clason (24:00):
Um, acts chapter two, uh, 47, and then Romans 15, six through seven. So Ephesians 1, 6, 12, and 14 says, so we praise God for the glorious grace that he has poured out on us who belonged to his dear son. Verse 12, God's purpose was that we, Jews who are the first to trust Christ would bring praise and glory to God. And verse 14, the spirit of God's guarantee that he will give us inheritance. He promised that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so that we would praise and glorify him. So because of what he did right, we would, we would as a result, praise and glorify him. And, and because of that, then Piper is making the argument that that's the church should be, um, built on worship and adoration and, and praise of God. Acts chapter two verse, uh, acts 2 20 47.
Nick Clason (24:50):
Acts 2 47 says, all while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people, and each day the Lord added to their fellowship, those who are being saved, Romans 15, six and seven, then all of you can join together with one voice giving praise and glory to God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept each other just as Christ has accepted you, so that God will be given all the glory. The fifth marker of the church. Our meetings must include exhortation from the word of God, right? This is pay attentional to this one. This is really what this entire podcast is centered on. Um, we were born and new through the living and abiding and the word of God, first Peter 1 23. And our life in Christ is preserved not by bread alone, but by every word that precedes out of the mouth of God.
Nick Clason (25:35):
Matthew four, four, the shepherds of the church are the provision that God has made for feeding his sheep. Therefore, we strive not to be the church where the word of God is neglected. First Peter one twenty three, for you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal living word of God. Matthew four, four, Jesus told Satan, no, the scriptures say, please people or not, not please people do not live on bread alone, but by every word that precedes out of the mouth of God. Um, I do think that God has put pastors and shepherds in place to help feed his sheep, but I think that that really the role and mission of the church is, um, as Paul says in Ephesians is, is to equip the saints for works and acts of service.
Nick Clason (26:17):
And so I think in a lot of ways also it says in, I can't remember, I didn't write this one down first or second Peter, that we have everything we need for life and godliness, where a priesthood of all believers. And so people who believe in God should be given the tools to feed themselves to grow in their own faith on their own. And so, yes, I believe that you should gather together to hear a preacher who's poured over a week and remember the, the, the, the power from the word of God comes from the private, private life of the preacher, all that. However, I think the preacher should also be not just teaching the person, uh, like giving them a fish, right? But teaching them how to fish so that they can have that lifetime of learning. And we have, and I think that that a lot, a lot of that learning, um, with that requires some discernment.
Nick Clason (27:00):
Like especially with so much out there, social media, articles, whatever the case might be. Uh, I think the, one of the main things that needs to take place is discernment. Like how do you know if you believe this? If, if this article you're reading lines up matches up with your belief in God and if your, and if it lines up with what the Bible actually has to say. So how do you take what the Bible has to say and and weigh that and measure that against what you're reading, what you're consuming, what you're listening to. So, uh, I'll continue on number six, along with worship and the exoration, we must celebrate in the Lord's supper in order to be the church. We're committed to do this in remembrance of Christ. Luke 2219 and first Corinthians 11, four, neglecting this ordinance might seem, uh, inconsequential at first, but I think a church will bleed to death through the amputation.
Nick Clason (27:49):
Luke 2219 says, then Jesus took some bread, gave thanks to God, broke it in in pieces, and he gave it to his disciples saying, this is my body which is given to you. Do this in remembrance of me, first Corinthians 1124, and give, and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and said, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. This is a gigantic argument for the importance of physical gathering. You, you really cannot partake in the Lord's supper together as a, as a body of Christ without a physical gathering together. You can, um, church has that before, took communion every single week. And so as a part of their online experience, they would encourage people to grab crackers and juice and do it in their homes. And we did that during Covid cuz that was required necessary.
Nick Clason (28:30):
But I think that there's something about doing it in a communal way. Again, I would not, I would argue though, that like when we're sitting in rows and the pastor comes out on stage and leads everyone through communion, I, I don't know that that's really communal, like you're together. But is that actually what he was just talking about there? And that's where, that's where I think the, the, the 21st century American breakdown from church is a has been away from family and more towards a theater or observatory way of church. And that's what I'm saying, encouragement and communal and all these things that, that do happen within the context of a physical church gathering. I do think that it's, it's not actually being played out that way. So you can make that argument like, well, yeah, you need to be together and whatever, but like when I'm sitting in a row, shoulder to shoulder and staring at the back of someone's head, I'm not really getting to know them, not really doing that thing that way.
Nick Clason (29:22):
Um, that's just how we have come to land here out of, out of history. Like historically this, we've been doing it this way, so we're doing it this way again, as opposed to like really, like I said, leaning into less on the information side cuz information's now much more available, but more leaning more into the relational side. Last thing, um, from Piper's article, finally, all of this must take place with the, with the guidance of duly appointed leaders. Paul appointed elders in all churches, acts 1423. He gave instructions about the qualifications of deacons and elders in first Timothy three and tied this one. Full disclosure, I did not write those out, so you can go check those out on your own if you want. And he said that Christ had given pastors teachers to the church to equip the saints for ministry. Ephesians four, one through 12.
Nick Clason (30:13):
I referenced that earlier. Uh, there have always been disagreements about what to call these leaders and how to organize them, but they must be present in a group in order for that group to be a church. Historic Christianity has always affirmed this. So Acts 14, Palm Barnabas also appointed elders in every church with prayer and fasting. They turn the elders over to the care of the Lord in whom they'd put their trust. And then Ephesians for one through 12, therefore I prisoner for serving the Lord beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling. You've been called by God and their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and to build up the church, the body of Christ.
Nick Clason (30:50):
All right, so with all that, with all those different pieces of, of writing and articles and excerpts from books, what's the conclusion? So what I believe very strongly is that the church is God's plan, a for redeeming his people. Matthew chapter 16, Caesarea Philippi upon Peter's proclamation that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus says upon this, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And so, uh, not only is the church going to be successful, but also it is God's plan, a for bringing about redemption and restoration to his people. I also believe that the church should include as Piper laid out elements of worship and teaching. And as I said in the last podcast, living out the one another's, he said it in one of his points about the importance of encouragement of meeting together.
Nick Clason (31:51):
I think that there's a, like I said earlier, and I did a little sidebar, uh, earlier, I think there's a lot more there and I think there's a lot more opportunity for the church to be more encouraging in lifting up one another. And so I think it's, I think it's ultimately God's desire that everyone comes to a knowledge of salvation of him. And I also believe, and I, and I see it pretty clearly, that it's Jesus' command for us to go and make disciples teaching them. And and I think that's probably done through the context of community. Now, like I said, I think we can get it twisted and say when we're sitting in rows, the way that the church has been set up for, for a century or longer now, that that's community because we're in the room together. And I don't actually think that that's the most effective form of community.
Nick Clason (32:43):
And I think most pastors would say that's not the most effective form of community. However, no one has really tried to break that. Um, and if they do, they're often considered sort of like hippies and people just trying to be like super offshoot of Christianity, right? But people who live, um, best in the context of community, people who have committed to a local assembly, a local body, a local acc, the church, um, those people are the ones who then can live out this command from Jesus to both be discipled and to be discipling others, teaching them about the commands of Jesus. And that's not just the pastor's job, it's the pastor's job to help equip set up framework, um, do this under the, the guidance and assembly and all these things. Okay? But in addition to the content from God's word, there's an encouragement of one another that needs to be lived out and needs to be expressed.
Nick Clason (33:40):
And however, I think in addition to all of that, we see Paul and we see Jesus and we see his disciples, like when Jesus sends out the 72, that they have a high level of urgency and priority to go and share the gospel to the people that have not yet heard the message of Jesus. And I do believe that digital vertical, short form video, long form video, audio podcasting, TikTok, is today's opportunity to help go out into the fray infringes to share the message of help found in the gospel. Like, like Paul, right? Almost every one of his letters was written to a church that he was not in physical proximity to. He had a relationship with them, he had met them before, maybe he hadn't, he just heard about 'em in a couple cases. But he sends and uses the, the communication means and effort of his day and age, and he uses it to get in contact with different churches.
Nick Clason (34:44):
And I believe that TikTok is today's opportunity to share the message of hope that's found in the gospel if we're borrowing from the marketing world and looking at like a funnel, right? Like the top of the funnel is the widest, and that's the awareness phase. And then people might move into a consideration phase and then a conversion phase, and then to the fact down in the lowest part of the funnel, um, where they are expressing loyalty. And then finally, they are expressing a advocacy. And I think that the church can, um, follow a similar way. And I think that that TikTok, I think that social media often is a top of the funnel type of thing. I don't know that you are gonna pray with anybody to receive Christ over TikTok. You might, and that'd be an amazing story. But I think in a lot of ways a person is, is hovering around the top of the funnel, gaining an awareness of Jesus, um, and, and maybe even your church, and then moving down that funnel more and more and more until finally I take a step into real live, authentic personal community.
Nick Clason (35:44):
And the church world is very similar. Jesus set up the very same framework, right? Jesus said, um, Hey, explore who I am, where he, where he gives the invitation to Andrew and John, and he says, come and see. And then out of that, he, he allows them to follow him or, or connect with him and with some other disciples. And then he really ch he leans in, he challenges them, goes from following me to, I will make you, I will change you, um, make you into fishes of men. And that's what we see a lot of the growth of them internally. And then finally, the most growth is when he turns and pivots and he says, now it's your job to go and multiply. And that's why we see much joy out of Jesus when the 72 come back, because the 72 is the, the second and third and fourth generation of disciples.
Nick Clason (36:31):
It's not just his disciples, the ones that we know, the ones that are listed, Peter, James, John, Andrew. But it's, it's their disciples, the ones that they've shared the message with. Those 72 go out and they also bear much fruit. That's the framework that Jesus has built up for multiplication. And so, um, we can, as the church, we can lean into that come and see, and that follow me, those entry level places. And in a lot of times those have been set up in physical gatherings in the worship environment. And that is a place where people can come and explore. But I think, um, in today's day and age, they're also doing a lot of that exploration in the palm of their hands, on their phones, on their devices and on their screens. And they're looking at their, at their phones. They're asking questions about, who is this man?
Nick Clason (37:13):
Jesus, what is this you say about faith? And as they're scrolling through TikTok to yes, be entertained and to yes, find another silly video or whatever they're looking for, they might also find something meaningful, something spiritual and something where you can say, Hey, come and see. Hey, listen guys, I hope you found this episode helpful. Uh, it was a deep dive. Um, it was heavy and there was a lot of, uh, scripture and quotes and stuff like that. And so, um, I will post, um, all the links to everything I've done in the show notes. Of course, there's free transcripts and you know what I'll do, I'll include my notes for this, um, in the, the notes as well. So you can get all that over at hybridministry.xyz. Go grab the ebook, go watch the YouTube video and how to post. And um, guys, listen, there is a lost and dying world out there, and that's why this is so important, not for you to get a thousand million hundred views on a TikTok video, but so that people who don't have a relationship with Jesus come to an understanding of a relationship with Jesus.
Nick Clason (38:15):
And maybe just, maybe that's through you giving them an opportunity to explore and open the door. So keep doing what you're doing, blessings on you and your ministry, and we'll talk again.
39 min

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Hybrid Ministry is complicated and hard. Or is it? How do pastors and youth pastors create a vibrant extension, not replacement, of what's already happening during their weekly church services? To…

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