What to do Now with Your Online Ministry

[Tom Pounder] Today we're going to talk about what you can do now with your online ministry. What are those next steps look like for you as you process where you go with your online ministry? Are you ready? Because it's time. [Announcer/Intro Voice] You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network. [Tom Pounder] Hey heroes, my name is Tom Pounder. I'm your host for the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. If you're listening to this, you're like, wait, it's the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast and not the YM Sidekick Podcast? What happened there? Well, the simple fact is that last week, Jeff Reed and I announced that I'm going to be now part of the Church Digital team. And this podcast is now a part of the Church Digital team. podcasting network that's going to have more launches in 2022. But I'm a part of this team now and what I do with my blog and what I do with the podcast is now going to be part of the Church Digital. So if you've never heard of the Church Digital or you've never checked out the site, I want to encourage you to go to that at some time. Listen to the podcast first and then go to the site and explore all the great options. I'll include the links on the show notes. But this podcast will not change actually from what I was currently doing. What I like to do is I like to call you all heroes. And so I'll reference it from time to time, the very beginning to the very end about how you all are heroes. You guys are the ministry leaders who are in the trenches and you are doing God's work. And so you all are my heroes. I am simply your sidekick. And where I like to invite people to share about what they're doing online and what they're doing with digital tools and trends and how they're applying into our ministry context. So each week that I get together for the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, I interview someone and we talk about that and we look at how we can apply it into our context. So I'm really excited that in this first podcast, under the new branding of the Church Digital Sidekick podcast, I have my friend Ben Stapley here. ben is a great resource and a great online minister he has online ministry experience and now he's the weekend experience director down in the church in miami florida i have all his contact information below because you're going to want to check out what he's doing on his website but also what he's doing on social media he is a great resource and today we talk about the fact that we are now almost two years in to covet and a lot of people have been doing online ministry for the very first time and you've been making a lot of progress but now you have some decisions to make because you are not just on online but you're in person as well and so you have divided resources and you have real tough decisions of where you're going to focus your time and energy can you do both how does that look like Ben walks us through a great flowchart that he has about what church leaders can be asking these questions and what kind of action steps they can be taking right now, depending on your church context. Because let's just be honest, our churches are in different spots. They're in different areas. You're serving different communities. So online here maybe looks a little bit different from online over there. And so what does it look like for you? He walks us through this great flowchart, and I'm going to include that flowchart in the show notes, so make sure you grab that and follow along with us as he leads us through. So I'm really excited to have Ben on. So without any further ado, let's get into the interview right now with Ben Stapling. All right, with me right now is Ben Stapley. Ben, how are you? [Ben Stapley] I'm doing great, Tom. I always like to rub it in that I'm down here in sunny Miami, lounging on the beach, enjoying the weather as the cold comes upon the rest of the nation. Not to rub it in, but I'm doing great down here. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, it actually is like a little bit chillier up here, up in D.C. now. And it's like, man, I'm kind of envious of you Floridians that, you know, especially you in Miami, like you get to experience just nice weather down there. [Ben Stapley] all year round other than august all year round so august is pretty like unbearable yeah you just you try to go from air conditioning unit to air conditioning unit from the car to the office of the home and make that that that outside experience as short as possible then that month is endurable other than that it's not [Tom Pounder] That's good. Well, consider we're recording in October. It's kind of a nice time, and it is definitely getting chilly up here in D.C. So, well, Ben, you've been on my podcast a number of times, and we've had a lot of different interactions. But for anybody who may not know who you are, why don't you give a quick little description of what you do? And we know you're in Florida, but what do you do? [Ben Stapley] yes so i'm down here with a church on the executive team price fellowship miami i'm the experience director which some people are what in the world does that mean i get a chance to oversee the experience on site and online from our from our streets to our seats to our screens and overseeing that experience and helping people follow christ not just the one hour during our church services but the other 167 during the course of the week so i get a chance to do that it's my full-time job in addition to that i get a chance to coach and consult with churches and individuals with communication, leadership, and creativity. So those are some of the things that keep me busy on a week to week basis. [Tom Pounder] Well, you are definitely busy and you're all over the place. I know that. And I'm going to ask you to share specifically a little bit more about what you do as we kind of wrap up and how you can help churches. But you have online ministry experience too. Before you became the experience director, you were an online minister, correct? [Ben Stapley] Yes, I'm with a call in the business, Tom, a dinosaur. I was doing church online before COVID hit. At this point, everybody is now, which is great. But I was in the game before that. Actually, I was a church online pastor for three years at Liquid Church. And prior to that, going back to 15 years in ministry for myself, I was at a church in New Jersey that was very transient with the summer. a lot of beach but it seemed like everybody seemed like everybody in the church other than me had a beach home but that wasn't the case but a lot of people people had a church home and so the summer time we would have uh it would be a mass exodus for june july and august people would say i love you guys but i'll see you in three months And we went down to almost like a fourth of our congregation size every summer. And then September, like clockwork, everyone just came right back. And so during that time, again, this is 15 years ago. How can we get this experience for people that even though they're remote, they can still tap into us? So I was pushing in on that church online experience 15 years ago, just because I... from uh from those beach home owners i was trying to captivate them during the summer as well and not lose them in terms of their engagement and how they can continue to walk with christ so i i've been in the game for a while like i said a dinosaur at this point yeah you have been uh that is for sure and you know it's kind of interesting that your mentality of why you guys started church online back in the day you know that when we're not as old as you are my church we're not as old as you guys are with that [Tom Pounder] But we started initially over the summer because of that exact reason. It was they would go on weekend trips and they would be always gone on the weekends or for week vacation. And that's when we said we need to launch something. So we launched ours in a June one summer and it's been great for us. So it's been kind of cool. all right well i want to talk with you about something that's actually on your website um and it's called the church online flow chart okay and you can get this and we'll reference it a little bit later but if you go to ben's website benstapley.com it's on there a lot of he's got a lot of resources on there um but you have this thing called the church online flow chart so as we've been now through covid and we're not out of it by any stretch of the imagination but people are well versed with church online i think a decision point comes really right now for a lot of these churches to say okay so now what do we do you know we've been doing church online and also in person church what are our options now and i think you've really highlighted this on your church online flow chart so talk to me a little bit about why you created it and and what it what's the purpose [Ben Stapley] Yeah, great questions. The first thing I did was when the pandemic hit, I think every church jumped into Church Online because they felt they needed to because everybody else was doing it. We don't have a revenue stream. We don't have any way to collect an offering anymore. We need to do this. and i think a lot of churches jumped in because they felt they needed to and the first couple questions they're asking is how how do we get how do we do this what's the gear what's the camera that i need what's the streaming service what's the best platform to be on and a lot of churches they jumped over the most critical question of why Why are we doing this? What do we believe? Before we jump into the model and how we accomplish it, let's wrestle with the mindset and what do we believe philosophically, theologically, what church online is, what it can be, what it should be. And so for me, I was like, after a couple of months into the pandemic, I was like, I need to rewind the clock here. And there's a bunch of churches I was working with who were spending all the time asking the how. none of the time asking the why and i was like let's rewind a bit and let's figure out so that was my goal let's just give a basic framework and talk people through in terms of the wise what do we think is accomplished do we think it's x great it's not if not let's is it y if not is it z and so the flow chart it was in it was in lieu of that to help those churches think through why they're doing it [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's great. And so, OK, so to kind of kick us off there, I think that really the big question is the first question you have on here is you've asked the question, can some degree of spiritual evangelism and discipleship take place online? And again, I would encourage you, if you're listening to this, to go to Ben Stapley dot com and download this so you can kind of track along with what Ben and I are talking about. But you have it in two direct points. So if someone answers no to that question. you know what well what do you think of that opinion i'm going to ask you that opinion but then if someone answers no what do you encourage them to do there [Ben Stapley] Yeah, and so just for the people who are looking, if you go to benstapley.com online, you'll find this just so you don't have to hunt around. So you'll see this flow chart and it'll make a lot more sense if you're looking at that as we're discussing this. So the first question is, first of all, is it, does some spiritual degree, spiritual discipleship, some degree of it happen online? And most people would say yes. Some people say no. If you say no, no spiritual discipleship can take place online. That's great. You're strictly on... site church um but my encouragement is then make sure that your model of ministry matches your mindset so if you don't think any of that can happen if you don't think people can get closer to christ through online tools then let's take down that website let's stop that podcast uh let's take down your vimeo account close out the social media if you and so here's the thing it's it's a bit of a straw man but i don't think anyone believes that um in their heart of heart i think i think every church leader believes it to some degree so that's the first thing that's the question to be even frank there's some leaders right now um recently in the news who's saying you know like a zoom church is not a real church and there's some out there who are criticizing spiritual discipleship taking place on digital platforms but those same leaders are fully utilizing those platforms to get their they're they're communicating it on a digital platform for crying out loud which is kind of ironic right so uh so let's just let's just make sure the mindset matches the ministry and i think i think that's a small small percent of churches that would say this it's probably a one percenter who would say no none of this can take place and again i would disagree with that i think you're missing a huge opportunity um and i and i don't know if you're a ministry unless you're like you're on the amish or you're men in a or you know you know a technical luddite right if you're just like this is all evil unless you're in that camp you you're not in that camp. So let's just say that small sliver of people are in that camp and then move on to everybody else and where we fall. [Tom Pounder] Yeah. And just in conversations I've had with you and friends like we have with Jeff Reed, when online church started becoming a thing, that was what a lot of people were saying is that you can't have real community online. You can't have real discipleship or evangelism online. And that was part of the reasons why they were not doing it in the first place, correct? [Ben Stapley] Yeah, there was even before COVID, before the necessity of it, and before people saw the true opportunity of it, there was that criticism. And let's be frank as well, a lot of that criticism was coming from lead pastors who like to see the people in front of them. And it's harder mentally to make that gymnastic jump to saying, I'm reaching somebody and I might not ever see them. It may be all through an email or text correspondence. And I never see their face and I never get to meet with them face-to-face. my ministry my ministry model was not set me up for this my my mdiv and my theological background did not set me up for this i was not trained for this i was trained for on-site on-site so i understand i'm trying to be gracious towards the church pastors and church leaders who've had to try to make this change they've they've not been set up for it but now that we're here how do we adjust accordingly yeah [Tom Pounder] So now, okay, so now in your flow chart, you say, okay, so that was if they answered no to that question. Now, if they answered yes, you break it down into three specific categories. Is church online more important, as important, or less important? So let's just attack those one at a time. If you think that church online is more important than church on site, what would your recommendations be? What would you encourage them and how would you encourage them? [Ben Stapley] yes and i've tried to use pretty generic language here because it can get really subjective you can start splitting hairs and really jump into the syntax and so i'm saying more important how you define important you can define that however you want but at the end of the day do you think church online is more important i used to say like hey congratulations you're you're you're part of the one percent as the one percent who don't think there's probably one percent who don't think any spiritual discipleship can take place online there's probably there was about one percent who thought it was more important uh i think that number's grown over the past year uh i i don't think it's one percent anymore i think there are church leaders who are seeing the incredible growth and the opportunity here and the return on investment on online we see church leaders who are saying hey we actually had a physically viable campus for multi-site and a third campus is doing fine when we reopen we're not going to reopen it we're going to take the funding for that and put it towards online the funding in terms of the facilities from the staff hours the volunteer time and we're going to beef up what we're doing online so you see church leaders who are putting this into practice you see church leaders church planners who are saying i'm just going completely digital i'm not you know i'm not doing anything physical so you see church leaders who are pushing into this i think I think the number is going to grow. So at the beginning of the pandemic, I said, it's maybe 1%, it's maybe about 5% of church leaders have this mindset. It's more important because I'm not saying it's better, more important. I'm saying it's more important because of its reach and its opportunity. Also, to be frank, more important because of the financial restraints we are going to move into as a church. So let's be honest, nationwide, we're probably about 50% back to our numbers at large, maybe 50, 60, 70 across the nation with our attendance post COVID. Giving is probably around 90, 95% back to where it is because by and large, a lot of that has been sustained by an older generation who were raised on tithing. What I'm flagging is the reduction in giving has not caught up with a reduction in attendance, but it will. and there will be a reckoning for the church how do we respond that how do we tighten our belt and be leaner what does that look like i think there's the possibility of being saying it for the past 10 years but i think it's still coming around so in the next five years i think there is the possibility that the tax exempt status here for churches in the states may go away what would that look like from a financial responsibility of how we do how we minister on a tighter budget leaders who see online as more important are ahead of that curve and are addressing it and are putting themselves in a position to weather those uh those famine years i think we've gone through feast years as a church which is great god bless we're going to go through famine years and god is going to bless us during those years as well so i think that's that's how you that's how you respond if you think church online is more important for you during this next season [Tom Pounder] Yeah, this is a great, some great points you have highlighted here. And I think one of the things is what we're seeing too is like, so the first part of the, in 2019, well, in 2020, when the pandemic hit, we actually had a really good year financially with tithing and giving at our church. And we think a lot of churches had that. I don't know if you saw that in your area as well. But in 2021 now, we've seen a decrease in tithing and giving. And so I see what you're saying there is that it is really kind of catching up. And our attendance is about 50 to 55% of what it used to be. And so it's a really interesting point what you made there. And again, just to highlight, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's... [Ben Stapley] cheaper to run online ministry than it is to run in-person ministry because of building and all the other functions you have there correct yeah there's no i think behind it there's it's drastically cheaper and this is this where i encourage churches because what i'll say first is pursue church on the ministry because the harvest is plentiful and there's a great opportunity and so that's my strong selling point i think this is a tool god wants us to reach more people for christ Also, in addition to that, it is a more financially viable model for us to consider. And so you never want to reverse things and have the cart before the horse. I think we're doing it and we need to do it and pursue it because we think there's an opportunity to proclaim Christ first and foremost, not just to keep us financially solvent. but that does need to be factored into the equation and i think church leaders who are not doing that are not being honest with realities they face and if you're not reality if you're not honest i read somewhere recently like churches who don't have a clear definition of success but are going to be the last to know they failed and if you don't have a clear definition of what your financial realities are you're going to be the last one to realize that you need to close the doors and god God deserves more than that, putting our heads in the sand and not addressing financial realities. We need to see them dead in the face and respond to them aggressively. [Tom Pounder] Yep, I agree completely. Okay, so that's what some action steps you can take if you're thinking that church online is more important than church on-site. Now let's go to the next one. Is church online as important as church on-site? I think this is where a lot of churches are. And again, what do you think about that? And what are some action steps there if that's what your mentality is? [Ben Stapley] yes so again i i agree with you i think we've we've hit the ends of the bell curve right those who are never going to adopt the model and those who are early adopters now we're in the middle of the bell curve majority of churches who are saying yeah it's um it's not the same as on-site um but it is as important as on-site and because of that we need to respond so basic responses to that is making sure that you're staffing looks like that you probably won't have the same staffing for online as you will on site and a lot a lot of churches have wrestled that if you have a graphic designer and they're making graphics that are playing in your services and on your online service are is it 50 50 we're still figuring that out we need to be we need to be gracious towards ourselves uh but realize there's gonna be staffing changes towards it there's gonna be communication changes towards it are you communicating in all your communication that you would love for people to come and join you uh on site or online a lot of times we forget that online we've kind of let let it go i actually like to reverse it and i like to say hey we uh you can experience here at christ fellowship miami wherever and wherever you are online um in addition if you're in the area and you wanted to check us out physically come to one of our campuses and so you even see how i'm reversing things there and putting online ahead so there's there's implications there the other thing i'd tell a lot of leaders uh who are in this middle is be gracious towards the model of ministry because by and large it's still in its infancy and to the same degree that you wouldn't uh you wouldn't evaluate an individual and their potential and their growth and where they are based upon their infancy well don't evaluate church online with where it is right now because it's still in its infancy and it has a lot of growth potential to go to grow so so wait for it to become at least in its teen years before you disband it and you run away from it because it's still in its infancy. There's a lot of growth opportunities. Wait for it to reach adulthood before you fully evaluate it and judge it accordingly. So there's church leaders here in this. Stick with it would be my encouragement and push through these infancy years. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's great wisdom there. And let me ask you this question, because I feel like in a lot of churches mindset of like, OK, now we have a church online and it's getting up there and almost an equal value to on site church. but the budget differences is still significant. And I know a number of churches that will be like, we talk about church online as so important, so important. We want you to connect in these online groups. But when you look at the budget constraint, the differences, it's so far and wide. What would you encourage some church leaders on that when you see churches that have just such a wide disparity in budget resources? [Ben Stapley] The first thing I'd say is make baby steps. Sometimes we think it needs to be on par by day one. So we have two staff members for onsite. So we need two staff members for online, not necessarily, but so see where you're at and see where you continue to make inroads towards it. And also, like I alluded to before, also realize that some of your onsite staff will have online implications towards it. So again, we can think of like a lot of centralized staff in terms of what they're creating, especially from the creative side and the experience itself. Pretty much the majority of them are probably staff that their time is going towards the online campus or volunteers that are going towards the online campus. So realize that. And then I think it'd be helpful at least to give yourself a benchmark, if you haven't done it yet already, to have your staff members ballpark. Again, ballpark. where are you where they think the majority of their time and effort is going towards is it going towards on-site or online we've wrestled this with this at christ fellowship miami so um janitor right probably all their efforts are going towards on-site i don't think any of their efforts are going towards online that's a clear okay great 100 zero uh church online pastor okay zero 100 that's pretty clear now the rest of us are all in the middle what does it mean what does it mean for me uh for the lead pastor who's communicating, but he has to think about communicating to the camera and making sure that he calls out the church online campus. And he does, you know, we're doing this quarterly meet the pastor event with our lead pastor online for our online, just strictly for online community. Okay, so maybe... five, 10% of his effort is going towards online. Do that with your staff, whatever your staff is, even if it's just yourself, you're a lead pastor and you're the only person, think through what your percentage is. And then what I encourage you is how can you create more margin, more of that percentage for each staff member over the next year? So again, it doesn't need to be, we had two full-timers and we went to three full-timers. It could be we had two full-timers and both of them were 90-10 in terms of their allocation of effort. Can we push it to 80-20 next year? Can we push it to 70-30 next year? Think of it that way. Think of it not in the terms of one-on-one staff members, but percentage of times for each staff member. So that's a great starting point for churches in that situation. [Tom Pounder] And I love what you just described there because I'll just take, for instance, our children's ministry, right? At my specific church, they were 100% on-site only before the pandemic. And then once it happened, they became a little bit different. But now that we're coming out of it, we are doing a lot of more on-site stuff, but they have not lost their focus a little bit on online. And then so... I would say they're at an 80 20 right now, whereas before it was 100 to zero. And so they're making strides and they're still they're not forgetting that online stuff. They're still incorporating it, but not as much to the degree when we were just online only. So I love how you just described that right there. All right. So that's as if you think it's just as important. Now, let's get to the last one where you think the church online is less important as church on site. And I'll just say this is one of the things I've been noticing, too. And you can tell me if you've noticed this with churches you've been working with. is i've noticed now that we've gotten through the the heart of the pandemic the just real crazy time of the pandemic that more and more churches are saying okay this worked well for us at the time now let's just go back to you know maybe we'll do a facebook thing or maybe we'll stream it to youtube but we're really just going to go back and so are you seeing that too and how would you encourage those churches and then let's get into the meat of what you would recommend here [Ben Stapley] you're breaking my heart you're breaking my heart with this reality that yes a lot of church leaders have are going back to the the normal right when we get back to normal a lot of church leaders are saying yeah it really is less important and let's treat it accordingly and i'm i'm not trying to like i say to some degree i'm trying to convince people of the legitimacy of church online at the end of the day You need to, it's going to be you and God. You stand before him with your own convictions and say, God, I invested my time and my talents. I really thought this was better or this wasn't better. So I'm not trying to convince you otherwise. If it truly is a conviction of yours, that it is less important. um i got great friends who are followers of christ who love jesus more than me with that conviction uh what i what i would say is this what i would challenge you towards is think through the ramifications because if you do it may change the way you think and what i say that is that is if you have if you have the church online your campus your experience or whatever it is and it's all designed to be a feeder system to the main thing the real thing the legit thing then no one's going to want to be a part of it so if you if your church online host is hey so so we're glad that you're here today with us but we would be really glad if you actually came to one of our physical campuses where the real thing's happening and that's if and that's not even sometimes said i'm i'm being hyperbolic here but that's the the sense sometimes you get with some church online experiences that we're sorry you're sick you're vacationing you had to show up we're kind of sorry you had to do this But hopefully you'll come back in person next time. And you get that sense. I alluded to a romantic relationship I had Tom going back in the time machine here in high school, when I asked a girl out for a date. And she told me she said maybe that's like maybe that's an odd answer. It's kind of yes or no. and she told me she said well she said i'm still waiting to hear back from tommy if he's going to take me to the prom just tell me no who wants to be the guy waiting in the wings and so i said god bless tommy he's a handsome dude you should probably go with him instead so you know what it was clear where her heart was and so i use that story as an analogy because if people are coming and they think that the real date the real show the real engagement with jesus and community and all the good stuff is only happening on site they're not going to want to come to your online campus and they're not going to want to be a part of it so i i encourage churches i just think through the ramifications of that because you're gonna you're gonna shoot it in the foot if that's the route you go [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I agree with you 100% because I've heard that from other church leaders that they're like, we want this to be a good experience, but not as good as just being in it. We want them to come in. And again, I get that to some degree. I mean, that's how we always used to do it, but the world is changing. The world has changed. And I, again, I don't want to get on a soapbox here. I mean, you and I've talked a number of times. [Ben Stapley] Get on it, man. Get on it. Have you ever gone to an online store? I was at Target the other day online. There was no like banner. We're sorry you're not in person. Boo hoo. You couldn't make it. They're like, yeah, here's the cart. Give us your money. like this is an engaging experience we're so happy you're here um and then when i went to the actual target store there was no one actually greeting me there's stuff on the floor and so like they clearly have put all their eggs in that basket we as church leaders can do that as well get on the soapbox tom i want to hear you [Tom Pounder] Well, no, I was just at a Walmart because I was looking for a calculator for my daughter because she needed it last minute. I would have ordered it on Amazon if I could have done it, but if I had more leeway, but she needs it tomorrow. And so I had to go there and she showed me on Walmart, you know, here it is. And I'm like, I have no idea where to go in Walmart. in-person experience is so horrible again maybe it's just this one thing but I've discovered this with other stores online I can I can get to where I need to go the navigation's great all I type in is calculator and wham I got a ton of calculators right there right on my phone put in the cart And so I think if we just limit it and say the best experiences without making the online experience as great as it can be for people, I think we're missing a huge opportunity. The world has changed. We need to change with it. And church, again, we want to reach people for Jesus. We've got to do it online. So there, I'm done. I'm going to stop. um well ben this is awesome i love all your resources i love all the tools that you have and you have such a passion for people to to discover jesus in general and you've done this great stuff with online and communication stuff uh so i want to encourage people to go to your website benstapley.com but talk to me a little bit more about what you have on your website and what kind of services you offer uh to the churches [Ben Stapley] Yeah, and I know you invited me here online, so I'll take it real quick. But if you want that graphic that Tom and I have been talking about for the past 20 minutes, it's benstapley.com online. If you want someone to come alongside and coach you through this and partner with you, go to benstapley.com slash coach. I would love to. And here's my sales pitch, not for myself, but for churches that are still on the fence. I think some, right, let's be honest, some church leaders are like, I never did the online thing. of seemed like it was a fad i kind of missed the boat so i guess i shouldn't don't be embarrassed in terms of being a latecomer i've i got the most improved student high school and in my undergrad i got it twice tom twice you know uh the most approved because i'm a late bloomer that's who i am and that's god's working through me in relationship to that if your church is a late bloomer is coming to the scene at the end of the day don't worry there's still opportunity for you to get involved and do great kingdom work here so that's that's not a sales pitch for me it's a sales pitch for the model but i think it's going to help churches reach more people [Tom Pounder] Yeah. And I will give you a sales pitch right now because there are a few people that I like to go to and I trust with valuable resources and who have a heart for this. Ben Stapley is in the top five. I mean, he is one of those guys that he's my go to guy. If I'm processing something or thinking through something, I'm like, I got to talk to Ben or I got to get to hear what Ben's saying. And so if you're not following him on social media, if you're not checking him out, his website, you need to. And I would highly recommend him as a coach. He has a huge heart for people and for churches to hear about Jesus. And so I love and again, it's not just online. He's got some photography stuff. You've got a wide variety of stuff that you offer. And so I would definitely check him out ASAP and give people your social media handles real quick. [Ben Stapley] I'm on all of them, Ben Stapley. And so just feel anything that pops up now, any of the new platforms. I haven't jumped to TikTok yet. Maybe I need to jump to that. But all the rest of them, I'm on at Ben Stapley. I'd love to connect with you on social media as well. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, Ben's great on social media. I like to connect with him on Twitter. So I would encourage you to do that with him. Well, Ben, as always, it's great having you on. I'm so excited to hear, again, all the stuff that's happening. So I look forward to talking to you again soon. [Ben Stapley] Thanks so much for having me on, Tom. [Tom Pounder] All right, heroes, so what do you think? What do you think about what Ben shared with us today? What's going through your mind? Where are you out in this flowchart? I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on it. So simply, you can put it in the comments section below or you can hit me up on Twitter. I would love to talk to you a little bit more about this on Twitter. My Twitter handle is at TAPounder. You can go there and... Chat with me all the time. I love this conversation to carry on. Because again, we're all at different points in our online ministry. So what does this look like for you? What questions are you asking? And I would love to talk to you a little bit more about that. So again, put it in the comments section below. All right, heroes, well, thanks so much for joining me for this very first Church Digital Sidekick podcast. So excited that you're here. If you've not subscribed to it yet, make sure you subscribe to it. I've got interviews lined up for a long while, and we're going to have some great conversations that I know that you're going to want to be a part of, so subscribe to it. And make sure you go to the church.digital website, and you can learn more information about online ministry and how it applies into your ministry context. right here is why i hope you have a great rest your day i'll talk to you soon have a great one