How My Church can Reach Millennials and Gen Z in 2022

About this Episode

Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly harder and harder to reach. And add to that the shifting trends of church attendance. The honest truth is a lot of us as pastors aren’t exactly sure what to do. And pair with that all the difficulties that have come post-covid. How can we enter into this digital and physical world and reach Millennials and Gen Z with a more Hybrid approach to our ministry?

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Or find full transcripts and show notes at http://www.hybridministry.xyz

TIMECODES
00:00-0:58 – Intro
0:58-3:35 - Does Digital Ministry matter post-covid?
3:36-7:09 - What could a Hybrid Model even look like?
7:09-9:09 - The faltering faith of younger generations
9:09-13:43 - Inspecting Digital openness amongst Church attenders
13:43-16:29 - How to get started in the Digital Space
16:29-18:24 - How to expand teaching and preaching into the digital space
18:24-20:00 - The future of short-form video content
20:00-21:24 - The difference between a sermon and teaching online
21:24-22:23 - Short-form content is very digestible
22:23-23:44 - The advantage we have as church leaders in the digital space
23:44-32:50 - How to get started
32:51-35:28 - Fulfilling the Great Commission through Digital means

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
Years ago, right? Uh, so 22. Yeah. Wow

Matthew Johnson (00:05):
Man.

Nick Clason (00:05):
And I didn't do the beard, right?

Matthew Johnson (00:07):
Yeah. You were doing the chin strap back then.

Nick Clason (00:09):
Yeah, I had that for oh gosh. And it was like, not very much.

Matthew Johnson (00:13):
no, , it's like just subtle it up.

Nick Clason (00:19):
Yeah. And now I've got this gigantic thing.

Matthew Johnson (00:23):
I love it.

Nick Clason (00:25):
Well, Hey everyone. Welcome to hybrid ministry podcast. On today's episode, we are gonna talk about how your church can reach gen Z and millennials here in 2022. Um, I'm your host, Nick Clason, along here with my friend, Matt Johnson, Matt, how you doing?

Matthew Johnson (00:43):
Doing right? It's uh, a little early. I see the sun rising right now of the sky, but it's actually very peaceful and I'm loving it.

Nick Clason (00:51):
Yeah. You have coffee going yet or did you just, yeah. Okay. Smart. Smart.

Matthew Johnson (00:55):
Got some cold brew right here.

Nick Clason (00:57):
Nice. Okay. So, uh, I wanna talk about this idea of hybrid, you know, and, uh, like, like we said, in the pilot, there's a lot of, there's a lot of thought. I think amongst church leaders about, um, digital being kind of pitted against physical, um, and Barna actually came out with the study recently. I'm sure you've seen this because you're the one who told me to look at it. uh, that said, um, a solely digital church expression is wanted by only about 9% of Christians. So, um, when you read that, do you feel like that's a, do you feel like that is a push towards the, the physical expression? Like what would be your response to that?

Matthew Johnson (01:40):
Yeah, when I read that, it there's, I think there's a lot there in this study that Barnett did, but specifically this stat, what stood out the most about it is that when COVID happened, the answer was immediately, well, everything has to go a hundred percent digital or we're staying a hundred percent physical. There was no conversation about an in between at all. And you rooted uprooted people from their, you know, their daily lives, their weekly habits of every Sunday morning, I wake up and I, you know, go to my local church down the street or whatever to, okay. I gotta sit in my living room and watch church. And there's a huge disconnect that you started feeling with that. So, um, I think that's why digital church is drastically dropped and you can kind of see those numbers at, in the church in general. Um, and I mean, the stats says it all only 9% of, you know, Christians want only digital, which is not very high when you look at, you know, Christian numbers. So, um, but what it does say is there's still people that want that. So that's something we have to also keep in mind as we go forward.

Nick Clason (02:54):
Yeah. And if you, if you read on it actually says, um, so only 9% say they, they only that, and I think that that word only is what's key there. Right. Because it says one third express that some sort of hybrid option would suit them. Well. Yeah. So that's, that's 33%. Right. And then as you, as you inspect deeper into the generational gaps, millennials and gen Z are just as likely to choose a hybrid option as they are to choose a physical option. So 40 versus 42%. So like that, and that's the wave of the future, right? Yep. So, so what in your mind, like, what does, what, what does a hybrid option even look like? Or do we know, or do we know yet?

Matthew Johnson (03:40):
I don't think we have so a solid answer, but I think we have a lot of, um, balls rolling at different churches around the nation and you can kind of start seeing what a hybrid option looks like. So, uh, a good example, some of good examples that you could think of that. I mean, everyone talks about life. Church, life church is a great digital presence. Mm-hmm, , you know, they're live online. I mean, pretty much every time I go to their website, this says we're live right now. So , um, which is honestly why, uh, life church has probably been able to hit the millennial demographic better than most big mega churches have been able to.

Matthew Johnson (04:23):
Interesting because they have had that option where, Hey, I can go to church. Um, life church has locations everywhere now, but also I can just watch online. And that's the key to this. What we're talking about is like reaching these younger people. So even millennials who we are starting to see have kind of been a forgotten generation when it comes to the Christian world, the gen Z, who, um, we're starting to realize are going to be forgotten. And we have no idea how to talk to gen Z. Uh, how do we get these younger people involved with church as much as they are involved with other aspects of their life. Um, and if we can have that hybrid option, which really in my mind, we need to have an offering that they can do as much as possible as they can in the digital realm of your church, but have the reliability of coming to the church for all the major stuff. So crisises, um, community questions, mm-hmm, , uh, like, uh, conversations. Cause we know, especially you being a pastor, you know, you can have a way better conversation with somebody if they come have a coffee with you, then if they just tweet at you.

Nick Clason (05:49):
Yeah, for sure. So, well, and, and a step that you always remind me of is 51% of gen Z have said that they prefer online only as a discipleship option. Yep. And that's literally half can't get more. Yeah. I mean it's a little more than half, but so it's like, that is important and that that's half of our demographic. And so if we, as a church for sake, uh, any form or any sort of digital, uh, we're missing half of a generation based on what they say that they want. Yep.

Nick Clason (06:22):
And so we gotta, we can, we don't have to do that. We don't have to pursue after that, but we just have to know what the cost of that is gonna be. And the, I, I just think that the church is in a spot where they're the church being the capital C church, like in person, church, attendance trends are different and I get it cuz digital costs money. And so with attendance, a lot of times follows money. And so you gotta make sure that you have what it takes to, to staff towards these things and to pay for these things and have the budget for these things. Right. But yep. But uh, if we don't, we're just gonna continue to reach people as they are aging, older and older as gen Z, millennials are finding their worth meaning and value over on TikTok or on YouTube.

Matthew Johnson (07:10):
Yeah, exactly. And I mean, you can already see this trend of the younger generation's faith faltering drastically, like the Gallup study that you and I just talked about where, you know, uh, we went from 78% of 18 to 35 year olds had faith in God to now we're down to 68% and that's in what, six years. So that is, um, crazy, crazy aspect that we're not thinking about. And I'm telling you, um, we can keep doing church the way we've always done it, but the church is just gonna consistently be behind. And there's the running joke in the church world. And the church world is always five years late. You know, we always, you know, oh yeah, we're finally gonna add a guitar on stage. And everyone's like, well, rock music been around for 15 years. So, um, that's just the running church joke. We're a little slower to adapt, but we can't be slow to adapt in this climate because every day that we take our time on adapting is faith is all deteriorating. Hmm. So that's something we gotta keep in mind.

Nick Clason (08:20):
Well, and I, and you know, I wanna be clear like you and I like, we're not people that are like over here trying to like crap on the church. Like, oh, we love the church and

Matthew Johnson (08:29):
Yeah. We work at a church, so

Nick Clason (08:31):
Yeah. And we think that the church is like, I believe that Jesus made the church, his primary number one, uh, right. Yeah. Way to way to reach the world, you know? So like I think there's good things out there. I think there's good para church type ministries. Good, good people like on TikTok and YouTube trying to do things, but like the church should enter into this space, you know, and not just leave it up for some 15 year old influencer, you

Matthew Johnson (08:56):
Know? Exactly. Yep. Yeah. The church is not going anywhere. I wanna be clear about that. Like the church is solid, we're strong, it's the church just needs a little bit of a, a shift in, you know, it's something that everyone is talking about currently.

Nick Clason (09:09):
So, so Barnett had an interesting thing in their study, um, and they called it digital openness. So that's church adults who were defined as having digital openness. And so these are sort of the five kind markers of that. So I just wanna run through them. And then when you, and I can kind of think about, 'em talk about 'em the first one is, um, uh, a church adult with digital openness sees the value of attending an online church service. Um, they also think that churches should use digital resources for spiritual formation or discipleship purposes, post pandemic. They think that churches should use digital resources for gathering their people together after the pandemic as well. Number four, they say either hybrid. So both a digital and a physical or a primarily digital church will best fit their lifestyle after the pandemic. And they're open to attending new kinds of online gatherings that are unfamiliar.

Nick Clason (10:07):
So like we said, this is the type of, I feel like, I mean, you're millennial, I'm a millennial. Like these are things that like both you and I would hold as values, like having, having an option to attend something. Like, I guess the starkest picture I have of it. Matt is a couple weeks ago in our youth ministry. I was in the room. Um, and we were meeting in the room with our teenagers and leaders. And um, one of my leaders had a question about an event coming up and rather than her tracking me down, uh, she pulled up our website to try and find an answer to it. Um, and she, but she couldn't. And so we're in the room and she's on her online device trying to figure it out. And she's trying to, she's trying to get answers to it until finally she's like, Hey, like she's flagged me down as I was walking by.

Nick Clason (10:57):
And she's like, I can't find the answer to it. And I was like, oh, well that's cuz we didn't put it on there. Um, so that's our fault, but I just, again, right. Like that's an example right there of where digital meets physical. Like that's the type of world that we're living in. And I don't think that in the church in general, I don't think we're thinking about it often in that type of way. I think we're like trying to replicate a physical expression onto digital mm-hmm and I don't know, I, I do think that people are tired of that post COVID, but I do think that there are other avenues or other, um, other ways that people can try, uh, that churches can try to enter into that kind of hybrid space. So mm-hmm um, and another thing I thought was interesting, I'll read through these and then wanna kind of chat and just pick your brain as, yeah.

Nick Clason (11:43):
These, these are some of the options, um, of things that people thought could be like a, a digital expression or like a hybrid version. Right? So teaching slash preaching, one-on-one prayer, small groups, all of this in like the hybrid space, worship, prayer visitation, confession children's ministry, youth ministry, adult ministry, the number one option on there was teaching and preaching. And I find that so interesting that that was the thing that, that people thought was the number one option, um, of them to be able to, uh, experience something digitally mm-hmm . So for some reason I said this to you the other day. So for some reason in the church, the, the, we determined the most effective way to communicate theological truth was through a pastor preaching in a pulpit mm-hmm , that's no longer the most effective way. And I think for a lot of us in church, like that's a little bit of a terrifying proposition, cuz that, that means we're getting rid of something that is age old and, and someone we've been doing for years. And I'm, I'm not, I'm not even sure I necessarily want to do that either. But the fact is like, we, we now have the internet, we now have podcasts. We now have all kinds of other ways that we can communicate theological truths. So what are some of those ways that you could see the church stepping in to sort of that hybrid space and some of those, you know, arenas. Cause I think if, if you're the average person listening to this, you're like, okay, all these thoughts sound great, but like what should I do?

Matthew Johnson (13:21):
Yeah. Where do I, where do I start at? Yeah. So a big thing I even wanna highlight is this is just church adults that are saying this, so this

Nick Clason (13:29):
That's

Matthew Johnson (13:29):
Good point. Yeah. This isn't even like our agnostic, the atheist, the spiritually questioning people at all. This is just your people that are in your congregation right now are saying they need this mm-hmm um, so when I, uh, some good examples of some easy things that you can start doing today, um, that do that, don't take a lot of time and if you wanna, they can grow and they, they can be a good foundation building block for you. So, uh, first of all, teaching and preaching with record, just throw a camera up, record, whatever you're teaching your preaching is honestly. Um, we do know if you're trying to reach your church. People like honestly, all you could do is just throw that as an audio and make that a podcast and put that on your website and say, Hey, here's pastor bills or, uh, you know, pastor Toms, you know, sermon from this last week or whatever, something super easy that you guys can start creating the digital presence.

Matthew Johnson (14:34):
But some other easy stuff is like, just create a Facebook group for your church. Um, just, uh, or if you have like multiple different ministries in your church, create Facebook groups for all of them, invite your volunteers into there, invite the people that, you know, wanna be involved with those groups and start cultivating those relationships in a setting that is designed for that. And, uh, you're gonna realize most people, especially, uh, higher millennial up are gonna be very open to going into those Facebook groups. Now, when you're trying to hit gen Z and stuff, you're gonna have to get a little more creative with what your digital presence looks like. Um, cuz we know, first of all, they're slowly going off of Instagram. We know they're not really involved on Facebook anymore. And really the world that's they're they're in is like TikTok and Snapchat mm-hmm um, and those avenues are just vastly different, but I mean download TikTok and start making some fun videos. If you fill up to it, uh, there's some easy wins that you could start doing right now. And then if you really wanna start like strategizing, okay, what can we do? Um, as a church here is like digitally, uh, do you have a church bulletin that you give out every week that you're still printing, make that digital, just put that online. You can still have it physical, but give a digital option for it. Um, yeah,

Nick Clason (15:58):
At least let the people be able to find it on Tuesday night. Exactly. If they have a question about the, the Wednesday event coming up tomorrow,
Matthew Johnson (16:05):
Exactly like have, have all that in mind for any resources you're making and I guarantee you're making this stuff on your computer, so just upload it digitally instead of printing it and make a easy avenue for people to access that stuff. So, um, those are some quick easy wins. And then if we wanna get more complex, you know, there's thousands and thousands of things we can

Nick Clason (16:29):
Start to do. Yeah. Well, I mean I'm thinking, right. So if in this list here that I read already teaching preaching 1 0 1 small groups, uh, 1 0 1 prayer, small groups, worship visitation, confession children's youth adult ministry, the number one option out of that was teaching. Yeah. So we can deliver, um, our teaching yes. On a Sunday morning in a large group gathering of some sort, but both through, like you're saying ripping down audio, maybe throwing up a camera and creating it, uh, a video to put on YouTube. We can take that content though and repurpose it. And so, especially as we're talking gen Z, um, and millennials, uh, you know, I remember you telling me the other day, like everything on Instagram and Facebook is trending towards Instagram, uh, and Facebook reals. Yeah. Because they're trying to keep up with TikTok. Yep. And so this short form video is kind of king right now, at least at the time of this recording.

Nick Clason (17:27):
And yeah, we in the church are in the business of content creation. We create content every single week. So what if we just took and parsed out elements of our sermon from Sunday morning and just shot that in some sort of short form video content, like either leading up to the sermon or, uh, coming after the sermon, operating as some sort of like recap or something and just shooting it in with a little bit of a different mindset, same content, take all your study, everything you did, all the passages that you studied and did exegesis on. And then just bring that into like a one minute short form video and start flooding some of those places. I think that's a way that you can, you can take your digital or I'm sorry, your physical expression and bring it out into a digital world and kind of lean into that. That hybridness would you, what do you think about that?

Matthew Johnson (18:22):
Oh, I can't agree more and even speed of short term content, Instagram believes in it so much that they literally, this week as we're recording this updated Instagram, that every video is now real. So they have said,

Nick Clason (18:36):
I saw that yesterday. Yeah. I, I saw, I was like what? That's a real, yeah.

Matthew Johnson (18:39):
Yeah. So they're, they're saying this is where we're headed and it's to compete with TikTok. Um, so yeah, take your teaching and your preaching and just splice that up into some one minute service, uh, one minute clips and stuff. And let me talk, it's super easy to be able to do that. Um, I mean you can do that an I movie that's already on your iPhone or you can download a free video software, like black magic that is very easy to do on, I know it's a crazy name, black magic, but don't get scared by it. It's just a company and, uh, you can, uh, you know, start cutting up video today and honestly start, uh, growing your digital presence there, um, very easily.

Nick Clason (19:23):
So you, yeah, so you can either record your sermon and take clips off of that. Um, but I, I personally think if you don't, you know, if you don't have the technology for that, you don't have a camera set in the back of the room yet, and you're just starting in this, like all start recording audio, like the best camera that you have access to is the one in your pocket. Yep. You know, the, the, the, the phone now they say has more computing power than the computer that landed us on the moon. Oh yeah. Uh, back with NASA and, and Armstrong and everything like that. So just get your phone out and record short five short form videos as like, just snippets of your sermon, you know? Yep. And the difference, you know, Matt, like I was telling, I was talking about this last week with some of our team, like the difference between a sermon and a sermon.

Nick Clason (20:08):
You keep, you kind of build to like a climax and then you like have like a grand reveal at the end. Um, uh, social media is different. Like you gotta hit, you gotta hit your, your topics straight away. Um, and not, not hold it back. And so for preachers, sometimes it's a little bit of a different, uh, philosophy, right. But if you get on TikTok and you start exploring, you'll learn kind of that archetype pretty fast, you know? Yeah. That's anyone who's good and performing well on there. They're probably using that, that strategy. Yep. So have a compelling hook, um, and have some compelling text there. That's gonna stop the scroll because what, like, what's the average watch time on TikTok,

Matthew Johnson (20:50):
Like right now.

Nick Clason (20:52):
Yeah. I don't know. Like it's, it feels like if it's not good, you're just gonna swipe right. Past it to the next

Matthew Johnson (20:56):
Thing about, yeah. I mean, usually the average watch time is about seven seconds, which is why TikTok seven, second videos typically get pushed higher in their algorithm.

Nick Clason (21:05):
Yeah. And even as a church, you can even take some sermon content and put that in a seven second video. Right. Like you can, you can do one of those videos that has like way too much text to read in seven seconds. And so it's gonna force people to rewatch it, which is also gonna tell the algorithm like, Hey, this is a good video show this to more people.

Matthew Johnson (21:25):
Yes. Yep. And something else that's super important about that short form content right now is the fact of how digestible it is. Yeah. So when you're reaching millennial and gen Z and we're, let's think of like youth leaders, you're mostly gonna be reaching you to gen Z right now. Um, you're going, they're gonna want that short, digestible content that they can share with other people, or they don't have to think wrong about at all. So that content doesn't have to be the super polished piece. Mm-hmm I, I want to like, make sure that we're pretty clear about that. Like if you look at YouTube, um, and what people are watching, like most of these guys are just, you know, taking their iPhone and they're recording themselves and then they post it and it's get millions of views now. So, uh, that as long as the content is solid and it's short and digestible, you're gonna be totally fine.

Nick Clason (22:23):
Yeah. And I, I think that's the piece that, that also, so, you know, number one, we are content creators by nature in the church. And then number two, uh, the level of Polish, uh, has really diminished. In fact, I think some, some things that are so polished are sometimes a little bit of a turnoff mm-hmm to gen Z and millennials. And so both of those things bode well for you and I, because I don't need a several thousand dollars camera aside from the one that's already, probably on my phone. Right. Yeah. And I don't, I don't need to re like, gosh, man, I can't imagine if I was like a washer and dryer company trying to do social media. Like, what would I do? But I'm a church. Like I have, I have hundreds and thousands of pieces of content on my hard drive right now of old sermons. I've preached, like I can dust those off and I can turn those into short form video content and use it as a way to, you know, to reach people. So, yeah. Um, and it's not even, it's not even bad, like, it's, there's a lot of like serious or like thought provoking things on TikTok. It's not just dancing and, and trend videos. Like those things are on there for sure. But you know, like you can, you can, uh, find an audience there on, on TikTok, super easy by doing some type of stuff.

Matthew Johnson (23:42):
So, absolutely. Yeah.

Nick Clason (23:44):
So, um, if, if Matt, if, um, you were someone's, um, marketing consultant and they were saying, Hey, we have nothing. You know, we don't even record our sermons. We don't have a camera in the back of the room. Um, what are the, what was be three to five things that within the next like month, you could see a church maybe start to start to take steps towards, to enter more into this hybrid world to reach millennials and gen Z.

Matthew Johnson (24:10):
Oh yeah. So let's see, you have no digital presence at all. You're a church of, you know, 300, let's say a hundred. Yeah. Small plant. Um, just getting going. Uh, I was actually just talking to a church that has 50 in Denver. Um, and, uh, some of the stuff I would tell you is, okay, so create a Facebook page, start there, get a Facebook page going and a Facebook group going for your church. And just,

Nick Clason (24:38):
And by the page, you mean the, like the business, the thing so that you could be able to run ads off that if you wanted to

Matthew Johnson (24:45):
Yeah. Yeah. Creative Facebook business page, um, for your church, that is just a place that people can come like and make comments and you can start posting content on. So Sunday morning, pull out your phone, take a photo of the outside of your building and just say, come join us and give me the service times or whatever, like start, just start, um, pushing stuff on to digital platforms. And I also say create a Facebook group. Um, whatever that group looks like for you, I would really strategize and think about what you're trying to do with it. Um, don't just create a Facebook group just cuz oh, you know, these guys are telling me to create a Facebook group, like think about what that group should be, but really that group should be a place that your community can come together and start talking to each other. And there's not a lot of work you have to do for that. You create the Facebook group, you come in and put a post and let people facilitate those conversations. And if it gets, uh, little rowdy or crazy, you can start, you know, facilitating it. But I highly doubt that's gonna happen as you're getting going. Um,

Nick Clason (25:46):
Well, and you can even do like, and like you're saying like strategize, right? So you can be like, okay, every Monday we're gonna post like the, the song set from Sunday or something like that. Exactly. And then every, every Wednesday we're gonna do a Facebook live at noon and the pastor's gonna jump on and do a devotional. Then every Friday we're gonna do like a funny Friday and we're gonna post like a meme or something like that. Exactly. It can be that skeleton of a, a strategy because in a group you're hoping that everyone else kind of drives the conversation. And so you don't even really unlike Instagram or unlike TikTok, where you have to continually kind of feed the content yep. A group you can let the other people be like, be creating that

Matthew Johnson (26:24):
Absolutely like post post questions. Like what can we be praying for you for this week? Uh, what's going on in the community this week? Is there any volunteer opportunities like really get that conversation, just going, just spark the conversation and sit back and let everyone go. Um,

Nick Clason (26:39):
Okay. So get on Facebook,

Matthew Johnson (26:40):
Get on Facebook. Yep. And then, uh, another great thing is to start, like we said, making short term video, short term video content, and I'm, if you don't have a smartphone, which there's probably not a lot of us out here, that'd be listening to this podcast right now that don't have a smartphone. Um, so pull out your smartphone, take your sermon notes that just look at your sermon notes and find the minute chunks in there that you like and record that real quick vertical. Just shoot it vertical, throw it on your Facebook. Um, you can from Facebook post it strike to Instagram. Mm-hmm and there's not a lot of work there for you and that's gonna start getting your digital presence up too. And I, what I say is like, find those minute chunks, or even if you are like, you, you could speak into this more too, Nick, cuz you're obviously a pastor, but like, you know, you write your sermon and you go, okay, I know I'm gonna summarize this in a minute. I have my synopsis of what this is like record that though that on camera.

Nick Clason (27:45):
Um, yeah, honestly, I'm like it's, it's, , it's a little bit of a bummer how I can like preach a message for 30 minutes and then I can take my outline and basically summarize it in five minutes and do a five part series on TikTok. And I'm like, oh, what was I doing up there for 30 minutes?

Matthew Johnson (28:03):
You just have more stories of illustrations and

Nick Clason (28:06):
You. Exactly. And then the other thing you'd say is try and start recording your, your audio so that you can have a audio podcast. Would that be one of your things or is that not even as high on the list for

Matthew Johnson (28:18):
You? Um,

Matthew Johnson (28:21):
So the thing is, is if you have a audio set up at all at your church, so usually you, you know, it could be the most basic soundboard in the world, which you probably have right now you can throw an SD card and their press record while you're on stage. So I would say, yeah, go ahead and make your audio content a podcast right now, as long as you have that soundboard. Um, but I'm, if you have a mic set, as long as you're not, you know, using a mic, like a karaoke mic, you should be able to do that, but don't go buy new equipment yet until you're ready for that next step. Cuz here's what happened during the pandemic and all these guys I talked to as I was consulting with churches and figuring out how to help them go digital or okay, I'm gonna go buy these three Sony cameras.

Matthew Johnson (29:07):
We're gonna have this three camera set up. Uh, we're gonna have some students in the back, you know, try to figure out what we're doing. Hey, uh, Matt, what is all the equipment I need? And my answer always was like, first of all, okay, if you had the budget for equipment, let's talk, but don't go get the top tier of anything. You don't know where this is headed for you guys. So yeah. Tweak your time. Um, and really have a figure out that strategy, not just the, oh, everyone's doing this, so I need to do this before you go do it. So, um, yeah, get that podcast going, uh, the audio for that podcast or whatever that looks like for your congregation or your group going, that's gonna help you digitally. Um, and then, you know, another easy thing to do is, like I said, you know, post that short term content on like, uh, Instagram and Facebook. Like if you are already starting to post social and stuff, like start posting doesn't necessarily like not graphics per se, but like just take a photo outside and go, how can I be praying through this week?

Nick Clason (30:14):
Yeah.

Matthew Johnson (30:15):
Or, uh, take a photo of worship this week and go, Hey, what worship songs would you wanna see this? You know, this semester or whatever, like you can start asking those questions that are related to those options that you were talking about earlier. So, um, you can really start figuring out what it is that people are looking for with your group.

Nick Clason (30:35):
Yeah, well like we recently doubled down in our student ministry on, on TikTok and on reels. Um, and we actually pulled back on some of the more formal, uh, or traditional styles of posting like on Instagram or whatever. Yeah. And we just used, uh, we're just using our short form video content sort of supplement in those areas. So for example, like I was trying to post a story a day and I was trying to post something on the Instagram feed a day and I scaled those back cuz I saw those starting to underperform a little bit mm-hmm um, but I saw our reels and our TikTok content starting to skyrocket. And so I was like, all right, instead of five things a day or five things a week on the feed, let's just move it down to three, make it really quality content, like get a nice photo.

Nick Clason (31:23):
Um, and then the rest, um, of everything and just throw, throw that short form video content. So again, like we were saying, depending on when you're listening to this at the time of the recording like that right now is everything. Yeah. And the beautiful thing is that doesn't require a lot of, you know, like software knowhow, like you can edit right in the app, like TikTok has a decent editor. So does reels, like you don't have to have Adobe premiere pro or any video skills. And like you said, you have, you have the ability to just shoot that kind of raw on the cell phone. That's sitting already in your pocket. So yeah. And what was that back to podcasting? What's that HubSpot stat? You said about uh, uh, the average adult and podcast.

Matthew Johnson (32:10):
Yeah. Listenership. Yeah. I think it's 84% of people listen to eight hours of podcast a week. And I know I'm one of those guys, like, you know, I've, I've always listened to podcast. You don't even realize how much is I listen to when I run, I listen to, when I drive, I listen to it. When I'm cooking, I listen to it when I'm doing housework, like I'm always listening to, you know, my podcast. So, um, you wanna be where people are. So as you start seeing where your people are, know that to go for them and you're gonna hear people go, well, I don't listen to podcasts. Remember we are, we're here talking about millennial and gen Z. They listen to podcasts. yeah, I promise so

Nick Clason (32:51):
Well, I think that's a great way to put the, I think great way to end it. You said go where people are, cuz that's what this is about. And if we look, if we pull this all the way back from, from the great commission of Jesus, which is to go out and make disciples of all nations like it, when, when we dovetail that off of the acts one eight, uh, commission, where he says, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea Samaria, and then ultimately to the ends of the earth, it's this ripple effect. But it starts where you are. So find where the people are. Yeah. There's, there's a quote that said theology is all the more important today because there are so many messages being delivered into your home that you need to be able to determine then what is actually true? that quote came from CS Lewis in the 1950s.

Nick Clason (33:37):
Yeah. When the advent of television was coming into the, to the American and, and world's home, right? Imagine the, the importance of that same idea, that same quote now with not only television, but internet, YouTube, TikTok, cell phones, advertising, all the things like that. Like the, the time is now like the amount of untruth that's out there. And so the world needs you, the world needs your church and your people and millennials and gen Z. Like they, they do, I, what I've seen as a youth pastor, they do care about spiritual stuff. Oh yeah. They just don't think the church wants to talk about the spiritual stuff that matters to them. Yeah. So don't be afraid to Wade into that space because oh yeah. Because relationship equals influence and so you can help to start build that through, uh, some of your digital channels.

Matthew Johnson (34:30):
Mm-hmm yep. Totally agree.

Nick Clason (34:33):
All right. Well I think that'll do it for us, uh, today. Any, any final thoughts, Matt?

Matthew Johnson (34:39):
No, just go get it and just start, you know? Yeah. Go, just start. Um, your digital presence. That's all I can say. Like that's the thing that we, we can sit here and talk to strategize, but just go shoot your first video. Go create your Facebook or whatever that looks like. Just take that first step. You guys got this.

Nick Clason (34:56):
Yeah. Well, Hey forever. You update on this. Follow us on Twitter at hybrid ministry, uh, website is hybrid ministry.xyz because of course.com was taken and uh, and uh, yeah. Be sure to subscribe, share it with friends. And uh, we'll talk to you guys next time.

Matthew Johnson (35:14):
Hey, thanks guys.