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 notes@hybridministry.xyz. 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.

SHOWNOTES
HUBSPOT ARTICLE REFERENCED:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/short-form-video-trends?utm_campaign=Marketing%252520Blog%252520-%252520Daily%252520Emails&utm_medium=email&utm_content=219842216&utm_source=hs_email

TIMECODES
00:00-02:26 Intro and Short Form Video Trends
02:26-03:56 Why Short Form is the most effective
03:56-07:16 What htis means for church services
07:16-11:08 How churches can use trendy content
11:08-14:04 Brand Challenges
14:04-17:46 Use of Influencers
17:46-24:06 Product Teasers
24:06-26:38 User Generated Content
26:38-29:57 Behind the Brand Videos
29:57-34:13 More Educational Videos
34:13-37:31 What plaforms should we use besides TikTOk and Reels?
37:31-38:29 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
What is up everybody. Welcome to episode eight of the hybrid ministry podcast with me as always on these glorious mornings, Matt Johnson sipping his coffee. Matt, what type of coffee are you drinking this morning?

Matt Johnson (00:17):
Uh, I am drinking a local light roast from around here that supports, um, kid cancer whenever you buy it. So, wow,

Nick Clason (00:28):
Dude, you're such, you're such a good citizen of the world.

Matt Johnson (00:33):
Don't know about that, but you know, I love good cause

Nick Clason (00:36):
Is it, is it hot or ice this morning?

Matt Johnson (00:39):
It's hot this morning cuz I was in a rush. So I just, you know, grinded up my beans and threw it in the Keurig real quick.

Nick Clason (00:45):
Nice. Um, well I don't, I don't know if mine supports anything, but I roasted it yesterday in my garage. So there you go. There's that I guess

Matt Johnson (00:55):
Supports you.

Nick Clason (00:56):
Yeah, it does.

Matt Johnson (00:58):

Nick Clason (00:59):
And I, so I, we were at summer camp two weeks ago and I roasted a gigantic batch. Um, and I brought it to camp and I thought I was gonna be safe, but then all the leaders wanted to try my, my freshly roasted coffee, which is fine. I wanted to, you know, I wanted to share with the people, but that's the yesterday was the first time I'd roasted since camp, cuz I I'd just, you know, it was my birthday in between there. So I got a couple bags of coffee. So I've been been using that. So here we go. No one cares, but that's, that's the low down on my coffee situation.

Matt Johnson (01:30):
I love your coffee situation.

Nick Clason (01:32):
well today, uh, we wanted to talk about short form video trends because we haven't talked about short form video enough, right?

Matt Johnson (01:44):
Nope. Not even close.

Nick Clason (01:45):
No. Well, and even though we have it's, it is everything right now on social media and on the internet. And so we wanted to, um, we have, there's a, a HubSpot article that came out a couple of weeks or months ago and I wanted I'll link that in the show notes. So you guys can check that out hybrid ministry.xyz, but also, uh, I wanted to go through that and then kind of bring some of the, bring some of our like church ideas kind of into that. So mm-hmm so that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Um, so let's just dive into it. You ready?

Matt Johnson (02:24):
I'm ready.

Nick Clason (02:25):
Let's do it. So, uh, the first thing is that 85% of marketers say that short form video are the most effective format of video on social media. Well actually mm-hmm, not even video most

Matt Johnson (02:40):
Effective just general

Nick Clason (02:41):
Format on social media, 85%. That's crazy. Mm-hmm what are those other 15% even trying to say? Do you know

Matt Johnson (02:50):
Um, the other 15% aren't being seen I'll tell you that, um, I've even seen people that are doing static images as videos now. So that's kind, that's just kinda the world we're in.

Nick Clason (03:03):
So they literally post like a JPEG and turn it into a video.

Matt Johnson (03:08):
Yeah. So they'll like, you know, fade in the text or whatever. And you're like, this is literally just a static image with text that fades in

Nick Clason (03:15):
all all to be seen by short form video. Is that just because the algorithms have changed? Is that because of the popularity of TikTok? Is that like what what's behind that? Do you feel,

Matt Johnson (03:27):
Uh, it's a hundred percent TikTok. Um, you can see every big, uh, organization has been trying to mimic TikTok. You saw it with Instagram, with reels, YouTube was shorts, um, Facebook with their promotion of just video in general. So it immediately, once TikTok blew up the way it did. Cause it's been a long time since we've seen a social media channel grow as quickly as TikTok did. Yeah. Everyone had to get back on board with it.

Nick Clason (03:56):
Yeah. It says there's a quote in here that says the growth of social media is causing the human tension span to become shorter and shorter. So leveraging the power of short form video content will give you a leg up on the competition and help you engage your audience. And so mm-hmm, what, like, do you feel like that is a threat to, uh, the traditional in room church gathering 35 minute sermon model

Matt Johnson (04:27):
A hundred percent. Yeah. That's something that I don't think we're talking enough about as a church. Um, instead of actually, you know, trying to cater to this, you know, new generation, uh, millennial, gen Z gen alpha that are their short, their attention spans are shortening we've I've noticed church sermons are getting longer or um, oh, we'll just have more production into it, you know, more lights, more action. But um, if you're live experience, isn't on par with, uh, you know, like a big live concert almost at this point or short, you're not gonna be able to capitalize on it. So just an unfortunate world we are in right now. But uh, I think there's some creative solutions that we could figure out and that some of these tasks out there can help us figure out.

Nick Clason (05:13):
Yeah. How, how do like where's the line though? You know, like where's the line on, like we need to cater to them versus like, you know, preaching, biblical content is still meaningful and important and we should still do that as well. You know what I mean? Like when I feel like that probably just has to happen at every church's, uh, like value level, they just have to have that conversation and be like, well, this is what the world is seeing, but this is where like we're gonna stake our claim or whatever, you know? Cause I do think we can get into a slippery slope there and just be like, well, sermons are gone, you know? And I dunno that we're trying to, I dunno that we're trying to say that either. You know what I mean? I think that we should be, be cognizant of where that, where that line is.

Matt Johnson (05:59):
I think the big thing that people, and this is a way bigger tangent than what we had planned on, but

Nick Clason (06:05):
For sure, I didn't even know we were going this way.

Matt Johnson (06:08):
I think a big thing that we're at to figure out as, uh, as churches is just what, what is that next iteration of the sermon that we can figure out? So I don't think we need, you should at all straight away from biblical teaching and biblical truth. And if you're shying away from talking about Jesus at your church, I strongly feel like you're failing as a church. Like yeah, people wanna hear about Jesus when they're at church, they wanna hear about the Bible, it's the way you deliver it. So I just think we have to start kind of figuring out what, uh, your sermon 2.0 would be like, and I do not have a solution for that at all. Um, you know, someone will figure it out and they'll blow up and we'll all go and then everyone will copy them for the next 10 years. So

Nick Clason (06:55):
Yeah, but in the meantime, like there are solutions to the, the hybrid kind of side of it, right? The, what happens, what happens Monday through Saturday, the days you're not in the auditorium the days you're not at church and that's really where kind of this article comes in. So mm-hmm, uh, they say that this, this article also has another stat, says 63% of marketers say that trendy content related to cultural moments and news stories generate the most video engagement. So that's really what that's saying. If I'm understanding that statistic correctly is just that like things that are relevant tend to perform the most. Like if it copies a, if it copies a trend or if it copies a dance or if it copies a, a song that, or, you know, a sound that's going viral, like those are the ones that perform better on average

Matt Johnson (07:48):
Mm-hmm . Yep. Yep. Definitely. So that's something you gotta keep in mind too. So that is the majority still. It's not like the, um, it's not like 75% though. 63%. That's a still, that's a pretty good percentage of people that, of your content that should be probably more trendy relevant rather than just original stuff that you're trying to get relevant.

Nick Clason (08:11):
Yeah. And that's gonna require someone to kind of have their finger on the pulse of that. You're not just going to like pull open TikTok and like no trends.

Matt Johnson (08:21):
Uh, yeah. And that's, that's gonna be the biggest challenge. Yeah. Mm-hmm

Nick Clason (08:25):
Yeah. So who is that person? And there's probably, there's probably a young person in your church that, that does know that, you know, whoever you are listening to this, whether that's you or you're in leadership at your church, like that's a, that's a, there's a person out there that you can probably delegate that to, or at least tap into their knowledge. Cuz I actually, you know, this is the, here's a great case study for this. So I post on TikTok all the time, uh, at our church and I was posting and um, these students of mine were like, you should do this. And I was like, no, no. I was like, this is what's working on our TikTok. And I'd like, told them this thing. They're like, what? I can't remember. They basically like, no you're wrong. We just need to do this thing. And I was like, whatever, I didn't have, like, I didn't have a plan for like my next post anyway. So I was like, that's fine, whatever. We'll just do it. And so we did it and it was by that night it was the number one video on our TikTok channel

Matt Johnson (09:25):
and they

Nick Clason (09:27):
Were like freaking out about it. They're like sending me screenshots. I'd like, Nick, this is the number one video on our to channel. And I was like, yeah, I'm an idiot. You guys are smarter

Matt Johnson (09:37):
Than me. when it comes to having yeah. When it comes to having the finger on the pulse of trends, your students are gonna be the people that know what's going on.

Nick Clason (09:46):
Yeah. Which I posted something on our Twitter the other day and there's like, you know, TikTok ideas, like short form video ideas. And one of them basically is like, ask your youth group smiley face.

Matt Johnson (09:57):
Yep.

Nick Clason (09:58):
Just go to them, like stop putting some 35 year old in charge of, of TikTok. Like go ask the 15 year olds who are spending all hours of all days on it. They will bring you the trends. They'll bring you the ideas and

Matt Johnson (10:12):
Exactly

Nick Clason (10:12):
Crap, dude. They'll probably even like do it for you if you want 'em to like

Matt Johnson (10:16):
Yeah. Which is actually one topics we talk about. Yep.

Nick Clason (10:20):
And, and that's what man, we talk about that, or that's been talked about in like the growing young study by four youth Institute, Kara Powell, all those people, they talk about this idea of key chain leadership, like give, give the, the students who have, uh, some level of authority and responsibility within their church are more inclined to stick with their faith. Mm-hmm so if you give them some sort of ownership of it, you know, but oftentimes I think we just shy away from that because they could make us look bad or they could do something that we don't know or trust, but you know, that's a, it should, church should be a safe place for them to express that and, and try things and fail and, and all those things. So.

Matt Johnson (11:05):
Yep. Exactly.

Nick Clason (11:06):
Yeah. All right. So, um, let's look at these six ideas. Um, and we're gonna talk about, we're gonna talk about six short form video trends to look out for. Uh, the first one is brand challenges. So Matt talk about what a brand challenge is for just a second, so that us, uh, layman and idiots know what that even means.

Matt Johnson (11:32):
Yeah. So a brand challenge, um, is essentially taking the viral content idea. So if you, if you're li if you're listening to this and you have no idea how TikTok works TikTok, you can actually search stuff by like dances songs and sounds, um, which is what makes it stick out from a lot of the other social media platforms. So it's not like based off of hashtags or actually trying to search, or you can search things off of filters. Like that's like the world of TikTok. So you can search actually based off of the content. So as a brand, you could create like a brand challenge sound. So let's go back to, um, a couple years ago in the ice bucket challenge. Okay. And how big that got before the world of TikTok. Now think if your brand could actually mimic the success of the ice bucket challenge on TikTok and how big that could actually get.

Matt Johnson (12:32):
Uh, so it's really taking this idea of, Hey, we're challenging you to, uh, you do something, whatever that looks like. So a great way you could do this as a church is we wanna challenge you to, uh, talk to God five times this week. Um, or, Hey, we wanna challenge you to pray twice this week. Like you can come up with some spiritual challenges that people can do, or you can come up with some church challenge or like more outreachy challenges. So like, um, we wanna challenge you to, you know, see with Jesus' eyes five times this week and help somebody on the street. Um, so it's like starting to be more cognitive, uh, to help people be more cognitive of like their day to day. Uh, another good example of this is like Colgate for mother's day. They did like this huge make mom smile challenge, which was really a challenge to just post photos of your mom or a video of your mom on TikTok.

Matt Johnson (13:34):
And it was for mother's day in Colgate, you know, make mom smile, get white teeth. I don't know, but it was really just a way to get people to post their mom and everyone's gonna post their mom. So, or you could come up with a challenge like who you're praying for this week, post a photo of who you're praying for this week or a video of who you're praying for this week or a video of who you're bringing to youth ministry this week. I'm not gonna see these challenges are gonna go viral. Like, you know, um, the ice bucket challenge, but they could go viral in your church. And that's really the, all that you need right now.

Nick Clason (14:04):
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, wow. I got super echoy. I had to move cuz my kids came down the basement. Yeah,

Matt Johnson (14:13):
You got real echoy. Sorry.

Nick Clason (14:16):
Um, the next one it talks about, it talks about influencer ads. So mm-hmm, um, obviously we're a church. We're not trying to be influencers mm-hmm but what, like what would be something that we could do in the church with, with that idea?

Matt Johnson (14:36):
Yeah. So influencer marketing is always going to give you a higher ROI, always. Um, yeah. That's just because think about the people you trust and how you take, you know, what they say higher than others. So, good example of this in the church world is, you know, Lee Stroble is a massive influencer for the Christian community or Dave Ramsey. Um, so if you like got buy-in from them, you're probably more likely going to like purchase whatever, you know, these stro or Dave Ramsey's talking about. Um, now in your world, let's say we're at a church of, you know, let's say really small church just planted. I have 80 people at my church. You're probably not gonna be able to get a Lee Stroble to talk about your church. I mean, if you got Lee stro, talk about your church, that's a big deal.

Nick Clason (15:29):
Well, and I mean, what's that thing, that cameo thing you could do that

Matt Johnson (15:33):
You could do a cameo. Yeah. But uh, usually Lee Strobel, cuz you know, I've worked with him, his, uh, the asking price could be a little high for his ads and that's because he is Le Strobel. Yeah. Um, and he did a lot of stuff for favors for us though. Cause he is a really nice guy, but like we also like getting him just speaking, you know, it costs money. I mean he's worth it, whatever. Um, so how can you do influencer marketing in your church? Well, your pastor can be considered an influencer. Um, he, I mean, obviously he's probably the big influencer on your campus. Uh, so you start using him in a more strategic option to like promote stuff. You could also, if you really wanna get creative, find these people that you would call influencers in your church. So let's say this is gonna sound real bad, Nick, and you can push back all you want.

Matt Johnson (16:28):
Cause this is definitely like going to a weird space with your youth group. But as a youth leader, I, um, you could definitely find the popular kid yeah. And get the popular kid to, you know, start pushing stuff on like be your influencer for you. Um, yeah. Yeah. Now we don't wanna play favorites or anything like that obviously. But at the same time, if you know, like, Hey, if I got, let's say Abigail, for instance, to like get on board for this, I know she would get like 12 other people to get on board for this. That's a good use for influencer marketing. So think of influencer marketing on a small scale at your church that could grow into a bigger scale and just make that short term, uh, short form video. Like that's the key to all this. So

Nick Clason (17:13):
Yeah. I don't think like, like we've said, I don't think our goal is to become, get famous people or whatever. Right. But no, but you're right. If, if your senior pass, especially if your senior pastor is not a part of your social media channels too often, like when you post him, that's going to, that's gonna have that effect, you know? Yep. If you are the senior pastor you're listening to this and you are the primary person running things on digital and social, like then there is, you're not gonna have that same influencer or effect because you're the primary face on there. You know what I mean? Yep. So you gotta exactly. Who else are you gonna put out there? All right. The next thing we talk about is, uh, product teasers. So, um, this is talking about, you know, it says anywhere from six to 60 seconds, um, where you're teasing something that's coming. I think this one is one that works perfectly within the church. Mm-hmm you know what I mean? Yep.

Matt Johnson (18:03):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's like think of a traditional commercial is usually a product teaser, so

Nick Clason (18:10):
Yeah, exactly. And so one of the things we did, um, all gosh for probably like 5, 4, 4, 5 months, uh, on our TikTok was just the teaser, uh, round signing up for summer camp. So we did all kinds of stuff that was promoting the idea of summer camp, giving a sneak peek to summer camp. Um, you know, funny videos about summer camp, but it was all about some upcoming event. And that was obviously within the realm of our student ministry. Mm-hmm . And so if you're running this for a church, you have not only summer camp coming up, but you have vacation Bible school and you have the adult Bible study starting and you have financial peace university on its way, and you have the missions trip, uh, domestic and international and you, so you have a million things and that's, that's probably more, the challenge is trying to figure out what or how to promote everything, but product product teasing is something that can become very easy to do. You know what I mean? Uh, in the church world.

Matt Johnson (19:14):
So mm-hmm yep, absolutely.

Nick Clason (19:16):
So real quick, before we jump to the next one, uh, as someone who does marketing in the church, Matt, what is your like preferred model for knowing what to promote and how often, and do you have like a, do you have like a framework built? Do you have like a, a rule of thumb? That's good, good practice for that because you know, if you're in the seat, you're in the kids' ministry wants their announcement and the student ministry wants their announcement and the women's ministry wants their announcement and the seniors ministry wants their announcement who gets the announcement.

Matt Johnson (19:52):
Great question. So step one is making, um, the various ministries kind of work together and work backwards. So the rule of thumb on any given Sunday for us is three announcements. And that is just because we know three decisions is as many as people can do before they start feeling overwhelmed. So if I give you four decisions, that fourth decision is gonna take less precedent than the other three. So that's step one is get the ministries to like, not launch five things on the same weekend, which we all wanna do. I, we all wanna do it, but don't do it. It's just two the next week. It's fine. Um, secondly is, uh, yeah, we, we have built, uh, an SOP, a standard operating procedure to really define what takes precedent over everything. So, um, what gets on social media is gonna be different than what gets in our email for the week, which will be different than what's on stage, which will be different than what the pastor talks about.

Matt Johnson (20:56):
And this is all weighed depending on the, um, the outreach draw of it. So, um, social and email, we have decided that email is for internal. So if this is more of internal event, so rooted, rooted is not gonna be something that you invite friends to really that are not part of the church, cuz rooted is gonna make you go deep in small groups. That should just be our newsletter and um, probably our host spot. And why I say that for the host spot for that is because, uh, that's a great way to get people that are in the church that probably have not done rooted. And they're new to go, okay, go do this to take next step with Parkview. Um, uh, the set, the next thing. So then social like alpha is great for social media because that's an external thing. So I can run, you know, ads behind that and get people to come to that.

Matt Johnson (21:59):
And then, uh, like if it's something that's gonna really affect everyone and that's a big deal that goes to the pastor to talk about in his spot. So let's say we have like family weekend coming up our next gen weekend. That's something that should probably be talked about by the pastor when the most captive audience is there. If that's something that we have said as a church, like that's hu ways higher than everything else. So you really just gotta define who your target is for everything that you're trying to promote. And then you can kind of figure out where they fit in your puzzle piece of all the digital platforms you have. Um, what's

Nick Clason (22:36):
The, what's the biggest, like, can you think of a time, like the number one time that you had like multiple people vying for, for something like, and how did you filter through that?

Matt Johnson (22:47):
Oh, I mean, it happens all the time at where we're at now and it's because everyone thinks their stuff is super important urgent. And the big thing is just sitting down with everyone and explaining their target and actually getting their purpose. And once they start realizing, oh yeah, mine is internal. Mine's really only for preschoolers. It's like, okay, then we should target preschoolers. Like this should not be, you know, an all church thing, um, necessarily it could be depending on what the event is, but 99% of the time, it's not going to be, um, now at a smaller church and maybe you have less going on. That's okay to like talk about all this stuff with your congregation and be like, yeah, I do have a friend that has a preschooler and I've talked about God with them and they might be interested to come, but like, that's great. That's a great avenue for that. But when you have eight different type of group functionalities, plus five kids things, plus your student things, plus your, um, mission things on top of, uh, we have mass baptism weekend or whatever, like you gotta really start kinda weighing what is actually gonna get you the most bang for your, your most bang for your buck, quote, unquote,

Nick Clason (23:56):
Bang for your,

Matt Johnson (23:58):
I was saying quote with buck unquote quote.

Nick Clason (24:04):
All right, great. Those just like a quick deviation, but uh, okay. So the next thing here in this article is more user generated content. All right. So what's that. And how can churches use it?

Matt Johnson (24:18):
User generated content is literally just getting your users to create content for you. So, um,

Nick Clason (24:25):
That feels like churches could do pretty

Matt Johnson (24:28):
Easily, oh, a hundred percent. You should be doing it. And user generated content has actually been shown. I haven't seen the most recent studies, so don't quote me on this, but it was, uh, shown to be one of the highest ways for conversion rate. And that's because you're trusting someone that, you know, you so it's. So if you think about it in the hierarchy of like influencer marketing commercials and then user generated content user generated, content's gonna have the highest conversion because Nick, if you tell me about something, I'm gonna trust that more than if Lee Stroble tells me about something, which I trust Leero more than, uh, my I'm watching a Dodgers game and there's a commercial that comes on. So if you think about that

Nick Clason (25:10):
H baseball, right?

Matt Johnson (25:13):
Cause baseball is good. Nick, it's good for the heart, especially when you have a team that wins a lot. So if you think about that hierarchy, that like, okay. Yeah. It's building that trust user generated content is gonna weigh higher.

Nick Clason (25:28):
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, how, how, how, like, how could churches go about capturing user generated content?

Matt Johnson (25:38):
Um, great way is, do you have some kids you trust, well, have them run your Instagram or TikTok for the day? Um, yeah. You're at camp. Uh, have your students do be like, Hey, I want you guys to promote camp today, take the camera or the GoPro with you and you guys just go crazy. Like you have some options there there's a lot, like it CR this is where you can get whoever you want to be as creative as they possibly can within the context of whatever your, uh, your guidelines are at your church.

Nick Clason (26:09):
Yeah. Well, I'm thinking too, man, you could even do, uh, like what's it called? Like takeovers on Instagram stories. Mm-hmm, you know, um, little things like that. Give, give people like a kind of a glimpse a day in the life, all that type of stuff. Uh, I did that one year at camp where a different person took over Instagram for the day, you know, and they just, they got access to our student mystery account for the day. So, all right. Uh, sweet. The next one is more behind the brands videos. So this one's like a, this one's like a, I don't know, like kinda like a behind the scenes one, but it says mm-hmm, , uh, a sprout social study said that 70% of consumers say they feel more connected to brands who, uh, whose CEO is active on social media platform. So that goes to that senior pastor thing.

Nick Clason (27:02):
Um, but what are, what are some of the behind the scenes? Like, you know, we that's, that one feels like a super easy one for churches. Like people see what you want them to see on a Sunday morning or whatever, but where, but given them a glimpse into the office or the staff meeting or the prayer meeting, or a tour of like a, a place that normal people don't get to see those types of things, I feel like are super a, you know, have such a chance to blow up for people to just get excited about it.

Matt Johnson (27:36):
Yep. Yeah. And it's super easy. Like do walk around the office and say, Hey, here's Doreen. I want you to know about her and meet her and give your testimony or whatever. Or here's our meeting room or here's our staff meeting today, or here's our prayer time today, like build that stuff or take a photo of it and post it. And we have personally seen this be some of our, uh, highest, uh, converting slash liked and engaged stuff that we have done. And this is something we've recently just added to our world. So, um, getting, and it's so easy, Nick, it's so easy. Like you just walk up to someone with your phone and you film them for 30 seconds and then get couple hundreds on it.

Nick Clason (28:13):
Yeah. Yeah. Super easy. So, you know, you can even add that it's like a once a week, like a actually, uh, you've passed a friend of mine. He used to do this thing called, uh, what's behind that door. And it was just like a series that he would do. And he'd like explore different closets basically in the church, you know? And he had a little bumper with it and he would just do it. It was honestly, it was very TikTok esque before TikTok. He was just posting on his Instagram, like feed, but that was basically what he was doing. And then I remember one, he did like a super funny one. where he like went up into the attic and he planted this like baby doll. And so he like shown the flashlight and the attic on the baby doll. And then it just showed him like freaking out, like running away and then just standing there, like stunned at the end.

Nick Clason (29:01):
And that's how it ended like this, the perfect TikTok archetype, but he was doing it like before, before talk's time, even, you know? But I love that. Just little things like that that are just fun. What's behind that door, you know, what's that closet. Have you ever, have you ever wondered what this is? Like, there's, there's a million probably things in your church like that, and it's stupid stuff. Right? Like you hide it for the weekend, but people, people eat that stuff up, man. If they're like, this is our Christmas storage closet, for whatever reason, they're like, ah, it's amazing. Like I think because there's like a vulnerability there, they just feel like a greater sense of connection to your church. Yep. Because of that, like, oh yeah. I, I got to see where they have the Christmas trees, like who cares, but people do

Matt Johnson (29:47):
They do. And um, it's easy. like, that's all I could say. It's easy. Just do it.

Nick Clason (29:53):
Yeah. Yeah. There's really no reason not to. All right. The last one that this, uh, HubSpot article has here is more explainer or educational videos. And I feel like this is the one that the church can just go absolutely crazy on

Matt Johnson (30:06):
Mm-hmm

Nick Clason (30:07):
Mm-hmm so here's what I wanna do. I wanna do a little game. You ready? I didn't even tell you about this. Mm-hmm and it's coming to my brain right now for the very first time. Love it. So I want us to make a list and we're just gonna bounce back and forth. And the person who, uh, runs out of ideas first loses you ready?

Matt Johnson (30:25):
A list of

Nick Clason (30:26):
A list of educational or explainer videos. Okay. So like things that churches could do, um, great. And I'll start, then you go then back to me, then you, does that make sense? We're gonna ping pong it back and forth.

Matt Johnson (30:39):
Yep.

Nick Clason (30:40):
All right. So, um, you could do a, how to pray video,

Matt Johnson (30:47):
Man. That was on my mind. You could do a how to share your faith video.

Nick Clason (30:51):
Mm that's a good one. You could do how to read your Bible video.

Matt Johnson (30:55):
You could do how to share your testimony video.

Nick Clason (30:58):
that? I don't know. That seems very close to the first one. You said, uh, you

Matt Johnson (31:03):
Could do test. Well, I guess how do you share Jesus and how do you do your testimony? I guess

Nick Clason (31:10):
You could do, uh, you could explain like a deep theological truth, like the holy spirit or something like that.

Matt Johnson (31:19):
Oh yeah. That's good. Uh, one of my favorite types of videos is, uh, like dumbing down, complicated Bibles mm-hmm or, you know, so like, uh, talk about Leviticus that makes sense for people or numbers, you know?

Nick Clason (31:37):
Yeah. Yeah. That's like the Bible project. Yep. Um, you could do. Yeah. What was I gonna say? I had something, uh, uh, maybe I'm gonna lose here. Uh, you could do, uh, nah, I, I think I lost man. You win. Congratulations. Um, thanks. Yeah, but you see, like we could have gone a lot longer, but I'm an idiot. Oh,

Matt Johnson (32:01):
Definitely. Well, you had it. It's it's early, everybody.

Nick Clason (32:05):
That's so early. And this is my fourth room that I'm in now. Cuz I, my kids took the only room that didn't echo and now I'm sitting in a bedroom closet. That's just like the echoes of all the echoes. But I was thinking you could, yeah, you could do Bible content. Oh, this is what I was gonna say. You could do, like you could share, uh, unknown stories of the Bible you could share. I love that. Um, you know, like the weird, like the Balo and the Baylor story, or you could share like the, the name and diving in the, in the Jordan river, like you could just, you could pull some of the, the silly verses out, you know, and explain them. You could, there's just, there's a million different ways you could do overviews of, of new Testament, old Testament who wrote the book, why that's important, how to do hermeneutics, how do homo Lytics, like, there's just, there's things that at any given time, you, if you're a pastor, like, you know, is important, but you have to leave those things like on the chopping room floor yeah.

Nick Clason (33:06):
Of your sermon. And like you can pull some of those things out. You could even do like a deeper dive from your sermon of something that you did study in your research, but you chose not to include it for time sake or for whatever purpose, but you could just say, Hey, Hey, here's something that I, I researched last week in light of the sermon on acts chapter two and boom, you got a 62nd video explaining that. And those types of things I see on TikTok all day long. Not, not necessarily like spiritually though. I do see some of those, but I just mean like in general, those like quick hitter, 62nd, you know, explainer videos. And I think that this is what, this is what probably most churches probably are gonna lean towards. Um, at least naturally cuz that's we're in the content creation business, you know?

Matt Johnson (33:55):
Yep.

Nick Clason (33:56):
So there it is guys. Uh, like I said, I will, um, I will post a link to this article in the show notes, feel free to check it out hybrid ministry.xyz. Um, or however else you, uh, do it, Matt, I have a question for you

Matt Johnson (34:12):
Ask, go away.

Nick Clason (34:13):
It's talking about down here later on in this article, best platforms for short form video, it's got TikTok number one, Instagram reels, number two. YouTube shorts. Number three. Yeah. Do, are we messing with YouTube shorts these days?

Matt Johnson (34:28):
Um, uh, uh, depends on the day. You know, YouTube is actually out is weighing long form content higher again, so, okay. Um, if you can create some YouTube shorts, that's great. If someone gets stuck in the YouTube shorts, that's usually a good thing. The big thing about shorts is, uh, they need to create a shorts app. If they create a shorts app, I think you would probably have more success there. Um, right now it's hidden in the YouTube app. Um, I think it's only a matter of time before they do make a shorts app. Uh,

Nick Clason (35:05):
So maybe when they do that, it's time to time to make that matter a little more.

Matt Johnson (35:09):
Yeah. And I'm was gonna say, when it comes to Google, I really don't buy into their stuff quickly cuz the second it doesn't do what they want to do. They just kill it. So , I mean there's a whole website dedicated to like projects killed by Google. You can literally look it up. Um, and I'm telling you like it's literally called killed by google.com and you would just be mind blown by the amount of stuff they test before they kill it. So YouTube shorts is there for now, but I mean, YouTube go was a thing at one point and YouTube originals was a thing. Remember Google

Nick Clason (35:44):
Plus,

Matt Johnson (35:45):
Remember Google plus plus. Yeah like there's a lot there. So I would, if shorts does not become its own app, I, I would say it's probably gonna get killed sooner or later.

Nick Clason (35:55):
There's a lot of stuff on this website, bro.

Matt Johnson (35:57):
I told you, man. It, well,

Nick Clason (35:59):
We'll throw it in the notes too. Yeah. Um,

Matt Johnson (36:02):
It's just a fun website.

Nick Clason (36:04):
Yeah, it is fun. And then there's uh, there's some other apps that this HubSpot article is referencing like some trier hippo Magisto lately.ai and whiskey. Are any of those worth churches investing any their time in at this point, would you say

Matt Johnson (36:22):
It depends on your margin? So like trier is very song based, even more song based for, um, the TikTok. So if you have like a awesome worship band and you're not in trier, like maybe you should look into it. Um, and then the other stuff that's on you like hippo, Mao, um, lately a lot of this stuff is more of, uh, how to leverage short form content more rather than a platform that you would host short form content on. So like HIPAA video might be a good resource for you to look into if you wanna really maximize your like CTAs and your, um, auto like automation for video and conversion and stuff. So, um, but for hosting stuff like YouTube reels and TikTok, uh, TikTok are gonna be number one. And the, like I said, you look into it, but it's just like be real that's out right now. There's these, these smaller social platforms that are like captivating their audiences, but I nothing has blown up like TikTok since literally Instagram and Instagram took a long time to blow up. I don't think people remember that.

Nick Clason (37:30):
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Sweet. Well, I just saw those and I was like, Hey, these are like literally trier hippo Magista lately in w never even heard of any of those. So this is where

Matt Johnson (37:41):
This is. They're more of a tool podcast.

Nick Clason (37:43):
Tell us these things. So,

Matt Johnson (37:45):
Yep, absolutely.

Nick Clason (37:46):
All right, man. Well that is it for today. Appreciate, appreciate your talking. Appreciate you watching me go from room to room, room, room to room to find spot to record, uh, but excited to continue to be on this journey with y'all feel free to subscribe. Give us a rating. We'd love to hear from you at hybridministry.xyz and we'll talk soon.