An Amplified Ministry - Nils Smith

00:01 - Speaker 1
I got arrested with my sister for shoplifting, and sitting in that juvenile jail cell was just kind of this like I could see a life path. And what synchronously happened is my mom, who was a non-religious person, said you're going to start going to church with your dad again. Maybe that'll fix you. And so when I started going to church, in the midst of just kind of life challenges or confusion and God got a hold of my heart. I am Nils Smith and I am the founder and CEO of Amplify Social Media, helping Christian ministries maximize social media, and the head of innovation for a company called Dunham Company, where we help with fundraising and marketing for Christian ministries, and I'm grateful to be a part of this.

00:48 - Speaker 2
And that's my Faithly Story. Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at faithlyco. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry. On the Faithly Stories podcast.

01:29 - Speaker 3
I usually ask people like their faith journey, but with you, I want to ask you first the origins of your name. Okay, yeah, yeah, because I don't remember at all. Yeah, is Nils short for something or Nope?

01:45 - Speaker 1
Nope, nils was actually my great great grandfather that brought my family over from Sweden. In Sweden, nils is a very common name. I actually just met my first other Nils, who started an app called Bible Mate and he's based in in boston. But yeah, so nils bergren brought uh, you know, my great-grandmother, uh, over from, uh, sweden, to the boston area, to worcester, massachusetts, and uh, and that's, that's who I'm named after. But I've never, up until recently, still never face to face met another nils that makes sense.

02:21 - Speaker 3
you got a little bit of v, look, and I got blue eyes. Oh, I had no idea you were.

02:26 - Speaker 1
Swedish or Swedish background, and when I had hair it was blonde, like dirty blondish, and so as a teenager I looked more Swedish.

02:36 - Speaker 3
If you post that on your faith profile, we'll use it as the thumbnail.

02:39 - Speaker 1
Nice, okay, okay, I'll do it. I'll do it.

02:43 - Speaker 3
Yeah, so can we get into your faith journey, like how did you come to Christ?

02:48 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so I grew up in really two different homes. My parents split up when I was young and my mother was agnostic or atheist, maybe kind of identified as non-religious, and my dad went to church consistently, but I wouldn't say faith was a priority for our family. It was more just a you know something out of tradition that we did and I rebelled against it, probably in middle school. But where I, you know, came to Christ is, you know, two significant things happened in my life. There's one when I was 15, my dad had a very transformational experience on what was called a walk to Emmaus within the Methodist church. I saw his life, his faith, becoming more important to him. It was more than just going to church on Sundays, but something that became important to him. And then simultaneously, when I was 16, I actually got arrested with my sister for shoplifting, and sitting in that juvenile jail cell was just kind of this like I could see a life path. And what synchronously happened is my mom, who was a non-religious person, said you're going to start going to church with your dad again. Maybe that'll fix you. And so when I started going to church, in the midst of just kind of life challenges or confusion, and God got a hold of my heart and so I started, you know, gave my life to Christ at, probably when I was early, 17 or before my senior year of high school. And, yeah, I started walking with Jesus, figuring out. You know what some of that looked like and very challenging in high school, when everybody knows you, you know as a partier, as you know as a, you know whatever, you know opinions people had of me. And then really it was early days of college where I started. You know, I found a group of men and the fraternity brothers under Christ, which is where I really began to be discipled and growing in my faith.

04:43
What did you get caught? Stealing? That's a little embarrassing. So we got caught at, I think is what it was called, which was like a female shopping yeah, female clothes place. So my sister was actually stealing clothes and I just happened to be with her.

04:57
Now we, you know, transparently, that was just when we got caught we used to shoplift all kinds of things, like you know what it was is it was actually. You know, I used to sell. I'm an entrepreneur from a young age. I used to sell like baseball cards in middle school and then candy in elementary school, and then I actually found the margins to be really good when you began just to steal items and then sell them because you didn't have no upfront cost.

05:25
Now there were other costs that later became associated with it, but our top product was a guest wallet. So I used to steal guest wallets or my sister was actually the better shoplifter and then I would sell them to people at school and yeah, but we found things that we thought people would buy from us at school and I literally my truck, became a storefront of shoplifted items until we got caught. And so we, for probably about four months, had a little business. We ran out of the trunk of my 1985 Chevy Blazer, and it was really bad choices as a teenager, but that was my entrepreneurial journey of shoplifted goods.

06:04 - Speaker 3
So you literally got saved in a jail cell.

06:08 - Speaker 1
Like you know, I would say I would say God got my attention in a jail cell. I got saved at a youth retreat. That you know. I remember you know the longer story maybe is that I went up there chasing One of the things I actually found that I liked about youth groupers there was lots of girls there, um, and so the girl I had a crush on there, um, I kissed another girl on the bus on the way to this retreat and she found out, which ruined my chances for her at this retreat.

06:38
So it kind of forced me to pay more attention at the retreat and I just remember I had a moment with God. I'm like God, if you're real, I need to know. Um retreat and I just remember I had a moment with God. Of my God, if you're real, I need to know, and I really don't want to waste my time with this religion stuff, the morality thing, like I do. Either way, I need to get my you know morals together of of I'm seeing the consequences of my bad choices, but the Jesus thing I'm struggling with and and in that moment I literally called. I felt like maybe I'll see an angel or something and God will reveal himself in that way and I didn't. And so I called my mom and she, in the midst of that, was going through a really difficult time, battling depression, and she was in tears just saying, nils, I just got this new job, or I don't remember what the situation was, but she said on the phone you know, god is good. And I remember thinking my atheist mom just said God is good. And it was just this like Holy Spirit moment of like, oh, that's Jesus telling me he's real.

07:30
And that was my like moment of I went back in that chapel and gave my life to Christ. And then it was like oh, now, what do I do now? You know, like, because I was still like, while I was like turning around my morals, I was still drinking and dipping, and you know, like I was, I was, you know, trying to. You know, yeah, I don't know what I was doing, I was a teenage boy, uh, but but I was, I was searching, um, and god revealed himself to me.

07:55
So I'd hit him, hit a low, low in that jail cell. But, uh, you know, I think that the journey really began on that retreat. There was probably six months after the jail cell. And then it was like okay, now I get it, now I'm gonna live this, you know, and now I got to figure this out and yeah, but it, but I did it with the Holy Spirit, and so that was the difference where it's like, at first I started going to church to to get moral, and and then that turned into a place to chase girls, but it really did about a place to find Jesus and, and so that's where the faith began.

08:26 - Speaker 3
You're proof that the nicest people have the darkest past. I would not imagine you like that, because like we would be really good friends, but I never got caught, so that was always no, it's not, because that's the thing. It delays that fear of the Lord, you know.

08:46 - Speaker 2
Yeah.

08:47 - Speaker 3
But luckily I hung up, like with church people, more as I got older so just like that kind of life and those friends kind of naturally faded away.

08:56 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I more flipped a switch in my journey. Now I flipped a switch and I remember thinking, I remember going home from that retreat and like, oh, I've got to like I can't speed anymore. And then it was like I don't know, you know, can I speak or not, or uh. And then it was too some of the things like dipping like I really enjoyed dipping tobacco and that was really hard to stand. This jesus thing is cool. But the moral thing, I actually kind of like these scents, you know, like uh, but. But I also I remember I stopped speeding and I was like, oh, I don't have to look out for cops all the time, maybe not speeding isn't that bad. And I remember, like when I stopped dipping, I was like after probably like two weeks I was like that's actually kind of gross.

09:36
And so there are certain things where it's like God just took the desire for some of those sins away. Now, obviously there were other desires. One of the things that I remember I had a youth pastor that said I think you should not date for a year. And I was like I'm 17 years old, my God, you know like I can't not date, but I did. I made a commitment. Now, you know, I wouldn't maybe perfect in that, but I remember, though I just I put my focus on Jesus, you know, in those beginning days, but man, I was. I would say I was a good, I was always a good person. But I remember, too, like I had like a big Nike earring that I wore and I was like, do I have to stop? Do I take out the earring now? Like is that a part of me or is that bad? There were a lot of things that it's like, so I kept the earring for a couple of years. I switched from a Nike to like a stud, because that was more Jesus-like. If I could have done a cross, maybe, but I, you know, I think there were just things where it's like, okay, let me figure out how I connect the dots of Jesus growing in my heart but then also being lived out through my life, and I think it.

10:35
You know what I obviously, I think, learned there in college. It was less about what I didn't do and more about what I was beginning to do, but it was, you know, so much of what was getting my attention, though, was like most of my behavior, most of the words coming out of my mouth were just not good. And so you can. You can be a nice person, I think, and make really bad choices, and yeah, but that was, you know. It's crazy too because it also seems like it was a couple years ago. I'm 43 now, you know, and that was when I was 16, 17 years old, but man, I still remember, you know like, and I still remember the adrenaline from shoplifting and some of those things that you know it's sin can be very appealing and and transitioning. When, especially when you have a reputation and you know, for sin and relationships built around sin, it's, it's hard, you know, to make that transition. And that's where college became a natural fresh start for me. Yeah, it was a crazy journey.

11:28
Where'd you go to school? Undergrad? So I went to Southwest Texas State University, which is now Texas State University. It was because of my life decisions, I didn't have a whole lot of college options. It was actually it was a one-page applications and it was $20.

11:44
And I remember I went on my college visit and I didn't actually make it to campus because there was this there's a river that runs through campus and it's known as a party school and and there were, you know, a bunch of girls laying out on thing and a bunch of people just partying and hanging out.

11:58
And I just hung out with them for the day on my college day, and a buddy of mine from high school went out there for the college day and we're like, yeah, we're going to college here. So, uh, you know, and I was saved at that point, but I was still in my you know like in my journey and uh, and god took me to a party school and I got discipled there, um, and I feel like it was all the temptations that where my sin was. But but at the end of that I found a new community of people and then I also was able to be very relatable to them. The minute. I feel like I've never had a more fruitful ministry than I did, relationally, while I was in college, just by, I think it was people that were wired like the old me, but I also understood them deeply and also understood the shame and guilt that often, even when you don't have Jesus, that comes with a lot of those choices.

12:46 - Speaker 3
So who are these people that you connected with and helped you, discipled you?

12:49 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so it was the Beta Upsalankai it was the actual name of the fraternity, but Brothers Under Christ is kind of what they're known for and it was a pretty new Christian fraternity that only existed in Texas. Now they're nationwide, but there was probably 20 guys. But I remember, um, you know, mutual friend or somebody connected me to them and they're like you should at least check them out when you, when you get up there. So it was the first thing I did when I got there is like how do I find out about this Christian fraternity and this is pre internet, you know no website or anything and I think I found them. They had a booth in like the, the big courtyard, you know the, the main college, you know center, center college area, and uh, they had a booth set up and they were doing rush, you know with all the other fraternities and and uh, I went to their first rush event.

13:34
I remember thinking these guys look like me, they talk like these are like my old baseball buddies and uh, I, I just my perception of Christians. And you know there were cute girls at the youth group but the guys were all dorky and you know, I felt like I did, I struggled to relate to a lot of the guys that I had been around that were Christians and I felt like these are guys I want to just hang out with and do things with. And so, yeah, they just I, socially, you know, connected well with them, and and then, spiritually, they had what I needed, you know, uh, without without knowing that. And so I knew I needed some Christian friends, you know, and I knew, knew I probably needed to find a church up there, um, you know, somehow, but I, yeah, so that was like first week I was there, I found them and it was such a godsend that that connection, and I remember just some of those, you know, they, they and I I wish I could remember exactly kind of what some of the things were, but they, they often joked of like just how you know I was, I was, I just didn't know the Christian language and you know so much of that, you know, yeah, just how to how to function in Christian community.

14:37
Yet at that point, and so, um, yeah, it was, it was just the, the way the, these guys, and I remember I had a big brother's name was Chris Peacock, he was on the baseball team there, um, at at Southwest Texas and um, and so we just hit it off because of baseball initially, but he, every Wednesday we'd go to dinner and uh, and he just, you know, poured into me my freshman year of college. But so many other men and I remember it got him David Arnold and Travis Young and Brian Stone and these just guys that were a couple years older than me, but guys I wanted to be like and so to be able to be around them and have them investing in me and pouring into me as a young new believer and just as a young man. I was 19 years old or 18 years old probably at that time and they, yeah, there was. That's. That's where the the discipleship process really began in my life. Are you still in touch with them now? Yeah, a lot of them, you know. A couple of them stood next to me at my wedding I mentioned. Travis Young is planning a church right now in the Fort Worth area.

15:37
We've stayed in touch through the years and that's the beauty of social media in a lot of ways. You know, I would say all of them. I probably have some at least once a year, some kind of interaction with them there. I would say, you know, it's interesting. You asked that, but a lot of them are still my, you know, my good friends and one guy actually from the fraternity he was. He came a year after me but we, every Wednesday we do a Zoom call. He lives in Austin, texas, and we do a zoom call and just it. We. The Only objective of that call is just catch up, it's just, it's a, it's a social hangout. Uh, it's not really accountability, it's not really. You know, like it's just, we just do life every Wednesday, uh, on a zoom call. We typically both get lunch and do the Zoom call together and, yeah, he's a great friend. Yeah, so a lot of those relationships continued. I mean, 20 plus years later, bucks is what we called the fraternity. They actually became a client of mine too years later, probably about five or six years ago. I got to consult with them for about a year around their social media, marketing and fundraising strategies, and so it's kind of been full circle, even with the organization of Bucks and love how they're raising up men in colleges around the country.

16:55
So what happened after college? What was your first job? Yeah, I would say it actually happened, not after college, but after my freshman year of college I got an invitation to be a summer youth pastor for a church, st Mark's United Methodist Church in Baytown, texas, and you know I was a new believer, realistically, but I was cool, you know, and I had long hair and I, you know, had an earring, and they're like you'll attract youth to our church. And it was a thousand dollars a month for three months and, uh, and I was their summer youth minister. I remember that first and this is actually how I got into digital ministry as well that first Wednesday night youth group, uh, there was a seventh grade girl and a high school boy and I remember I had like I'd planned this like youth group, where I was like I'm going to, I bought a like a worship CD and a boom box and I was like that's how we're going to do worship, cause, that's, I don't have a worship leader and and then I'll do a talk, and I was thinking there's going to be probably 20 or 30 kids show up. Well, there, my devotional, and then the seventh grade girl asked me a question that changed my life, um, and she said what's your aim? And I, and I said my aim is to reach every teenager in baytown, texas, with the gospel of jesus and I was so deeply passionate, like in my mind, I was like this summer for three months, I'm gonna do nothing but change baytown, texas. It was a small oil town outside of Houston and I'm going to just go tell everyone about Jesus. And she said, no, what's your aim? And I said, well, I just told you my aim. She said, no, what's your AOL instant messenger? That's where all my friends are. And I was like I don't know what you're talking about. She's like you know that CD you put in your computer, you get in the worldwide and it's a chat thing and that's where all my friends are. So this is my aim. And the high school boys are like, yeah, me too. Here's my aim.

18:47
I got on AIM. So right after that youth group, I got on AIM, I added them, started chatting with them. I literally we had one computer in the church like the secretary. That's when you said secretary, you know the secretary's desk. And I got on A aim. I literally stayed at that computer until two in the morning chatting with teenagers, which no youth pastor should ever do. But there was no rules to how the internet worked and how online ministry worked back then and and built relationships with them, you know, immediately, and they started connecting me to their friends right there.

19:15
The next day I had a. We had a 15 passenger van, which is also now illegal. Uh, and no 19 year old should be driving teenage kids around in a 15 passenger van illegal, and no 19 year old should be driving teenage kids around in a 15 passenger van. I just went and picked them up the next day and took a bowling with their friends that I'd met in the chat group. We had a whole like we ran out of seats and seatbelts on the bus going bowling, and so there's digital relationships turned into physical relationships and so that summer I just chatted with every teenager that they would connect me to shared gospel.

19:42
I had more than a dozen kids except Christ in a chat room on AIM that summer and we had more than 30 kids except Christ in our gatherings on the Wednesday night youth group. So we did a big lock-in at the end of the year that we ended up with like over 50 kids at this thing from two kids and it was just there's digital relationships became impersonal relationships and that was my summer in youth ministry and I was, I was, I've, just it was like this is what I've made to do and this is what I want to do forever in my mind back then. But then it was like you go back to college and you, you know, kind of get the flow. And I ended up doing that every summer at different churches during college. And then I remember when I graduated and I got a business degree I got a business management degree and we were having a conversation with my dad and the economy was down and he said why don't you just do that youth thing like full time for a couple of years, let the economy pick back up, and then you get a grownup job. And you know what? I'm 43 years old now and I've never gotten a grownup job. And so I did youth ministry then for about a decade.

20:43
But social media was at the core of that. And then that's what led to. You know, a church in San Antonio said you seem to know how the social we've been thinking about launching an online church. And this is 13 years ago. And I said well, I think, if you use this new facebookcom website, I think you know AOL had come along, myspace had come along, but Facebook was this new thing that was just now going from being just for college students to being for everyone. I said I think this thing is going to really catch on.

21:06
So we bought OnlineChurchcom and, yeah, we started doing digital ministry and took our local church global and within weeks we were seeing thousands of people all over the world logging into our online services and figuring out how to do online church and figuring out how to do online church, and so that was kind of my journey into full-time ministry. That went from like summer youth minister with a 19-year-old. That barely I mean the bad theology I taught, you know, must've taught, and said but kids despite you know my not knowing what I was doing or having a strategy for online kids got saved and God was gracious in it and, yeah, it's been a fun, fun journey along the way.

21:45 - Speaker 3
What were some of the social media strategies you're using throughout your ministries, your youth ministries?

21:51 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you know, I would say, there, there's. You know, at the core I just built relationships. You know, I just showed up to where they were and just tried to connect with as many teenagers as I could. You know, I would say there were a couple of just transformational moments, though, where I began just to see breakthroughs.

22:08
One, you know, especially probably when Facebook had come out and this is when it was still just for college students. They had opened up where you could run ads on it, and I was running a college ministry, for, you know, like we did youth in college and our college ministry was maybe 20 college students in a Bible study, and I started running Facebook ads, spending I think $10 a week on Facebook ads. Within like a month of doing that, we had tripled our group. We had over a hundred people in the room because Facebook ads are super cheap. You could target them to just college students in San Antonio to come be a part of this Bible study. It was like, what do we do with this? And so we ended up growing that college ministry to over 200 college students, all through Facebook ads, and I don't think I ever spent more than $200 altogether for those ads and just the fruitfulness we saw there. So that got me really into digital advertising and what's possible there for a minister. I, you know, I had no background in doing that. I just saw a, you know, I saw an ad and then it said create your own ad. It was like, let me try that and uh, so that was, that was awesome. And then when we launched online church, after I had that experience with Facebook, I ran Facebook ads to bring people into online church on a budget of a hundred dollars a month. And when I then opened up that targeting from just college students to San Antonio, to anybody anywhere in the world those ads became way cheaper and we were able to reach people all over the world and bring them into our online church.

23:33
And so just, you know, I think that connection of digital advertising and the power of Facebook, the other thing I'd say we did with Facebook in particular is we had a Facebook page that we used to build community 24-7 in between our church services, where most people used social media and most churches in particular was for marketing. They would just say come to our church, come to our church, come to our church. And what we did is I just used basically quotes from the sermon. I used Bible verses from the message and what I did is we just I just used basically quotes from the sermon. I used Bible verses from the message and what I found is that when I actually did minister asking, we'd always ask for every day we do a prayer, how can we pray for you?

24:10
And we just do a big prayer threat on the Facebook page. And so what would happen is these posts were just going viral. And so when we said we're gonna use this mostly for ministry and then secondarily for marketing, we saw organic reach explodes. That page within a year I think we're over 300 followers, all organic on our Facebook page ended up growing it to about a million. And it was just because we chose to do ministry there rather than just make it a marketing platform. And so we still did marketing, but primarily through advertising, and then used our page for ministry.

24:44 - Speaker 3
Do you feel like that's an effective strategy now or just because those early days it worked really well? Because 2002, it's like almost 20 years. You know, you've been yeah.

24:55 - Speaker 1
So that strategy I think really took effect about 13, 12, 13 years ago, and I actually created a formula back then that I still use today with my clients, and the formula was we're going to post a minimum of 50% inspirational content, a maximum of 20% informational content, and then the other 30% are. I call them three C's of conversation, celebration and connection. So conversation being, we're just going to ask a question like can we pray for you? Or it was funny, my pastor used to get upset because I would ask like where's the best hamburger? And everybody had an opinion, a bunch of people comment and then he'd be like ask them what their favorite point was from the Sunday sermon and we get like 10 comments and it was just too deep. I think we realized that the more shallow we kept the conversation sometimes it was just more natural and easy to respond to. So we said conversation, celebration, connection, so celebrating what God's doing in the life of our church or ministry. So we'd celebrate, you know, salvations, we'd celebrate baptisms, we'd celebrate life change stories. Sometimes we'd even just celebrate Easter or Christmas or you know things like that. And then connection would be a behind the scenes and so, hey, we're filming for Sunday, or you know, you know things like that, and then connection would be a behind the scenes. And so, hey, we're filming for Sunday or you know, um, you know, celebrate our pastor's birthday or we're going to highlight a volunteer, uh, and it created a personal connection to the ministry. And so we've used that formula and still today, uh, we use it.

26:17
I actually one of the things that happened to me and where my agency was birthed is about a year into launching on the churchcom, I got him. Nick Vujicic, uh, came, was a guest speaker at our church and he's like hey, I've got 20,000 people on my Facebook page. Can you help, uh, run that for me on the side? And, uh, you seem to know how this Facebook thing works really well. And he said and I think I said you because you're so engaging with video and he has no arms and legs. Many people have probably seen him online I said, I think you should be on YouTube too.

26:45
I think people should see you and will engage better there. And so we dove in and really built up his Facebook and still continue to run his social media. But we use that same formula today with his ministry and all of the ministries that we work with and we tweak it a little bit, uh, based on some trends, but you know, more than a decade later, that same formula continues to work in it. But I think it's really the mindset of for ministry leaders focus on ministry, use these for ministry first, and secondarily, let them be a marketing platform. And I think it's just like your sunday services you need announcements at church, people need to know what next steps they need to take within your church, but they're there for the worship and the message and so if they're not first being inspired, they're not going to effectively take action. But I think the mistake that people make is they often try to be inspirational and then tag on a marketing within one post and you just got to mix it up within your content flow with a diversity of content.

27:43 - Speaker 3
Could you give some examples, because it sounds very broad and I'm pretty sure a lot of churches are like wait, we are doing that. It's like no, you're posting announcements. Or it's like a classified ad instead of inviting people into experiencing seeing what your church members are seeing For sure.

28:02 - Speaker 1
You know, I, I think practically it's.

28:04
It's also, you know when, when something is inspirational, people are more likely to share it, and so I often describe that as even like micro content that leads into your you know core actions that you want people to take, and so, historically, for us, that was that, you know, back 10 years ago, that was taking a quote from the sermon, because it was all text-based, or a Bible verse, and then we started using graphics. You know when that started to be implemented into these platforms and that began to see more virality. Well, now that's clips. That's a, you know, a 30 second clip. That's a reel on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok, and so it looks different.

28:39
I think that the format might be different, but every church is creating, you know, content every week with their sermon, and I think what's happening is they're just these digital platforms for it to have maximum impact. And so I think, though, where I see even the mistake is, people are often just like hey, here's our new sermon series, come, come see it on Sunday. Well, the reality is, you can actually have clips from that sermon, and so they're already creating a connection to that sermon series through those clips that they're seeing, and that's going to naturally lead them to the action that you want them to take. But I think even where it's a mistake is I've seen churches that will be like here's a clip about the woman at the well, and then they'll also even add into the post of like oh, by the way, if you're a woman and you want to come to our women's retreat, it's going to be on this date and that distracts from the message of the post, and so when you want to post that women's retreat promo, just post it. It's not going to do as well. But if you have that balance of other content, but if you tag it on to your inspirational content, that's going to diminish the focus of that content piece in and of itself. So I think we just have to mix in different kinds of posts within our content strategy.

29:53
And so it does take.

29:54
You know it takes.

29:55
You know, I think, some, some rhythms, you know consistency of developing out how to how to create those clips and you know tools to use to do that, uh, but but you know we find that that the investment is is well worth it, based on you know where the front door that that creates for your church is, before we do anything today, we typically check it out online, you know, and so, and often even you know, I it's hard for me to even think of a restaurant that my wife and I have gone to on a date night that we haven't first found on Instagram and somebody shared a, you know, like, check out this place, and so it's how we find so many new things and, honestly, it's how people are finding churches today as well, and so I think, packaging our church experience well and making these platforms ministry first, that's your first touch with people.

30:45
It's not when they walk in your door. They're likely checking you out on social media first, then going to your website and then finding your Sunday services and then showing up at your church, but there's that process before somebody is going to commit their time to showing up, and so social media is what I found to be the best front door for churches today.

31:02 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I totally agree. I think even before I did like faith-based stuff, I didn't really get into all the social media stuff because I think I just had a very traditional mindset of just organically, relationally. But just the ramp of technology and the speed in which information travels, I realized, oh no, social media actually is a tool and, if anything, christian should be pumping out more content, because there's just a lot of not great content, so might as well be inspirational.

31:33 - Speaker 1
Yes.

31:33 - Speaker 3
And switch that nobody likes. It's like let just this thing be the thing, right, and let the other thing be the thing, and don't try to manipulate like an inspirational quote and then be like, oh, 9.99. Just watch this thing. Yes, I think there's like a commercial in vietnam, one of the asian countries, about the dad and, like you know, he's like struggling and helping the daughter and then it's like an ad for like something just like feel super manipulated. Yes, yeah, I'm realizing more and more the importance of just engagement, because if people are engaged and that means they're interested and they're invested, and those are the kind of people you want to bring into your church because they're like, oh, like, I want to be here rather than.

32:15 - Speaker 2
I was like forced to be here.

32:16 - Speaker 3
So in your opinion, yeah, with the current landscape of how social media is, like where do you feel like we are currently and like where is it headed? With like AI and with the Apple Vision Pro coming out, everyone's going crazy about that. Yeah and like yeah. So like. What is your thoughts on all that in the future, of how we would use technology and engagements outside of what we're doing now?

32:41 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a good question. Engagements outside of what we're doing now? Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I think practically where social media is today is it's it's probably 95% video today, and so I've. I think YouTube in many ways is replacing television, um, and so where you and I probably flip channels, growing up, my kids just know how to search YouTube, you know, um, and, and it learns us and it feeds us what we want, rather than having to like flip channels to find what we want. And so I think you're seeing that TikTok's algorithm is unbelievable and now it's being copied by these other platforms of short form, vertical video. So you see kind of all platforms moving to video and that becoming more and more significant part of what we're consuming.

33:21
So when we think about what content we want to create to reach people, I think we've got to be thinking about video, the AI side of it. You know, I think it's. You know there's so many things that it can help with from. You know, there's tools like Opus Clips that can help create, you know, basically, sermon clips for you, I think, tools like Canva that can do graphic design for you with AI integrations. There's tools like ChatGPT that can actually design your sermon series logo, you know, or things like that, with their Dolly integration. You know, one of the tools that I've been using a lot with some clients is just ChatGPT. You can teach it, you can basically feed it the transcripts of your sermons and then just say, hey, based on the voice you've now learned from our pastor, can you write an email or draft an email, and then you edit it, and so I think there's just these integrations that it just is going to create a lot of efficiencies for some of the processes we do, and I think the advantage that is to church leaders that lean in is it's creating efficiencies so that people can do what only people can need to do, and so I think it's going to allow for more pastoral ministry rather than, like behind a computer editing videos or, you know, creating graphics. And you know websites are going to better optimize themselves, and so there's a lot of tools that are that are that are creating some efficiencies. I think there's some darkness to it of like you think about all the fake accounts that are created of pastors and some things like that, or deep fake technology that will impersonate, maybe adjust to bad theology sometimes, and so I think there are some challenges with AI, but I'm mostly excited and optimistic of the opportunities.

35:02
That other, my friend, nick Vujicic, actually created a tool that he built for his ministry that they're making available to the mass public called Multitude, and it's actually does voice translation. They call it branded voices, where it learns your voice, translates. So it could actually take. You know it's taking. So we're starting with Nick. Takes his content, which he speaks with an Australian accent because he was birthed in Australia but he's from America, so he speaks in English but it translates and it uses his Australian accent but speaks Spanish or speaks, they do, up to 36 languages. So it sounds like Nick, but it's actually putting a voiceover of his voice into any language. So you think about your church being able to be in any language.

35:44
And when we talk about going to the ends of the earth and the great commission, you can see where this technology is going to help us do it. Just like social media with, you know, 3 billion active users on Facebook and YouTube like that's helping us go to the ends of the earth in a lot of ways, but it's also helping us go into our local communities more effectively as well. So I think there's some really interesting innovations that are happening when it comes to vr. You know, when you think about the apple vision pro and uh, what's happening there. I, you know, I tested vr probably for the first time eight years ago and I remember thinking this is the future and I actually own the domain virtual realitychurch because I was like we're going to do church in virtual reality. I've seen churches do that. I think a lot of churches have. Actually, I'm typically seeing churches be late adopters to things. I think more churches have actually been too early of adopters to virtual reality. I think what I've experienced so far has maybe reached a few, but there's just not mass adoption there yet. But I do think that there's just an inevitable future of the.

36:43
They're kind of saying that VR or augmented reality as well as kind of the last computing platform. The final computing platform is what a lot of people are calling it. I think actually neural link is is what that actually will be. But are that type of technology that is implanting things into our brains and that gets really scary and dark. But virtual reality I think it really immerses us in an environment and I get really excited about what I think of like virtual reality devotionals, and even Apple has already created a meditation app.

37:11
I think that's going to be a pretty neat technology. I think 360 video if you've ever experienced that, it's as if you could be at a concert or a sports venue and be sitting on the front row and experience it as if you're in the room. I think we're going to do church, and some people can experience church that way. I don't think that's going to replace church, just like online church hasn't replaced church, so I think there's some cool opportunities there. I think right now, though, the technology that churches need to pay attention to is AI and how to integrate AI systems into your processes that are going to create efficiencies. I think virtual reality, you know, augmented reality that type of technology is still probably five to 10 years away from mass adoption on how to effectively govern a lot of these innovations, and we need guardrails around this.

38:01 - Speaker 3
Just from a societal standpoint, you even take out the faith side of it I'm like an extreme, like pure libertarian, because, like my guiding principle is like everyone is personally responsible, because we're going to all face judgment and I don't mean like a scary condemning way.

38:16
It's just like God's a light. He's going to show you everything that you don't even realize about yourself and you're going to either be really humbled or just like double down, be like no right. So I think people should be allowed to do anything like, even if it's self-harm. It's like if you want to do that with your life, that's great, as long as it's not hurting other people around you. So, yeah, that's the context. I'm going to say this I no longer trust anything man-made because, like I grew up with technology like in the 90s and like, yeah, like our generation is like so special. We're like at the precipice and now at the dawning of like AI. It's just, it's a movie.

38:54 - Speaker 2
I'm living a movie.

38:56 - Speaker 3
Totally. Understanding that, like anything man-made like is like only 99% perfect. Do you know what I mean?

39:04
yeah there's always this ability like things fail, um, just even like how neutrinos work, and like flips a bit and like your computer crashes. So, yeah, I'm. That's why I would not trust it personally, but I would be fat, like I would have you on the podcast and talk to you. Yeah, because I do think like, yeah, like advances in technology should help people decide what kind of quality of life they want, right, yeah, yeah, because it's all a personal choice.

39:35
But for sure, for sure, yeah. As long as it's outside and it's part of my five senses, I'll use it.

39:43 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as it's outside and it's part of my five senses, I'll use it.

39:44 - Speaker 3
Yeah, because the other stuff is like I'm now learning how to not be so dependent on technology yeah like there was a time in my life where, if I couldn't find my phone, I'd be like in the worst mood and like my life would be over, but now it's like oh okay, I guess no one could contact me. That's kind of nice Right, or I'm like hiking, so yeah, all that to say like, yeah, everybody, you do you. But Danny is staying far away from trusting any man-made stuff.

40:14 - Speaker 2
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