Latest / Beyond Sunday Worship Leader Podcast / Brady Shearer on Helping Churches Navigate the Biggest Communication Shift in 500 Years
Transcript
- 0:00I am pumped to be talking to Brady Shearer from Pro Church Tools
- 0:05on the Beyond Sunday podcast.
- 0:07Bro, you're like the Obi Wan of church media.
- 0:12Like the stuff that you put out, the resources you have, it just blows my mind.
- 0:16I'm like so pumped to have you on the show.
- 0:18How are you doing today?
- 0:20I'm great.
- 0:21I'm a little concerned now thinking about my soon to come demise as I
- 0:25sacrifice myself for the chosen one of church media, whoever that may be.
- 0:29But when my time has come, just as Obi Wan did, I'll be ready.
- 0:35Great response.
- 0:36Great response, bro.
- 0:38How do you describe what you do to like just the random person on the street?
- 0:42That's just like, Hey man, what do you do for a living?
- 0:44Like, what do you, how do you answer that question?
- 0:48I used to answer it by talking about the specifics of, Oh, we help churches with
- 0:51video and photography and communications and branding and their website.
- 0:56And then we figured we need a better way of talking about this.
- 0:59And so we settled on we help churches navigate the biggest
- 1:02communication shift in 500 years.
- 1:04And that began to elicit the responses in those elevator conversations and
- 1:10on the street conversations that we were hoping and we didn't get prior.
- 1:14And of course that references to the printing press, you know, back in
- 1:17the day and that was instrumental in kicking off the reformation.
- 1:21Everyone gets a Bible in their hands.
- 1:23They're getting the printed word in their hands.
- 1:24Like, wait a minute, maybe the interpretation of scripture as we
- 1:27know it has some some holes in it.
- 1:29And we're living through a similar period now where.
- 1:33Information.
- 1:34is readily accessible from folks that never would have been able to share
- 1:38their perspective on the world before.
- 1:39I mean, you're listening to this podcast and for context background,
- 1:44I'm 32 years old right now.
- 1:46I started Pro Church Tools 10 years ago.
- 1:48We became an official corporated company in 2014 and for a few years
- 1:53before that, just a sole proprietor.
- 1:55So, you know, 10 to 15 years now.
- 1:58And I am a small town Canadian boy from rural Canada with no business
- 2:03pedigree in my family whatsoever.
- 2:05No church pedigree in my family whatsoever.
- 2:08And yet, you know, I come on these shows and people talk about how I've been able
- 2:12to positively impact their churches.
- 2:14And that's simply because the internet allowed me to start a blog
- 2:18in 2014, start a podcast in 2014, start a YouTube channel in 2014.
- 2:22And since then, I've just been publishing consistently, helping churches
- 2:25learn the skills that we all need, especially as worship pastors, worship
- 2:29directors, you know what it's like.
- 2:30Hey can you also run social?
- 2:32Can you also do this?
- 2:35how we all get started, isn't it?
- 2:36So true.
- 2:37So true.
- 2:38Okay.
- 2:39So that's fascinating because I'm always really intrigued by how people Find their
- 2:43calling, so to speak, or do what they do.
- 2:46So it sounds like you didn't have a church background, didn't
- 2:50have a business background.
- 2:52What made you back in 2014 be like, I want to start these social media
- 2:59channels and I want to help churches.
- 3:02Like, where did that come from?
- 3:05So the first place I ever felt like accepted as a human being
- 3:08was in high school when I started attending this new youth group.
- 3:11So I grew up in small town Baptist church.
- 3:14Like we didn't even have a PA system or like speakers.
- 3:17It was pastor would just preach from the pulpit voice only worship was
- 3:21an acoustic guitar and voices only.
- 3:23We did have a projector.
- 3:24So that was big for us.
- 3:26But I never really felt at home in that church.
- 3:28And so a friend invites me to this youth group and they've got like lights
- 3:32and there's a drummer and it's all kids and I was like, this is awesome.
- 3:35And I was a pretty eccentric, still am young person.
- 3:38And I didn't really fit in with the sports crowd.
- 3:40I played a lot of sports growing up.
- 3:41Didn't really fit in with like the academic smart people even
- 3:43though I excelled in academics.
- 3:46And then I come to church.
- 3:47And people are like, you're great as you are, let's follow Jesus together.
- 3:53And that was the first place that I felt like accepted.
- 3:56And so I'm looking up to my youth pastor and I'm like, wow, wouldn't it be great?
- 4:00I could be a youth pastor and do like what he did for me to like
- 4:03the next generation of students.
- 4:04And so I went to school to become a youth pastor.
- 4:07I have my degree in theology and youth ministry.
- 4:10And about a year or two into my internship, I'm like, I don't know
- 4:15if I have the relational bandwidth that is going to be required to
- 4:19give these kids what they need.
- 4:20Like they're going to need me to like be available.
- 4:23And, and I learned something about myself then is that all I wanted
- 4:27to do was work for churches and work with churches and serve them.
- 4:30But I did not have the relational bandwidth required at that time to
- 4:34serve in a youth pastor role, but I really wanted to work with churches.
- 4:37So I start next interning at this new church plant.
- 4:40As a media director.
- 4:41And they put a camera in my hands and they're like, just
- 4:43go and learn these skills.
- 4:44Like we've seen you pick up skills before and, and you can just do it.
- 4:48And I don't have any skills, but I'm going to learn them.
- 4:50And so as I'm learning these skills, that's when I go back to Bible
- 4:52college and looking at my friends in the youth ministry program, they're
- 4:54going to become youth pastors, become and worship pastors, lead pastors at
- 4:58really small churches in rural Canada.
- 5:00And I'm like, they're going to need to know how to start a Facebook page too.
- 5:03They're going to need to know how to like update their website.
- 5:05And if I can learn these skills from nothing, They can also, and that
- 5:09was the origin of ProChurchTools.
- 5:12com, the blog, the YouTube channel, the podcast, and everything that came
- 5:15since, you know, today we are, we have, you know, offices in Canada, we have
- 5:20offices in the States, team of 25 plus, you know, full time church creatives
- 5:25all helping to lead this digital front.
- 5:28Dude is brilliant.
- 5:30I love how there's, there's a little bit of connection even
- 5:33with our, our brands a little bit.
- 5:35So my podcast is Beyond Sunday, right?
- 5:37And basically the focus there is like what happens on Sunday morning is it's
- 5:43a big part of what we do, but so much happens outside of that in terms of
- 5:47discipleship and strategy and, you know, building a healthy culture.
- 5:51And I know with what you do, you're helping churches like, you know,
- 5:54Monday through Saturday, essentially, you know, beyond just your Sunday
- 5:58experiences, you know, helping them with, with social media and with
- 6:01branding and all this kind of stuff.
- 6:03So I want to ask you this, and, and part of this is, is probably therapy
- 6:07for me too, like, why are so many churches like terrible at social media?
- 6:13And I could say, like, I have a pretty decent podcast following,
- 6:16but over the years have just been terrible at social media.
- 6:22Why is that?
- 6:23And then, you know, what are some things that churches can do to, like, step up
- 6:29their game when it comes to social media?
- 6:33Well, I mean, the easiest thing to point at is the generational gap.
- 6:37You know, the reality is, is that the average senior
- 6:39leader in the West is 60 plus.
- 6:42And so imagine leading a church your entire life.
- 6:47And then in the final kind of chapter of your vocational career,
- 6:51this new change comes along and it starts disrupting every industry.
- 6:56And you're supposed to figure it out on the fly.
- 6:58And, and the pastors and leaders that have been able to do it.
- 7:00I commend them all the more so it's not like it's impossible to do this,
- 7:04but my sense is that the older you get and the more entrenched you
- 7:07become in the ways that you do things, the more challenging it is to adopt
- 7:11change when it does come around.
- 7:13It's funny watching you know, millennial leaders, but especially Gen Z leaders now
- 7:17because their aptitude for communicating through digital platforms is so.
- 7:24Inborn.
- 7:25It's just, it comes natural to them in ways that even for my generation,
- 7:29your generation, we had to learn, you know, I, I grew up, there was a
- 7:32rotary phone in my home, you know, the ones you had to like spin the dial.
- 7:35And then in high school I was joining Facebook and abandoning my
- 7:40space and starting Twitter accounts.
- 7:41And so, you know, I, I kind of have an experience with both, whereas Gen Z
- 7:45they're only growing up with digital.
- 7:47Same is going to be for the generation after them, Gen Alpha.
- 7:50So I think there's a really.
- 7:52Simple, obvious thing there.
- 7:54But then in terms of like institutional leanings, churches
- 7:59are a lot like education.
- 8:00There are a lot like healthcare.
- 8:01There are a lot like government where it takes a lot for things to move.
- 8:06There's a lot of red tape.
- 8:07There's a lot of, you know, internal bureaucracy, and there's a lot of,
- 8:10well, we've always done it this way, so we don't need to change things.
- 8:14And so the way that I've always presented it to churches is look,
- 8:17So, every industry is being disrupted by this communication shift.
- 8:21And we'll kind of walk through things that are now part of their everyday
- 8:24life that they had never even heard of because they didn't exist a few years ago.
- 8:28I live pretty close to the States.
- 8:30I'm in Niagara on the Lake.
- 8:32So we're about an hour south of Toronto, 30 minutes from Buffalo.
- 8:36And when I was growing up, I played a lot of travel basketball,
- 8:38we would go to the States.
- 8:40And when my dad would have to like, go Get directions to go from where
- 8:44we live north of Toronto to let's say Ohio or Pennsylvania, wherever we were
- 8:47headed, you know, he'd print out 22 pages of MapQuest and then I'd be there
- 8:51in the front seat being like, okay, we got to take the interstate exit.
- 8:54It's coming up in 2005.
- 8:56Google Maps comes along and suddenly we're not printing out 27 pages.
- 9:00of Map Quest, you know, think about what's happened to the music industry with the
- 9:04advent of streaming platforms and how that's also carried over to television.
- 9:09You know, nonlinear television has completely upended what we
- 9:13know and what we grew up with.
- 9:15You know, I was thinking about this phrase the other day, channel surfing.
- 9:17And I was like, Oh man, that's a phrase.
- 9:18That's not going to mean anything to anyone right now.
- 9:20But that was how we used to, you know, find something that's on the TV, just
- 9:23click through the remote control.
- 9:25And, and so.
- 9:26Understanding the monumental shift of this also means knowing that this is
- 9:33coming on the horizon for every church.
- 9:35And then COVID kind of really condensed that timeline and churches were
- 9:40forced to figure out certain things that they had neglected or just not
- 9:44really considered prior to that.
- 9:46But in terms of practical things, I like to speak to the positive
- 9:50as well, because churches have this advantage that is unique.
- 9:54Amongst every industry and that is we have senior leaders that are every single
- 9:58week putting in a ton of spiritual and creative effort to create content, aka
- 10:03sermons to then deliver to the church.
- 10:07And if you think about other industries, you know, right across
- 10:09the street, there's a house for sale.
- 10:11Shelby Tomlinson.
- 10:12Look, Shelby Tomlinson's got to sell that house and she's also
- 10:16got to contend with social media.
- 10:17And I've got a dentist appointment later this month.
- 10:19My dentists, God love them.
- 10:21They've got to clean my teeth.
- 10:22They also have to contend with the digital front.
- 10:24Lawyers, you know, they got to sign the documents.
- 10:27And they've also got to contend with social media.
- 10:29Churches are the only industry on earth, as far as I know, that have senior leaders
- 10:34creating content every single week.
- 10:36All we have to do is repurpose that goldmine of content for
- 10:40social and take advantage of this rhythm that no other industry has.
- 10:44And so, yes, we have fewer resources than a typical business
- 10:47than most other organizations.
- 10:48But we have this one thing that is tremendously advantageous in the digital
- 10:53world that is just unheard of elsewhere.
- 10:56No, that's brilliant.
- 10:57And I know that there are, like, some churches or leaders are just like, they,
- 11:05Turn a blind eye to social media or like, they're just not into that, you know?
- 11:09But what you're saying is like, this cannot be ignored.
- 11:12Like this is the reality of the world that we live in and to ignore it is to the
- 11:21detriment of getting your message out to the people that God wants you to reach.
- 11:26Right.
- 11:26Like we just, this cannot be ignored.
- 11:29Right.
- 11:30You can have a personal affinity for something.
- 11:32But there are so many things in our, in our jobs working in church
- 11:35that I'm sure that we don't have like a special love for, but we
- 11:38understand are important to our job.
- 11:40And I also think that sometimes our.
- 11:42definition of social media can be very narrow.
- 11:45And I have this one employee and he'll always say Oh yeah,
- 11:48I'm not really on social media.
- 11:49And then I'll like check him out and he's like on YouTube and Reddit all the time.
- 11:54And I remember we had a discussion many years ago and I was like,
- 11:57here's the thing, Reddit and YouTube, that's also social.
- 11:59He's like, no, no, I just, I'm not on Facebook and Instagram.
- 12:02I'm like, okay, but those aren't the only social platforms.
- 12:06And it's fascinating to see the way that social is expanding Even now 41 percent
- 12:11of Gen Z's time online, according to the global web index is now being spent on
- 12:15social media, which is an all time high.
- 12:17And the reason for that is not because they're spending more time overall.
- 12:21This is proportionate to their online time.
- 12:24All of it is it's because social media's definition is expanding.
- 12:27There's really two eras of social there's the social graph era,
- 12:31which is the first 15 years.
- 12:32This is when your feed was mostly friend and family posts.
- 12:35And then there's the discovery era, which is really the only the last, you
- 12:38know, four or five years, where now the content that we see in our feeds is mostly
- 12:42influenced by our viewing habits, our interests, and our geographic location.
- 12:47And so now social is not just social connection.
- 12:51It's entertainment.
- 12:52And it's not just entertainment, it's search.
- 12:55You know, Google's VP came out the a few years ago and said, you know,
- 12:58millennials in Gen Z are about like 40% of them overall, are more likely to use
- 13:03TikTok or Instagram to search for a local restaurant than they are to use Google.
- 13:06So, so, you know, social media is search.
- 13:08And then we also know how big of a role it plays in e commerce and how it drives
- 13:13buying decisions amongst younger people.
- 13:14And so like there's this massive shift and, and social just understanding
- 13:18its definition is sometimes useful for working with churches and leaders that
- 13:22are like, ah, social is just not for me.
- 13:23I'm like, do you listen to podcasts?
- 13:25Like, I like podcasts.
- 13:25I'm like, okay.
- 13:26Do you like YouTube?
- 13:27Yeah, I watch YouTube now.
- 13:28and again, Facebook.
- 13:29No, no, no.
- 13:29Okay.
- 13:29That's fine.
- 13:30Instagram.
- 13:30No, no, no.
- 13:31Tick tock.
- 13:31No, definitely not.
- 13:32I'm like, okay.
- 13:33How about facetiming your grandkids?
- 13:35I do that a lot.
- 13:36Okay, then maybe the best place to start is having you just do a live
- 13:39stream of a devotional because you understand what it's like to talk to
- 13:42someone on the other side of the screen.
- 13:44Maybe that's a good entry point for you.
- 13:46At the end of the day, our job as churches and leaders of churches is not to Elevate
- 13:52and idolize our personal preferences.
- 13:54It's to fulfill the mission of our churches.
- 13:57And we know that there's a disease in so many of our ministries, which is
- 14:00sometimes manifested in the phrase.
- 14:03We've always done it this way.
- 14:05That's not a missional like expression.
- 14:09That's a personal preference.
- 14:10The missional expression is this is what we exist to do.
- 14:13What is the best way of accomplishing that?
- 14:16And.
- 14:17I have not seen any credible reason why digital media
- 14:20would not be included in that.
- 14:22And so really it's just about helping churches feel comfortable with what maybe
- 14:27aligns with their preferences and DNA.
- 14:29Because just because you aren't digital doesn't mean you need to
- 14:31be like dancing on TikTok pastor.
- 14:33There's a lot of things that we can do that are going to feel, you know,
- 14:36comfortable with your existing skills.
- 14:38Yeah.
- 14:39What's the most fascinating or surprising social media trend
- 14:45in 2024 that you've observed?
- 14:48The biggest one is local geographic location playing a massive role in
- 14:54distribution, and this is somewhat new.
- 14:59We can all thank Tik TOK for it.
- 15:01They were the first ones to really do this.
- 15:02And virtually every platform save for YouTube has copied it so far.
- 15:06Where, where you live plays a big role in the content that you see.
- 15:12We had one church that we were working with sign up and they came to me
- 15:15and they're like, Brady, I just want people to know my church exists.
- 15:19Like we've been here for 30 years and then people discover us and
- 15:22they'll be like, I didn't know there's a church like this in my area.
- 15:24And I was like, yeah, that's a definitely what we can help with.
- 15:26So we started taking this church's sermon clips, repurposing them for social media.
- 15:31And within a month, He had two separate interactions where someone had come
- 15:36up to him and said, are you a pastor?
- 15:38Cause I saw you in my Tik Tok feed this week.
- 15:41And this church had not been using Tik Tok prior to this.
- 15:44And then it's happened with so many other churches with Instagram because they
- 15:47have the same local component where, where you live matters with distribution.
- 15:51This was not true in the previous era of social media.
- 15:54In the previous era, it was all about your friends and family.
- 15:56So this is really easy to observe if we all just think about it this way.
- 16:01Back in the day, you'd open up your social feed, doesn't matter
- 16:04which app and what would you see?
- 16:05You'd see people you recognize.
- 16:07Virtually every post, say for advertisements, was a friend or a family
- 16:11member or someone like one degree removed from you that you probably recognized.
- 16:16Nowadays, if you think about scrolling through your feeds, most
- 16:19of what you see will probably be from creators that you don't recognize.
- 16:23And that's because the discovery algorithms are
- 16:26deciding what you see based on
- 16:28viewing habits, personal interests, and geographic location.
- 16:32Why that matters is because now your church can be part of that 50 percent
- 16:36of new content, 50 plus percent, for other people in your area.
- 16:41So they're scrolling through and they see a, you know, a cooking recipe
- 16:44recommendation and oh, here's some, you know, oh, this clothing recommendation.
- 16:47I don't know who, here's a pastor preaching recommendation.
- 16:49Oh, this is a, this is a church that's down the street from me in my local area.
- 16:54This is brand new.
- 16:55I think churches have no idea that it's happening and the churches
- 16:59that are taking advantage of it are seeing incredible results.
- 17:04So Brady you, you kind of touched on some of this, but I want
- 17:06you to take us into your social ministry mountain a little bit.
- 17:12Like I, I found that fascinating just, you know, I saw you kind of
- 17:15describing it, you know, just the different layers of, Social ministry.
- 17:19Can you just break that kind of process down for us?
- 17:23Yeah, so this was a diagram that we developed in response to, you know,
- 17:28the biggest question we've gotten in the 15 years of helping churches with
- 17:31social, which is like cool post, but how does it help what we do in person?
- 17:35We are an in person ministry after all.
- 17:37It is a diagram.
- 17:39If you go to pro church tools.
- 17:40com slash mountain, you can download it and see it.
- 17:42I'll do my very best to describe it.
- 17:44It's a very simple diagram.
- 17:45It's a triangle.
- 17:46Think of the triangle as a mountain, and there are four layers.
- 17:49The top layer we call the crossover.
- 17:51This is the summit.
- 17:52This is what we're all trying to achieve.
- 17:54These are crossover events where we can tangibly point to, Hey, we did this
- 17:58thing online and it translated to in person to get there, there are three.
- 18:03Layers that we have to climb and the baseline, the foundation for
- 18:07every good social media strategy is what we call no weeks off.
- 18:12This is.
- 18:13easy to compare to like a fitness routine.
- 18:16You know, I did I did a push workout yesterday, so I did some chest and I did
- 18:20some shoulders and I did some triceps.
- 18:23And guess what?
- 18:24In the grand scheme of things, that one great workout will have virtually
- 18:28no impact on the health of my body.
- 18:31Just like one bad day where I go and eat, you know, Taco Bell way more than
- 18:34I should because I'm sad will also not have too much of an effect on my
- 18:38that your vice Brady?
- 18:39Is it, is it Taco
- 18:40Yeah, yeah, it's Taco Bell.
- 18:42I grew up when my dad and I would go on these trips.
- 18:44That's where we'd stop.
- 18:45And, you know, there's that, you know, origin moment.
- 18:48And now here I am as a 32 year old and still can't kick the habit, apparently.
- 18:51Now you know my, my dirty secret on the Beyond Sunday Worship Leader Podcast.
- 18:56Back to the point that I was, I was trying to make, it's
- 18:58that consistency that matters.
- 19:00The same is true for social.
- 19:01What we found is very few churches able to achieve this no
- 19:05weeks off rhythm indefinitely.
- 19:07What we see is this burst of inspiration that a church will have.
- 19:10They're publishing consistently, but we all wear multiple hats in ministry.
- 19:14What happens?
- 19:14You get pulled onto another project.
- 19:16Your attention is needed elsewhere.
- 19:17And then there's this dip on social and things are not as
- 19:20consistent as they once were.
- 19:21And then the saddest part of all of this.
- 19:24Is that we look at social, like, you know, it just wasn't working for my church.
- 19:27It just wasn't working.
- 19:28It's like, well, no, we, we didn't even set the baseline for the most
- 19:31fundamental part of doing social.
- 19:34Well, once you get that rhythm down consistently, and here's the
- 19:37best news before we move to that second layer, you're a church.
- 19:41You're not an influencer.
- 19:44are not monetizing your posts based on views.
- 19:48And reach influencers have to publish every single day, often multiple
- 19:52times a day, because when they go to brands to pitch their services, they
- 19:55say, Hey, every single week, this is how many views I can get for you.
- 19:58That's not what matters to us as churches.
- 20:01That's not our mission.
- 20:02So even just publishing twice a week, I would say that's the bare minimum.
- 20:06If you can just publish two good posts a week, not promotional.
- 20:10Not, Hey, this is this event that we have coming up, which nobody wants to see.
- 20:14Nobody cares
- 20:15If you can get to two posts a week, that's enough as a church.
- 20:19That's fine.
- 20:20Ideally you get to four, five, but two is okay.
- 20:24That's no weeks off from there.
- 20:25What we're looking for are what we call a viral for me post.
- 20:29This is the second layer on the social ministry mountain.
- 20:31Okay.
- 20:31We're climbing up to the next layer.
- 20:33A viral for me post is defined as any piece of content you publish
- 20:37that reaches 10 times the audience of a typical post of yours.
- 20:40Unrealistic in the previous era of social, very realistic in the current
- 20:44era of social, not common, but realistic.
- 20:48So I would say, and when I say common, I mean about three to 5 percent
- 20:52of the posts that you publish, if they're good, are going to translate
- 20:55to being viral for me posts.
- 20:58What's ironic is that that small sliver of posts is what ends
- 21:01up driving growth on platforms.
- 21:04And this is also what's new about the current era of social.
- 21:07Back in the previous era.
- 21:08The social graph error.
- 21:09You publish a piece of content and you basically immediately start
- 21:12a 48 hour countdown to that post just fading into irrelevancy never
- 21:17to be heard from again online.
- 21:19Nowadays, a piece of content can still be getting new views.
- 21:23Attracting new followers weeks and months after it was first published.
- 21:27I could show you my Instagram notifications right now and it would
- 21:30show you today's post and the comments and likes and views it's getting.
- 21:32And then it would show you a post from 12 weeks ago and a post from six weeks
- 21:35ago and a post from three weeks ago.
- 21:37Those are my viral for me posts that are still being distributed
- 21:41to brand new audiences.
- 21:42Weeks months.
- 21:43This is March.
- 21:44So some of these are from last year.
- 21:45In the previous year, that's, what's amazing about social right now.
- 21:50That's what a viral for me post is.
- 21:51The more of these that we stockpile and they all start working together,
- 21:55not just one, but like I said, in my Instagram notifications, the churches
- 21:58that we're working with multiple stacking on top of each other, we can get to
- 22:01that third layer, we call this the 10 X growth rate and the 10 X growth
- 22:06rate is defined as a 4 percent monthly growth threshold on any social platform.
- 22:12Pretty modest, nothing crazy, but when you combine it with no weeks off and it
- 22:16compounds over the weeks and the months, it adds up to something quite dramatic.
- 22:2010X growth over five years.
- 22:21So if you have 500 followers today, it becomes 5, 000 in five years.
- 22:26And remember the local component of social.
- 22:29Of those 4,500 new followers, a good percentage of those are
- 22:34going to be local to your church.
- 22:36What might that mean for your in person ministry?
- 22:39And that's when we start seeing these crossover events.
- 22:41And to be clear, we can see them at any point along the social ministry mountain,
- 22:44but the higher we get up, the more predictable and frequent they become.
- 22:47These are people being recognized, passionately
- 22:49recognized throughout the week.
- 22:51These are visitor cards being returned, heard about your church on social
- 22:54conversations in the lobby with families.
- 22:56Yeah, we were checking you out online for a couple of weeks, couple of months,
- 22:58and now we finally visited in person.
- 23:01And, you know, Numbers are my love language.
- 23:03If they're not yours, you know, we have case studies on this.
- 23:06You can go to socialsermons.
- 23:07com That's our agency where we work directly with churches.
- 23:10Click the case studies button in the navigation menu Just watch the interviews
- 23:14read through what this crossover event Thing actually looks like in
- 23:19real ministries because it's just so exciting to see digital used to connect
- 23:23people to churches encountering hope encountering purpose encountering Christ
- 23:30Brilliant.
- 23:31So much there.
- 23:32I love, I love how empowering this is.
- 23:35Like when you mentioned, you know, like a pastor that's saying, I
- 23:38don't have time to create content.
- 23:39Like who has time to do that?
- 23:41Like you know, I, I have to lead a church, but that weekly sermon.
- 23:46Is full of incredible content.
- 23:48It just needs to be repurposed for, you know, different platforms, which
- 23:51we can kind of get into, you know, best ways to go about doing that.
- 23:55But I wanted to ask you when, when do you encourage like a church to go
- 24:00like the paid ads route, as opposed to, you know, just organic reach,
- 24:06So the paid ads route is really useful when you have really big,
- 24:11what we call bridge events happening.
- 24:13And this is true for so much of social.
- 24:16It's all about finding the intersection of faith and culture.
- 24:20Where does what your church already, where does what your church is already
- 24:24doing intersect with the needs of the people you're trying to reach?
- 24:29You know, when we're crafting the hooks for our social media posts,
- 24:32that's what we're thinking about.
- 24:34But.
- 24:35For paid ads every year, your church probably has one, two, three, or
- 24:39four, what we call bridge events.
- 24:40The two easiest ones are Easter and Christmas.
- 24:43Typically there are programming elements of Easter and Christmas that
- 24:48are going to be relevant to people, irrespective of their faith background.
- 24:51You know, some churches do pictures with Santa, some churches do
- 24:54Easter egg drops, but sometimes it's just like kids programming.
- 24:57That's not like secular either.
- 25:00And if you don't have those types of things, you know, that our Easter
- 25:03service, our Christmas service might not be incredibly relevant for people
- 25:06that don't have a faith background.
- 25:07Then what about something like a VBS, summer camp for kids?
- 25:12You might have like a grill out, you might have a outdoor movie night.
- 25:16Virtually every church has some type of event that's community
- 25:19focused, but aligns with their DNA.
- 25:22Those are the events that you want to put money behind, because basically it's
- 25:26almost always, especially in this era of social, a waste of money to boost stuff
- 25:32that's going to be really insider focused.
- 25:33That's only going to be targeting people that have like
- 25:36some type of faith background.
- 25:37That's not going to probably result in reaching the people that you want.
- 25:42And it's also probably going to be a waste of ad spend because it's not going
- 25:46to be relevant to most people seeing it.
- 25:48What we know now because it was instituted in the last year, is
- 25:52that you're no longer able to use meta to target specific faiths.
- 25:55This doesn't mean that you can't use Christian language in your, in your ads.
- 26:01What it does mean is you can't target, like, Christians.
- 26:04In a five mile radius.
- 26:05So what we recommend is when you're using platforms like Instagram,
- 26:08like Facebook, target a five mile radius from your church, and then
- 26:12post about this bridge event that is going to be presumably relevant to
- 26:17any person that sees that, and maybe it's only relevant to families, right?
- 26:21But like, that's still going to be this massive chunk of people that see that.
- 26:25What it also does is it sets forth a bit of branding for your church.
- 26:30And, and this is the type of thing that it's very difficult to track.
- 26:34Like this ad dollar turned into this person coming to church, but this is
- 26:38what every big brand does in the world.
- 26:41You watch a Super Bowl ad and it'll just be like Matthew McConaughey
- 26:44driving a Lincoln and you're like, Oh, that didn't make me buy a Lincoln.
- 26:47Well, it made someone though add one more thing that they didn't know
- 26:51about Lincoln and that contributed to their purchase decision in three
- 26:53years by some unknown percent.
- 26:55Like that's just how brand marketing works.
- 26:57So if every time you boost your posts and it's to a bridge event
- 27:03that's valuable to the community.
- 27:05You are slowly, but assuredly building your brand in the
- 27:09community as a church that cares.
- 27:11You're not just there for you.
- 27:13You're there to serve and meet the needs of people.
- 27:17There's this rule of marketing that is called the rule of seven.
- 27:19It's a really easy rule to remember.
- 27:21It basically means that you're going to need seven interactions with
- 27:24a brand or products before you're ready to make a purchase decision.
- 27:27In this case, the first time someone sees that there's a bridge event going on, Oh,
- 27:31VBS for kids, you know, superhero themed.
- 27:33Oh, at the church down the street.
- 27:35They're probably not going to sign up and then maybe the second year they don't sign
- 27:38up, but in between they also had driven by the church and they're like, Oh, that
- 27:42was the church that was doing the VBS.
- 27:43That's cool.
- 27:43That's the third one.
- 27:44And then maybe they see a social post of yours.
- 27:46That's the fourth.
- 27:47And then maybe in 18 months, they're ready to take that step.
- 27:50And you won't know until you see it.
- 27:51So that was all this good decision adding up to it, but
- 27:54that's what brand marketing does.
- 27:56What's nice about the boosted ads is that you're not only getting that you're
- 27:59also doing what we call direct response marketing, where you're basically
- 28:02saying, we have this awesome thing.
- 28:03Do you want to be a part of it?
- 28:04And then people come through that.
- 28:06But if you look at the end of your ad spend and you're like, Oh
- 28:09man, this only resulted in this, that was below our expectations.
- 28:13The consolation is that if you are advertising a bridge event, that's
- 28:16valuable to everyone, That's awesome.
- 28:18You have basically stated to your community, Hey, we're here to help.
- 28:21We're here to serve.
- 28:22And it's not just come to us, come to us, come to us.
- 28:26Yeah.
- 28:26So you're not necessarily seeing an immediate return on that investment,
- 28:31Well, you are if done right.
- 28:33And we have a post about this.
- 28:35If you search Facebook ads for churches in my name or just Facebook
- 28:38ads for churches, it should come up.
- 28:39We did a case study with a number of churches with exact examples of what
- 28:42they were doing on Facebook, real creative, exact copy and the results.
- 28:46And so you can go through all of that to see what.
- 28:49When done well, this can translate to but if you do it for the first
- 28:52time, let's say, and you don't do it well because it was your first
- 28:54time and that's totally fine.
- 28:56I'm just encouraging folks to know that, hey, there is this,
- 28:59you know, consolation prize.
- 29:00It's not all bad.
- 29:02Yeah, love it.
- 29:03Brady, what is, give us an example of a, of a, you know, small to mid sized church.
- 29:10I know you've posted some recent examples from like Transformation and Elevation
- 29:15about how they manage their social media, which is like really insightful, and I'll
- 29:19encourage everybody to go check that out.
- 29:21But what are some, you know, small to mid sized churches that are doing social
- 29:26media really well that we could check out?
- 29:28Any, anybody come to mind?
- 29:30Plenty.
- 29:31It's funny when we, when we posted about this, the small and midsize churches,
- 29:35it's like, people are like, ah, snooze.
- 29:37And then we'll post about like elevation and they'll be like, yeah.
- 29:40And
- 29:40Yeah, a little more viral,
- 29:42And it's surprising because I'm like, look, at least small to mid
- 29:45sized churches, this is like us.
- 29:46We're all this.
- 29:47We can do it.
- 29:48You're not like the other churches, but Hey, that's that's how it goes.
- 29:51You know, it's not like that's surprising to me.
- 29:53Maybe a little bit, but there's this, there's this one church that comes to
- 29:55mind and they are called ironically One Church and they're from Texas.
- 29:59And we did a podcast with them.
- 30:01You can find that on our show, the Pro Church Tools show.
- 30:04You can search, you know, One Church, Brady Shearer, you can
- 30:06find it that way on YouTube.
- 30:08They were a newer church and kind of unique setup, married
- 30:13couple, equal amount of preaching.
- 30:15So husband and wife, both preaching.
- 30:18And they found that the content they posted on TikTok that was
- 30:23reaching a ton of people was preaching with a parenting lean.
- 30:29So they would talk about wisdom from scripture and how it
- 30:32applies to raising children.
- 30:34And that was the content that was blowing up the most.
- 30:36And I believe now they have more than a million followers
- 30:39on both Instagram and tick tock.
- 30:40I feel like it's close to that.
- 30:41It's hundreds of thousands and their church has grown considerably
- 30:45in the last, you know, five years after they've started because they
- 30:48started on tick tock pretty early.
- 30:51Like that, that's just a church that I find interesting because they're
- 30:55basically, that's the intersection of faith and culture, right?
- 30:57It's wisdom from scripture applied to parenting.
- 31:00So it's useful for people that know God.
- 31:04It's just as accessible to those that have no faith background whatsoever.
- 31:08And that's what makes social media content relevant.
- 31:12How can you meet people's needs where they are?
- 31:14So that's one church.
- 31:17There's another church that we did a podcast with in the bay
- 31:20area, this is a youth ministry and they're, they're doing a really
- 31:23good job of making creative reels.
- 31:26And their youth ministry is, you know, reaching a ton of people because of it.
- 31:29We have a number of case studies that you can check out on our podcast,
- 31:33especially from last summer with these small to midsize churches.
- 31:35But, you know, those are the churches that we're, we're trying to serve,
- 31:38you know, all the case studies that I talked about on socialsermons.com
- 31:41those are small to midsize churches.
- 31:43Yeah, I think, you know, what's really funny is that the bigger churches
- 31:47tend to do not so great on social, you know, we, we've highlighted Life
- 31:51Church, we've highlighted Elevation, we've highlighted Transformation.
- 31:54They all do really well, but most bigger churches we've found don't really feel
- 32:00the need to follow best practices on social because they have a charismatic
- 32:04personality or they were already a big church before social came around.
- 32:07And so they can kind of skate by on that influence.
- 32:10And so usually I say, Hey, don't, don't just copy the big church because they
- 32:14might not be following best practices.
- 32:16They might just be getting that result that you're seeing because of the
- 32:19recognizable factor of the, of the pastor.
- 32:22Yeah.
- 32:23No, that's so good.
- 32:25Can you, and I'll let you go here in just a second, Brady, but can you leave
- 32:28us with some of those best practices?
- 32:31Like what are some, and I know every platform is probably a little bit
- 32:34different, but maybe you could just take us into a couple of platforms,
- 32:37some best practices for social.
- 32:40Well, yeah, let's talk about a universal exercise.
- 32:42So whether you're on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, this
- 32:45is going to work for, you know, X, Threads, whatever you're on, whatever
- 32:48you care about, this will work.
- 32:50So you're looking at your church's sermon.
- 32:53Goldmine of content.
- 32:54Whether you were the person that preached it, or more than likely,
- 32:56you're the person reviewing it.
- 32:57Okay, Brady said I didn't have to make social content.
- 32:59What do I do with this 30, 40 minute sermon?
- 33:02So, you review it.
- 33:06Watch it at 1.
- 33:065 speed.
- 33:07If you can save a little time.
- 33:08Now it's a 20 minute review, but review the whole sermon.
- 33:10Watch it.
- 33:11Don't rely on bots or AI for this.
- 33:13That's the most important thing.
- 33:15And what you're trying to do is identify a few, you know, 30 to 90 minute segments.
- 33:21Usually we just aim for two.
- 33:22Don't try to pull too many.
- 33:23Sometimes you're just like, Oh, we're going
- 33:2430 to 90 second, right?
- 33:26Not 90 minute.
- 33:28that's right.
- 33:2830 to 90 seconds.
- 33:30Pull those.
- 33:31Okay, this is a really compelling thing.
- 33:33We're going to clean it up a bit, you know, cut up some, cut up, you
- 33:36know, remove some of the silences, punch in, punch out, whatever.
- 33:38That is 30 to 90 second clip.
- 33:42Your job is to now contextualize that for someone that didn't
- 33:45see the rest of the sermon.
- 33:46And the way that we do that is with a hook.
- 33:48First three seconds of the video, big text on screen.
- 33:53the number one job of a parent.
- 33:55As an example, that was one that we wrote that was really successful.
- 33:58A hook that basically makes a promise.
- 34:00This is what that content is about for people that have a faith
- 34:03background, but that don't as well.
- 34:06Here is the simple exercise on how to write a hook.
- 34:08This will work for sermon clips.
- 34:09It'll also work for carousels.
- 34:10It'll work for quotes.
- 34:11It'll work for anything.
- 34:13We call it the three C's.
- 34:15The three C's stand for curiosity, common, and care.
- 34:19Your goal is to Write a hook and then evaluate it according to
- 34:23those three C's and give your hook a score overall at a 15.
- 34:28So out of five for each of those three C's out of five for cliffhanger at a
- 34:32five for comment at a five for care.
- 34:33You want your hook to score greater than 10 at a 15 overall.
- 34:37If it's under that back to the drawing board, if it's over than that, Hey,
- 34:40you probably wrote a good hook.
- 34:41Let's get into each of those three C's cliffhanger.
- 34:43This one's pretty simple.
- 34:45Is there like an element of mystery?
- 34:48The number one job of a parent.
- 34:50It's begging the question, like, what is that job?
- 34:52Sometimes, we see churches write hooks that are basically
- 34:55just a statement or a thesis.
- 34:57So there's no reason to keep watching the rest of the video because you've
- 35:00already kind of stated the conclusion.
- 35:01Like, this is your point that you're trying to make.
- 35:05The second C is common.
- 35:08We've talked about this already.
- 35:09It needs to be universally something that people care about.
- 35:12So the number one job of a parent.
- 35:14You know, not everyone's a parent, but everyone's a child.
- 35:16So that basically affects everyone, that would be a five
- 35:18out of five on the common scale.
- 35:20And then finally care.
- 35:22This is the one people mess up the most.
- 35:23Just because something's common doesn't mean people care about it.
- 35:27So the bad example I always like to use here is, is gratitude.
- 35:32Gratitude is something that I think we all know, like, yeah, we
- 35:35should all practice more gratitude.
- 35:36It's not something people go about their everyday life thinking about.
- 35:39So if you led with a hook, like the number one thing people mistake about gratitude,
- 35:44it's like, I don't want, I don't care.
- 35:45Who cares?
- 35:47You have to meet people where they are and lead them to where they
- 35:49want to where God wants them to be.
- 35:51So it's okay if like in that 30 to 90 seconds, you conclude with the
- 35:54point of being, Hey, and the, the solution is to practice more gratitude.
- 35:59Here's how to do it.
- 35:59Okay.
- 36:00That's a great place to lead people to, but you can't start there.
- 36:03What are people thinking about in their day to day lives?
- 36:05They're thinking about man, finances.
- 36:08Marriage, parenting, purpose, hope.
- 36:11Is this all there is?
- 36:12Loneliness, anxiety.
- 36:13Man, I just, I wish I could be open with my friends.
- 36:16I feel so isolated.
- 36:17Work is so hard.
- 36:17Like there are so many things that are going through the back of our minds as
- 36:20like this inner dialogue at all time.
- 36:22Practicing gratitude is not one of them.
- 36:24So you don't want to meet people there, but you go through that exercise.
- 36:29You look the first couple of times you might be like, these are good.
- 36:32And then you might look back at those a year later and be like, man, I
- 36:34was very generous with my scoring.
- 36:37Not everyone starts great at this right away, but the practice of
- 36:40going through it, evaluating, use the three C's, do that exercise.
- 36:44That is what stops the scroll on social.
- 36:47This is like the 80 20 rule.
- 36:48This is the thing that's going to make all the difference.
- 36:50Not like, Oh, I put a cool backing track behind the sermon clip.
- 36:53Not, Oh, we had this like really cool frame with this
- 36:56like decorative trim like that.
- 36:57No, no, that's not going to do.
- 36:59Hashtags.
- 36:59No, that's like the final three to 5%.
- 37:01What stops the scroll is the hook.
- 37:04Is the content compelling to someone enough to stop scrolling?
- 37:09Follow that exercise and you'll be making a lot more progress.
- 37:13So good, man.
- 37:14I mean, this is an education here, bro.
- 37:16The value here is incredible.
- 37:18Yeah.
- 37:19It's like you could have the greatest content on earth, but if like your
- 37:23hooks and your headlines are awful, like nobody's going to pay attention, you know?
- 37:28And
- 37:29And if I can, people sometimes like are like, Oh, this is gonna,
- 37:31this is too much secular marketing.
- 37:33Like this is, this is not what scripture wants.
- 37:35Like look at Jesus's teachings.
- 37:38Robert Stein did this, looked at the synoptic gospels.
- 37:40More than a third of Jesus's teachings are story.
- 37:43So Christ comes to earth and he's teaching about this new thing, the kingdom of God.
- 37:49And how does he do it?
- 37:50Does he start right there?
- 37:51No.
- 37:51Rarely.
- 37:52He'll talk about wine.
- 37:53He'll talk about sheep.
- 37:54He'll talk about lost coins.
- 37:55Familiar entry points to then lead people to this bigger idea of the kingdom of God.
- 38:01So, this is literally following the example of Jesus.
- 38:06It's not some gimmick or marketing hack that we've come up with in socials times.
- 38:11This is following the example of Christ.
- 38:15Where there are these big ideas, they're difficult to receive.
- 38:18Even Jesus's disciples like, man, this, this is stuff is hard to understand.
- 38:21It's hard to grapple with.
- 38:22So what does he do?
- 38:23You start with story, it's easy, it's accessible.
- 38:26And now we bring people into these, you know, bigger truths
- 38:30of life and hope and destiny.
- 38:32Love it.
- 38:34Brady, last question.
- 38:35And then before I let you go, I want you to talk about you know, your
- 38:38pro church tools and your business.
- 38:40But you know, I know you work a lot with churches and their
- 38:43overall marketing and social media.
- 38:45So I coach a lot of worship leaders, worship pastors, any tip or trick or
- 38:51advice that you can give to like a worship pastor, who's leading a team.
- 38:57On how to use social media more effectively, anything that you've
- 39:01seen, any sort of tip, just in terms of communication and recruiting
- 39:06within a team within a church.
- 39:08Well, the first thing that comes to mind is visuals and photography.
- 39:12You know, we've talked a lot about taking sermon content and repurposing it.
- 39:17There's two axis on social there's reaching wide and there's reaching deep.
- 39:22Taking your sermon content and repurposing it is really great for reaching wide.
- 39:26It's also great for serving your existing congregation.
- 39:28So if there was only one thing that you could do, we'd say, Hey, do that.
- 39:31But photography and visuals of worship within church is really great at reaching
- 39:38deep, you know, we have a service with our social media crew where we'll like
- 39:42send a photographer to churches where they don't have great photography and
- 39:45capture like the life of the church, the heartbeat of the church, like
- 39:49the DNA of the church is the people taking that and putting that on social.
- 39:53Has this amazing effect as we scatter through the week and we're apart from
- 39:58each other, reminding, Hey, this weekend, we're all going to get together again.
- 40:01This is that third place for you.
- 40:03This is that home outside of your actual family.
- 40:06And this is not work.
- 40:07This is like a place that we all choose to come.
- 40:09And it's a really beautiful embodiment of what makes the church unique, right?
- 40:13Different generations.
- 40:14Different ethnicities, different socioeconomic classes all gathered
- 40:17together for a shared purpose.
- 40:18That doesn't happen anywhere else.
- 40:20And that can be emphasized with a specific worship edge or worship
- 40:25bent that can make a difference.
- 40:27That being said, I mean, I feel like in, in worship, like everybody
- 40:30wants to be on the worship team, you know, like, I, I don't think I
- 40:33should be giving you all my secrets.
- 40:34Like we need to help the kids ministries and the greeters.
- 40:37They're the ones that can't recruit the volunteers.
- 40:38I mean, everyone wants to be on stage, right?
- 40:41Well, there are a lot of, lot of teams that are lacking talent or they want to
- 40:46find more talent, you know which I think everything you're sharing with us helps
- 40:51with that, you know, whenever you're able to document your worship culture,
- 40:57you know, through video or through images that is only going to help raise
- 41:02the profile of your ministry to attract maybe some local musicians who want to
- 41:06get plugged in because of what they see.
- 41:10Yeah.
- 41:10And then the clips, if you, if you have good sound, more and more
- 41:13churches are having good sound which, you know, was not a recommendation
- 41:16I would have made years ago.
- 41:17But coming out of COVID and, you know, thank the Lord for all the
- 41:21autotune plugins that we all use now.
- 41:23Those clips can sound good when they're translated to social.
- 41:27And so those also we see perform really, really well.
- 41:30yeah, Brady, talk to us before you go about social sermons.
- 41:35I think this is your agency, just a fantastic resource for churches.
- 41:40So if some of our listeners here are like, man, we really need to step up our
- 41:43social game, but we don't want to do it.
- 41:46Tell us about your agency.
- 41:49I mean, one of the things I'm really happy that we get to do is we don't sell
- 41:53courses and we don't sell education.
- 41:56So everything on our YouTube channel, our podcast, our social platforms
- 42:00is me teaching the best things that I know, not holding anything back.
- 42:05There is no course where it's like, and here's where I'll
- 42:06actually tell you about social.
- 42:08But if you want us to do it for you, That's where we, you know,
- 42:12earn our money as a business.
- 42:14So socialsermons.com is where we work with about 200 churches every week
- 42:18and create a social media content that's custom and unique to them.
- 42:22And we have a waiting list right now.
- 42:24It's pretty, it's full, but you can book a discovery call with me if you want to chat
- 42:27about your church's social media needs.
- 42:29You can see the packages on that site.
- 42:30And then we also have a software platform that we started about seven
- 42:34years ago, Nucleus, nucleus.church.
- 42:36This is the church website builder for small and mid sized churches.
- 42:40About 3, 000 churches host their website on Nucleus.
- 42:43And that's another really awesome thing that we get to do.
- 42:45Software, agency work, and then creating all the content.
- 42:49Love it.
- 42:50Love it.
- 42:51Brady, any last words, anything you want to let my listeners know
- 42:55about that you haven't said already?
- 42:58Well, I mean, I think it's just always a useful bookend to remind yourself,
- 43:02like, take it easy on yourself.
- 43:03You know, if you're listening to this and you're hearing about social
- 43:05media, it's almost certainly not your job and your primary role.
- 43:09And it's, I think it's easy to listen to a podcast like this and
- 43:11you turn it off and you're like, man, that's a lot of good information.
- 43:15Hopefully I liked it, but like I have a real job.
- 43:18I have like, I have to do all this other stuff.
- 43:21And so if you take away anything from this, like two things.
- 43:24No weeks off.
- 43:26That is the non negotiable of social media success.
- 43:30So if all you can do is two posts a week, or if all your church can do with your
- 43:34contributions as part of that help is two posts a week, that's good enough.
- 43:38It doesn't need to be crazy.
- 43:39It just needs to be consistent.
- 43:41Don't set yourself up.
- 43:43to like fail by saying, Oh, we're going to start publishing like every single day.
- 43:46And then, you know, three, six weeks from now, you're like,
- 43:49man, that was not sustainable.
- 43:50You need to find that sustainable pace for your church.
- 43:53And you know, if it's just two times a week, that's great.
- 43:55You know, don't put don't put too much on yourself.
- 43:58Yeah,
- 43:58I like no weeks off as opposed to no days off.
- 44:01Like eventually as you get better, you can take a no days off approach.
- 44:06Right.
- 44:07But starting with no weeks makes that that's achievable, right?
- 44:11You set a goal like, Hey, we can do this and we do it consistently A long time and
- 44:17then we can kind of scale up from there.
- 44:19Dude, brilliant stuff.
- 44:20Thanks, Brady.
- 44:21Make sure you check out Brady.
- 44:22He's got a podcast, the Pro Church Tools podcast, prochurchtools.
- 44:27com.
- 44:28Dude, I just feel like I just took like a college course in like 40 minutes.
- 44:33This is just unbelievable.
- 44:34Thank you,
- 44:35appreciate the invite.
- 44:36I had a great time.