PODCAST | How To Get The Most From Online Church (Feat. Jason Moore)

Resources:

https://midnightoilproductions.com/

https://www.inviteresources.com/store/view/bothand (Code: BAwebinar10)

https://www.vanderbloemen.com/blog/hydbrid-easter-service-both-and

https://www.facebook.com/midnightoilproductions

Transcript:

Christa Reinhardt:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership podcast. I'm your host, Christa Reinhardt, Senior Marketing Coordinator here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, Michael Buckingham, our VP of marketing, talks with Jason Moore, the founder of Midnight Oil Productions, and author of his new book, Both/And: Maximizing Hybrid Worship Experiences for In-Person and Online Engagement. In this conversation, Jason shares tangible ways, and tips from his book on how to engage both in-person, and online church attendees in a way that allows for a better hybrid experience. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

Michael Buckingham:
Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited for this interview. So let me give you a little background. So my story is, some of you know, I get saved, I start going back to church, but I just couldn't stand how the church was communicating this amazing message that had just changed my life. So I complained about it for a while, I'm moaning and groaning. Well, while I'm going through this, I get this alert that there's this conference talk type of thing down in Detroit when I was still living in Michigan, and so that's the first time I got to meet Jason Moore, and at the time, Len Wilson as well, Midnight Oil Productions was doing this whole thing on how the church should be communicating better and I'm like, "Oh my goodness. I'm not the only one that sees this." So it was so great.

Michael Buckingham:
I still remember, I think I answered something correctly, I got a CD, used to be that we put data CDs, it's a whole story, a little history lesson for you. But Jason, I'm so grateful that we get to talk, not just because it's full circle, but I truly believe the book that you just wrote, Both/And is such an important topic that the church has got to wrestle with, probably a little bit, and learn from. But I want to back up a little bit, because I think it's really, really exciting about how you got to this point of talking about Both/And, so talk to us a little bit about that.

Jason Moore:
All right. Well, Michael first it's great to be with you, have enjoyed staying connected over all these years. I still remember that day too, that we met you, and it's not very often when you do lots and lots of events, it's not very often that you connect with someone who is just an attendee that comes up, because you do one event one day, and somewhere else. And I remember having some conversation with you, and you were doing, was it Holy Cow back then? Is that what you did?

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
Okay. I think, now maybe I'm not remembering right, but I feel like you gave me a card that day.

Michael Buckingham:
Yep, probably, yep.

Jason Moore:
I feel like we got to know you a bit in that. And then, of course, we connected on Facebook, and then I guess, our most recent opportunity to hang out was at that church conference a few years back when I was there and you took me to dinner. Am I allowed to tell them about the car ride?

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah, absolutely. Come on. Oh, yes.

Jason Moore:
First time I ever got to ride in into Tesla and you took me zero to 60 and two seconds or whatever it was and it was so much fun.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah. And we get to do that again in what? Two weeks we're both speaking there again.

Jason Moore:
Yeah.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah. That's exciting.

Jason Moore:
Yeah, we'll be there, yeah, on the fourth and fifth, so...

Michael Buckingham:
That's awesome.

Jason Moore:
So the way that this whole thing began is really just a God thing, which I guess it all is, but I have spent 20 years or so doing trainings around creating what I would call creative worship, where metaphor and story experience participation are all kind of part of the experience of worship. I feel like worship ought to be the most creative place we go, not the least creative place. And too often, it feels like worship is kind of rote. We do the same things over... Well, I think we are a people of ritual. Sometimes it feels like we are not infusing creativity into what we do. And we serve a creative God who models creativity for us, right from the very beginning of God's communication document to humanity. And so I think worship ought to reflect that.

Jason Moore:
So I spent 20 years writing books, doing trainings, consultation work, all of that around how to create really creative worship, regardless of style. So I think you can do really creative traditional worship and nontraditional and everything in between.

Jason Moore:
And then of course, March 2020 rolls around, I had just finished booking some flights. I've had the incredible opportunity to speak in 48 of the 50 states in the United States and-

Michael Buckingham:
Good to go.

Jason Moore:
... 2020 was going to be my year. I had one booked in the summer to go to Alaska, which is one of my last... I guess it was actually 47 states. Alaska, Rhode Island and Maine were all on my calendar. In fact, I just finished booking the trip to Rhode Island and Maine to do my seminar, and I thought I was going to get to check off all 50 states. And then this thing called coronavirus showed up and people started getting nervous, and then my host started calling. And I think three days, six events, six speaking engagements all canceled because we don't know what this thing is, but we don't think we can get people together in a room. And I started to panic a little. I said to my wife, "I don't know what we're going to do." The beauty of the church world was that every one of those events said, "Oh, we're going to go ahead and pay you-"

Michael Buckingham:
Oh, wow.

Jason Moore:
"And then you can just make it up when this is over. So we'll have you come out in the fall." We had no idea that it was going to be [crosstalk 00:05:53].

Michael Buckingham:
Of 2024.

Jason Moore:
Yes, exactly. So I didn't know what I was going to do. And I guess it was the second week that things had shut down. So there was kind of that week where they said, we're going to ask everyone to stay at home and they kind of shut the whole world down. I guess it was Monday of that week, Monday or Tuesday. I had a pastor reach out to me who I had done a Secret Worshiper consultation for, she started like secret shopping, except I'm not there to buy anything, I go, and I do these evaluations. And in 19, he had me come to Denver to do this consultation for his church. And he said, Jason. He, he called me and said, "They just shut us down. Would you be willing to Secret Worshiper online experience? Because we implemented all the stuff that you told us to do in our in-person experience and hospitality and all that. And now none of that really applies since we're only online."

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And I was like, "Sure, I'll do that." Thinking in the back of my head, I've got nothing else going on. And so I worshiped with them that Sunday morning, online. They were online prior to the pandemic, but they recognized that they were going to have to do something different than what they had done when they were people in the room. Because at that point, we were all at home. Everybody was at home.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
So I took two solid pages of notes and we set up a time on Monday where I got together with he and his team and went over those notes and I said, "Jeremy, so much of what I'm going to share with you here or what I've just shared with you applies to so many other churches who just went online. Do you care if I turn this into a little article. And I'll make you anonymous, but is that okay with you?" And he's like, "Oh no, go ahead. That'd be great."

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And so I posted it on Facebook and it kind of went viral. It started getting shared all over the place like crazy. It was, I think it was very utilitarian in its approach. I think I called it Five Ways To Improve Your Stream Before Next Sunday.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And-

Michael Buckingham:
Well, isn't that cool, where you didn't even know what you were doing?

Jason Moore:
Right.

Michael Buckingham:
I mean, you knew what you were doing as far as the content, but not that you were about to put something out there that was going to explode and how much people needed that? Yeah.

Jason Moore:
Exactly.

Michael Buckingham:
I mean, that's huge. Yeah.

Jason Moore:
I have been saying it's been like manna from heaven. I've just gotten to collect it from the beach. It was there. I didn't do... I mean, there were certain experiences that I've had and everything sort of added up to that moment, but it really was just this gift. And so I put the article out. One day after I put it out, I got a call from the United Methodist in Pennsylvania, and I do a lot of work in the United Methodist Church world. And I have previously been on retainer with these folks. I've done a lot of training, a lot of coaching for them. I've helped them. Every year, they have this big, what they call annual conference, it's a weird thing. They have regions that they call annual conferences, so like an area, but then they have an annual conference every year and I've helped them make that creative with production and writing and video and all that stuff.

Jason Moore:
And so they said, "We read that article. Would you be willing to turn that into a webinar for our conference so that we can teach our people how to do online worship better?" And I was like, "Well, yeah, let me explore that." I had never done a webinar. I mean, I had appeared as a guest on a webinar that someone else had set up, but I'd never... I mean, it wasn't as big of a deal back in 2020. So I spent a few days exploring, how do you even do a webinar? What software do you use and how do you make it more than just looking at my FaceTime camera and all of that.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And so I started to explore it. And the next day, like two days after the article, West Virginia United Methodist called and said, "Hey, we saw that article you did. Would you be willing to do a training on that?" And I said, "Well, I'm working on something. Let me get back with you." And then where I'm at in Ohio, they found out I was putting this together, "Can you do it for us too?" In five days, Michael, I had 14 annual conferences all over the country called.

Michael Buckingham:
That's fantastic.

Jason Moore:
And they all wanted it before Easter. So this was in March and Easter would be in April. And I was doing two and three of them a day for almost two weeks straight during the week.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And sometimes it was very confusing because I couldn't remember if I had already said that-

Michael Buckingham:
Oh, my God [crosstalk 00:10:22]

Jason Moore:
Because I'd just said it two hours earlier. So anyway, that original training was called Telling The Old Story In A New Time. And it was really all about how do we create worship for people not physically gathered. And the premise of the training or the way that I like to frame the conversation was to think about how books become films. Because when you tell a story in a different way, there are a lot of adaptations that you have to make. You have to consolidate the story a little, you have to embrace the limits of the story medium that you're to telling that story in, in its new incarnation. You have to... There's just all the stuff that you have to do in order to tell it well. And the thing is, I think some of the churches who just jumped online in 2020 simply put a camera in the back of the room and went about business as usual. And didn't recognize that you had to actually reimagine that story and tell it in a whole new way.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And so anyway, I put that train together. After Easter, I got more and more invitations. And so I believe I've done that one about 45 or 50 times now.

Michael Buckingham:
Wow.

Jason Moore:
Since March of 2020.

Michael Buckingham:
That's fantastic.

Jason Moore:
And then in the fall, I guess it was in September, I had this ecumenical organization who had hosted it twice in Indiana. They're called the Center For Congregations. And so they're nondenominational. In fact, they asked me not to use the word church when I present, because they have synagogues and temples and all that kind of stuff, so... But anyway, I had done it twice for them and I had written another book which came out right at the beginning of the pandemic called From Franchise To Local Dive.

Michael Buckingham:
Oh yeah. I remember that.

Jason Moore:
And not a good time to launch a book.

Michael Buckingham:
No, not [crosstalk 00:12:11].

Jason Moore:
That book, unfortunately never made it very far. I mean, it's got a loyal band of readers, but it didn't quite take off because the pandemic hit.

Michael Buckingham:
Sure.

Jason Moore:
But that ecumenical group said, we'd like to host a training on that book. And I already had that developed. And just in conversation, the day that I had a Zoom call with them, they said, "How's your Telling The Old Story going? Like the last time we talked to you had done it like 20 times." I said, "Oh I think I'm up to like 30 now." And I said, "My biggest challenge right now is that people are starting to come back to the building. And I'm really concerned about what happens when we get people back into the building after spending six months or eight months or whatever it had been talking to the camera." I think we woke people at home up to what it feels like to be participants in worship, rather than watchers of worship, which is really, I think what churches were doing pre pandemic. And that was okay. I don't think we had to put a camera or cameras in the room and broadcast or stream our worship. I don't think anyone felt like before... I don't think anyone felt left out.

Michael Buckingham:
Right.

Jason Moore:
I think when we all had to go home, and we started talking directly to them, and redesigning worship to include them and using chat and all those kind of things, I think we kind of woke them up to like, oh, worship online could be more than just me watching what people in the room are doing. And so I was sharing some of that with this ecumenical group and I said, "I've got too much material now for telling the old story. I can't put any more of this in there." I said, "But we got to figure out how we're going to do worship in, I don't know, like a both/and kind of way." And the guy said, "I want a training on that and I'll book two of them right now. Can you do them in November?"

Jason Moore:
And I was like, yes.

Jason Moore:
So I started working on, how do you do hybrid worship? That's different than just online, physically distance worship.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
So there was a little bit of overlap. But really what I'm passionate about, where my passion has grown in this last couple years is how do we create experiences of worship where people both in the room and online, where neither of them feel like an afterthought and both feel like they're the primary audience. You can get there. It takes some work, but I've seen little country churches with no internet and a smartphone create powerful hybrid worship. I've also seen where, a larger church with four cameras in a dolly and a crane and all of that have continued to create what feels more like a show that I'm watching than something that is participatory. And so I'm trying to help churches think about how do we move from monologue to dialogue in the experience of worship.

Michael Buckingham:
That's good.

Jason Moore:
And get away from, I talk about it in the book, three words that I'd like to eliminate from our vocabulary. Word number one is virtual worship. I don't think that worship online, virtual is not the right word, because virtual, I think says simulated. I got a virtual reality headset for Christmas a couple years ago, I rode a roller coaster with my dad two days after, and I didn't feel any butterflies going up the hill. I didn't feel any G forces. The only thing about it that was real was the connection I felt to my dad in that moment as we were riding that ride together.

Jason Moore:
So I don't think worship online is simulated. It's not fake. It's not like a close approximation, it can actually be worship. So that's where number one that I'd love to see us drop from our vocabulary. Word number two is watching worship. And I think we've got to develop some new habits because some of us are still kind of in the old habit of saying, "Welcome to worship. And if you're watching online, we're so glad you're watching at home today too." We don't want people to watch worship at home, we want them to worship from home.

Michael Buckingham:
Because they're setting that expectation, aren't they? That they're not going to be a part of worship because you're not here, but do listen to the songs and clap, maybe.

Jason Moore:
Yes.

Michael Buckingham:
Right? Yeah.

Jason Moore:
Exactly. Yes. It's more than being a... Well, the third word is viewer. I don't think we want to talk to people at home as viewers. We want them to be participants. And the only way they can really be participants is for us to give them a little bit of room to participate.

Michael Buckingham:
Yep.

Jason Moore:
So I talk about in the book, the idea of creating what I call the dual screen experience. You might invite them on their smart TV to turn on the worship, but also get out their smartphone and to participate in the chat. So we're going to give you an opportunity to reflect today. "What is, on this Easter morning, what is one thing you're thankful for? Put it in the chat, or just shout it out here in the room." And then to actually have someone in the room that might verbalize what people at home are saying. "So we got Michael worshiping with us online today and he says, he's so thankful for warm temperatures in Houston." And then you get to be a full participant.

Jason Moore:
And I really believe that the people in the room benefit from your participation online, as much as you benefit from getting to hear your actual request or reflection or whatever it is spoken in that moment. So anyway, there's a lot more I could say, but in general, that's kind of how we got to here was that God just moved in this season and I just had the right set of experiences and skills to speak to the moment. And it's been an incredible journey.

Michael Buckingham:
It's been really cool to watch. And I think the challenge is churches have to move beyond, okay, I have to put a camera up since they can't be here. And now how do I embrace that? Because I understand, if I'm preacher and that's what I'm gifted at, I'm gifted at being in the building, preaching to the people. I understand that desire, I want the people in the room. I understand that desire. How do people... Not people. How do pastors, how do senior pastors go, okay, this is not exactly what I wanted? I'm glad people are coming back together, but man, this isn't what it used to be like. How do they get to that space, where like, but this is still a good thing?

Michael Buckingham:
William did a first, an email and then a YouTube video about this whole idea of as they crossed over in Ezra, and they see the new chapel, the new synagogue, they're like, "Well, what's this? It's so small." But all they saw was the foundation. Now later in, that's the temple that Jesus would speak at. So how does a senior pastor embrace that and go, "Okay. Yeah, I want this, but how do I... So that I can truly in enlarge the tent.

Jason Moore:
I think that's a fair question. And it's a question a lot of people are asking. One of the things that I started hearing probably six months ago was, can we stop doing this now? Like people are back in the building in our church. 90% of our people are here, can we stop doing online?

Michael Buckingham:
Right.

Jason Moore:
And in the book, I talk about 13 different reasons and I won't list them all here now, but there are lots of reasons that we should continue what we're doing. And I think that when pastors can think in terms of the additional impact that we get to have, the motivation grows for continuing and continuing with some gusto. So think about the fact that some people have left the church who have refound church through online, who maybe never would've walked back in our doors. Or think about those people who have felt shunned by the church. Maybe they have too many tattoos or they don't have nice enough clothes or whatever the reason, they don't feel comfortable in the building. Think about shut-ins who have had the most incredible two or three years now of worship that they've ever had. Think about busy families who now have to choose between the gymnastics meet and worship on Sunday. Well, they used to have to choose, they don't now because they can still worship from wherever or whenever, business travelers, all those kind of things.

Jason Moore:
I think about the fact that we now get to dialogue with people online in ways that maybe we weren't doing very much pre pandemic. People with visual and hearing impairments can participate in worship through our hybrid in a way that they could not. One of my favorite stories came out of a consultation where a pastor told me he had an elderly woman in his congregation who doesn't have a lot of family left, but she considers church her family. So she loves to come in and get her hugs every week, but then in worship, she sits on the front row with her phone out. She's got a smartphone and turns on the captions because she can't hear, but she can read what the pastor's saying and be present in the space. And so there's a both/and moment happening right there in the moment.

Michael Buckingham:
Fantastic.

Jason Moore:
But one of the things I think that might be helpful for pastors to consider is that hybrid ministry has been a part of the church from the very beginning. We should consider the fact that Paul modeled hybrid ministry. All throughout Acts, Paul is preaching to the people in person. He does these in-person conversations. And then he finds himself in prison and he starts to write these letters [crosstalk 00:21:52].

Michael Buckingham:
That's good. Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And the letters that he is writing are to lead the church. And he's doing it from a distance. And he's preaching to them, he's giving them instruction for how to be the church. And you know what Paul constantly says in those letters? You see it over and over, "I long to be with you."

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
"I wish we were together. I wish we were in the same space." And so for those who are critical of this idea, that online worship shouldn't count as much or it's lazy or whatever, let's consider that the foundation of the church began in a hybrid approach, through epistles and letters. And those epistles came to form the theology that we are preaching about even to this day.

Jason Moore:
And so I think a lot about that and how, if we will embrace the moment rather than run from it, there is a wonderful sort of renaissance of that same idea happening to day. I also think that people tend to resist change. My old boss at Ginsburg United Methodist church, where I was on staff for many years, a large United Methodist church in Ohio used to jokingly say, if you put it up for a vote, the people will always vote to go back to Egypt.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah. Right. [crosstalk 00:23:12].

Jason Moore:
They don't want to live in the wilderness. And what I've seen happen is a lot of folks are saying, we need to go back to what worship was in 2019, to pretend like the pandemic never happened.

Michael Buckingham:
Right.

Jason Moore:
Well, I think all of us, in this last couple years have had to learn how to do things in a little different way. We've had to relate to each other a little differently. We've had to deal with the whole social distancing thing. I think a lot of companies have figured out you can office differently, all those things. But I think the reality for a lot of churches is that they are trying to go backwards rather than iterate forwards. And so I want to encourage pastors to think about what is it... I mean, you've made it most of the way through the wilderness or maybe you've even stepped a foot or two into the promised land, but you long for the comfort of captivity of the past because you knew how to do that. So I think there's some really wonderful opportunities here.

Jason Moore:
I guess the last thing I'd say, and I probably got a little too long winded there.

Michael Buckingham:
You're good.

Jason Moore:
It's just that there are some really low hanging fruit opportunities that I think pastors maybe just haven't recognized that are right there in front of them. So one of the things I've been saying, I have this wonderful opportunity right now. I do 16 cohort calls a month with usually like 10 or 12 leaders in each cohort. So I'm actively coaching about 175 pastors right now. So I get to have these regular updates and conversations and-

Michael Buckingham:
That's great.

Jason Moore:
... bring nuggets, but I also learn a lot from them as well.

Michael Buckingham:
Sure.

Jason Moore:
But one of the things I've been challenging them to think about is to just say, in addition to your in-the-room instructions or put it in the chat. Because a lot of us will say, "Well, yell something," or "You got a prayer request, shout it out." Or "What's something, you're... What it brings you joy, shout it out." I worshiped with the church the other day and a pastor said, "I want you to say it with me." Well, you can say, I want you to say it with me or put it in the chat as a response because I think acknowledgement makes people at home feel like they're part of it. So one piece is acknowledgement, put it in the chat, allowing them to participate.

Jason Moore:
The second thing is just to remember that eye contact really matters.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
I forgot to ask you at the beginning of this, if we were recording video or just audio. So if I wasn't looking at the camera, that's... But I think it's important that we maybe even put in our notes a couple spots, to put a camera icon in there, so that I remember that occasionally I need to work the room and the camera is part of the room. So I got to look over to the left and to the right and to the balcony and to occasionally look right at the camera. Don't look at the camera all the time, you're not filming a television show.

Michael Buckingham:
Right.

Jason Moore:
But what does it look like to make eye contact in that way? I guess the final piece I would say is just to remember, there are three ways that people are currently participating with us. And if we're not careful, all of our energy favors just the one way. So the three ways are, you've got people right now in the room with you. And that's where most of us have reverted our attention and focus, is just connecting with people in the room.

Jason Moore:
Again, if I'm not looking at my camera and I'm talking to my room and my head is off to the side, it pretty much forces you to be an observer, because you're looking off to the side or you're way in the back or whatever. So remember that you've got people right now in the room, the second group that you have, if you live stream, is people right now at home. And you have to use different language if you consider those two groups. And then the third group that you have to consider is you have later online, people who worship with you on delay.

Jason Moore:
So we default to saying things for the room, like let's stand together for the reading of the word or let's stand together and worship the God that, whatever.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
But most people at home are not standing.

Michael Buckingham:
They're not going to get off the couch and stand up.

Jason Moore:
Let's be honest. Right.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
So I like to say, let's give instructions for all three of those groups. "If you're worshiping right here in the building with us, I'm going to invite you to stand as we worship together. And if you are at home right now or participating online at a later time, find a posture that will allow you to fully participate in this moment."

Michael Buckingham:
Sure. Yeah.

Jason Moore:
So just the acknowledgement that they are there and participating. I'm not going to stand up, but I might sit up a little straighter.

Michael Buckingham:
I'm going to at least pay more attention. Right. I think, we all have the desire to be seen. And in that kind of a moment, it's why the churches that have the pastor on the lobby, they wait in line because they want to be seen and they want to be heard. And so we can allow people to do that. I also think it's an interesting thing of, we want people in the building and I think this is going to be a little bit of an evolution of, hey, it used to be that people just came to church. That's what we did. If we were here on a Sunday, we were at church, whether we believed or not, it is what we did. That's no longer true. And then this all happened. So now people... But we have to give people a reason to get involved.

Michael Buckingham:
And I don't mean because we're giving away an iPad. I mean, because we're building community, because we're engaging, because I want to see my friends, I want to worship together. I don't think there may be reasons for me to go, you know what? I want to do that in-person. I mean think about concerts, right? I could listen to the same exact music in my headphones, probably even better audio, but I want to go to that concert for that experience. So we have to be building those experiences, whether that's an experience with lighting and tech or whatever, or experiences with people or cafes or afterwards. We did a thing back when I was still at Victory, during the summer, we just had games outside. And people hung out and they loved it. And we saw attendance increase because of that.

Jason Moore:
Yeah.

Michael Buckingham:
I mean, for me, I moved from Atlanta to Houston and we're still trying to find a church. So it's really nice to be able to tune into and be a part of the church at Victory still. I still love that church. I still love the worship, the preaching, so we can still be a part of it. But I think it's important, I want to be a part of it, I don't want to just simply watch it. And I think that's going to be the... It's not easy. Right? It's different. It's not what we're used to, but it's such an important thing. It's such a powerful thing because our reach used to be our reach. That's what it was. And now our reach can be so much larger. And it is going to require some adjustments. I mean, I've been a big proponent of that third segment, of the people that are watching afterwards. Maybe that needs to be edited, because they're probably not going to sit there for an hour and a half.

Michael Buckingham:
I mean, that's a very long period of time. I mean even the... You're like, "Oh look, how many people are on Facebook watching." They watch for three minutes. So maybe we need three-minute, and maybe we need 10 three-minute clips, but there's so much more we can do now with all of that that we're capturing. I mean, this is just, in so many different ways, COVID accelerated so many things, some good, some bad. And this is one of the good things I think that it said, okay, hey, we want to help the church be more than just the building because we're really good at saying that, but it's a little bit harder to put it into practice, huh?

Jason Moore:
Yeah. I start the book off by quoting the great commission, that we are to make disciples of all people, taking the gospel everywhere. And we didn't know maybe that that was going to be digital. We still have to figure out that whole baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, that's harder to do online. But I also think that we don't have to have any shame in describing why there are advantages to coming to the building. I call my book, Both/And, not either, or. I don't think online should replace in-person worship.

Michael Buckingham:
Right. Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And so I think we ought make the appeal every single week, make the invitation, "Hey, if you're worshiping with us online, we are so glad you're a part of our worship. And there are advantages to being here in the building with us. It's so much more fun when we're together. We have great coffee, donuts. We've got out a first time visitor gift we'd love for you to pick up. So we want to invite you. We're glad you're participating with us online, but we'd love for you to come hang out with us in-person too."

Michael Buckingham:
And I think you can use this whole environment to that advantage. So maybe in a moment of service, I am talking to the people that are in the building. "Hey, I'm so excited. Hey, remember afterwards we have coffee and donuts. Hey, and for you online, I'm sorry, you can't be here, but you know what? Next week..." And now you did that whole house of cards... We call it house of cards, what it is, but whatever. But that whole, now you're talking to me, and now you captured me. You're like, "You know what? We should go there next week. That be cool. I'd like to see that." Yeah.

Jason Moore:
Yeah. I mean, that's a great example. There's a church that I work with out in Columbia, South Carolina, that the pastor told me that they're a large African American church. They had about 600 in attendance, pre pandemic, which I guess, depending on who's listening, that may be larger or small. But in my tribe, it's a pretty large church.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And the pastor said that, I've only got about 20% of my people coming to the building. He said, we've had a lot of folks that don't want to get vaccinated, they want to stay safe. So I had to figure out, how am I going to do worship so they can participate? And they've really leaned into this idea of using chat. So every week between, they started tracking it. They have somewhere between 400 and 800 comments every week in their chat. They invite people to check in. If you're a member, put M. If you're a frequent flyer with us, put FF. If you're guest, put G and that chat blows up. They say, whether you're a guest or a member or whatever, we'd love for you to share our worship. There's a share button down in the corner. And the views just blow up when that happens.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
But the thing I wanted to mention here is that they do communion, and of course they have these little rip and sip, I call them communion elements in the room. But they say, if you're worshiping with us online right now, I want to remind you that today, immediately following worship, we have our drive-by communion, and we'd love for you to come and participate in that if you'd like to do that.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
I walked out of the building that day back in August and there were 30 cars in the parking lot, all lined up to come receive communion. So they worshiped online, and then they came to the building because communion is one of those things. It's a little harder to replicate online. So the other thing I would say is I've got a 13-year old daughter who has just fallen in love with the Hamilton Musical.

Michael Buckingham:
Oh yeah.

Jason Moore:
I mean, who hasn't?

Michael Buckingham:
Right.

Jason Moore:
But when it came out on Disney Plus she just was glued to it, watched it over and over. And probably three or four months ago, her school went to a performance of the live show here in Dayton, Ohio at our performing arts theater. And she came home and she was like, "Dad, it was so good, I cried." And I said, "Honey, you've watched that a million times. Why did it make you cry this time, you think?" And she said, "It was just something about seeing it with my friends and watching their emotion, and I felt something different. And the actors were there and you could hear them singing, and it wasn't through the TV." I think it's okay for us to... I mean, who wouldn't rather go to the Super Bowl in-person than watch it in your living room?

Michael Buckingham:
Right.

Jason Moore:
I mean, I guess, maybe you don't get to see the commercials, but I think all of us-

Michael Buckingham:
That's true. That's a big deal. Yeah.

Jason Moore:
I think all of us would rather go in-person than online. But if we're intentional, I think we can create truly transcendent experiences of worship for those who are not in the building.

Michael Buckingham:
It's going to require us to think a little bit and strategize, okay, because it is to your point, creating some invitations. At Victory, we did a big baptism deal. It was like spontaneous... We planned it, but for everyone else, it was spontaneous.

Jason Moore:
Yes.

Michael Buckingham:
And so we're getting all these people up and we're like, "Hey, we're going to be doing this. We've got three services, da, da." And we had people, I mean, dozens of people had watched it online. We had somebody drive for two hours to come get baptized. And that was just a remarkable moment. And there's other things, there's classes that might be online, but maybe there's one big gathering at the end of it. So I think there's a lot of things we can do to get creative.

Michael Buckingham:
Now it's going to take some energy, it's going to take some people, but to go, okay, what are those invitations that we can create to draw those people in and get them to be excited about being a part of this, not just because that's what they do, but because there's an expectation. And I think what'll happen is we'll see church, because of those experiences, grow with the impact that it makes, because now, I'm going to church for a reason. If I'm just going to church because it's 11 o'clock on Sunday, okay, it's a good start. It's kind of like, it's fine that salvation, raise your hand and say a prayer. That's a good start. However, there's so much more, so what can we do to engage and invite and things of that sort? So that's exciting.

Jason Moore:
One of the other big challenges I've given the folks that I'm coaching right now is to think about making 2022, the year that we build a relational or discipleship pathway through our online ministry. So-

Michael Buckingham:
That's strong.

Jason Moore:
The truth is you can come to the room and be a watcher.

Michael Buckingham:
Yep.

Jason Moore:
We've got to build a discipleship pathway in our hybrid setting. So what if it's my first Sunday there and I feel God moving in my life and I want to take that next step? Is it clear what I'm supposed to do? What about online? So how are we going to lead people from just being a viewer in the room or at home to really being a disciple and inviting them into our faith communities? And I think I've seen some churches and I actually have some examples in the book, who have got a very systematic approach to, I'm a viewer on week one, but how do I take those next steps?

Jason Moore:
There's a pastor that I'm working with in North Carolina, who just told me a story about how at the very beginning of the pandemic, or right before the pandemic, he reconnected with a friend of his, that he had grown up with who lived in Miami or Tallahassee or so, somewhere in Florida.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Jason Moore:
And he said, "Hey, you're not going to believe it, but I'm a pastor now. And you got to check our church out online sometime." And so she began worshiping with them during the pandemic and was really drawn in by what they were doing, so she started giving offering pretty regularly. And then she became a tither, committed to 10% of her income. And then when she found out they had online Bible study, she started participating in that. And the pastor said, "You know what? You are as committed, or maybe even more committed than some of my regulars, my members, you ought to join our church." And she said, "I would like to do that." So for the very first time ever, on a Membership Sunday, they had three or four people standing up front, and they had a TV with Zoom on it, and this person took their membership vows. They're not moving from Florida to North Carolina.

Michael Buckingham:
Right.

Jason Moore:
He said, after she joined the church, she became the head of our online greeting team.

Michael Buckingham:
Come on.

Jason Moore:
So she now leads the chat and organizes folks from another state. So-

Michael Buckingham:
That's huge.

Jason Moore:
And she's actually found ways in her local area to serve at soup kitchens and do missional type stuff.

Michael Buckingham:
She's doing more than most of us did when we were attending church, right? Yeah. That's fantastic.

Jason Moore:
Exactly.

Michael Buckingham:
That's fantastic.

Jason Moore:
I feel like sometimes, we've just got to remind people that people who worship with us online are real people. They really matter. We can make real connections with them and we can create worship that transcends technology. And not that it should be a replacement for in-person, I'm not suggesting that, but there's a wonderful thing that's happening through our hybrid or both/and ministry if we'll lean into it.

Michael Buckingham:
Well, and you've pointed out how it's not an either or, and it's also not a stopping point. It can be something more. I mean, I'm seeing opportunities for people to become more ministry focused of, hey, maybe I love this church, lady in Tallahassee, but you know what? I'm going to invite 10 other people into my home. So now I'm going to have house churches that are true house churches with, not just me saying what I want to say to these people, but it's truly a part of this organization and watching these organizations and these churches grow larger and larger and just again, increase the size of the tent. And those 10 stakes are more and more. I mean that to me, that's revival and that's-

Jason Moore:
Absolutely.

Michael Buckingham:
That's a way to really go forward. All right. So let me tell you this, tell people this, how do they get more from you? What's the best way to get ahold of your books, your trainings, things of that sort?

Jason Moore:
Great question, which I'm happy to answer. My book is available from Invite Resources. Our mutual friend, Lynn Wilson is the publisher there. And so you can check out Invite Resources. I think it's... Hold on. Let me make sure I get this right. Yeah, inviteresources.com. If you buy directly from them, I'm going to give you a little code, you can save 10%.

Michael Buckingham:
Awesome.

Jason Moore:
Although today is not a webinar, I'm going to give you my webinar code.

Michael Buckingham:
There you go. Awesome.

Jason Moore:
Capital BA for Both/And, BA webinar, and the number 10, that'll save you 10% on the books.

Michael Buckingham:
Awesome.

Jason Moore:
You of course can pick it up on Amazon. A crazy thing is that the book came out on February 14th, 2022, and it is number 10 right now in preaching and has been in the top-

Michael Buckingham:
So cool.

Jason Moore:
Top 10 almost since it came out, which is crazy. The first two weeks, it was solid one or two in three different categories, in evangelism, discipleship and preaching. And so I can't even believe how God has been using this resource.

Michael Buckingham:
That's so cool.

Jason Moore:
And then if you'd like to connect with me, you can find me on Facebook is probably the easiest way, facebook.com/midnightoilproductions, or I'm at midnightoilproductions.com. You can certainly reach out to me that way too.

Michael Buckingham:
That's awesome. And we'll put, obviously all those in the show notes and things of that sort. And we're also going to, obviously this is a whole new landscape. And so we're now seeing online pastors, we're seeing online hosts, some of those are going to be volunteers. Some of those are going to be, you're like, I need to hire this person, how do we do that? Obviously that's what we do here at Vanderbloemen, so there's a link there to do that as well.

Michael Buckingham:
Or there may just be, you just need some consulting of, okay, how do we move into this new area? How do we manage all of this and our people and things of that sort? Happy to work with you on that and connect you to the right people and things of that sort too. So again, that'll all be in the show notes and things of that sort.

Michael Buckingham:
Jason, again, I am so excited to be able to do this, but I'm really excited to see what God has done. But I truly believe that what God's doing ahead of you is going to be even more remarkable. So I can't wait to see that as well.

Jason Moore:
Well, thank you, Michael. Great to reconnect. Thank you for the invitation to be a part of the podcast. And I'm going to look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks in Atlanta.

Michael Buckingham:
See you there. Looking forward to it.

Jason Moore:
All right.

Michael Buckingham:
Thanks, Jason.

Jason Moore:
Take care.

Michael Buckingham:
All right.

Christa Reinhardt:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership podcast. We at Vanderbloemen help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation and diversity consulting services. Visit our website, vanderbloemen.com to learn more and subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership podcast, wherever you listen to podcast, to keep up with our latest episodes. Thanks for listening.