Healthy Church Growth -Episode 10 – Justin Price
How to pivot.
Hosts Mike Mage and Justin Price discuss practical steps on how to pivot and reimagine what your church or non-profit could look like in the wake of a new reality.
Transcriptions:
Mike Mage:
Welcome to the Healthy Church Growth podcast.
(Intro Music)
Mike Mage:
Well, welcome to the healthy Church growth podcast, where we believe that healthy things grow and growth means life. I’m one of your hosts, Mike Mage. We just really want to continue our conversation as we’re going through this Coronavirus crisis. Ah, and just I wanted to have a conversation with Justin Price, who’s our other co-host, and really just talk some or about things that we can do things that we’ve seen, things that we’re inspired by. Just maybe as an encouragement for you, our audience and maybe just to get some more ideas, maybe just to kind of feel like this whole thing is not trending downwards into nothing that people are really, um, you know, taking up the mantle and trying to be as resourceful and creative as possible. And for us is church creatives just like, you know, in this past podcast we have with Stephen Brewster. Um, and he said something that has struck with me over the past week or so. But church is not closed, just our buildings are, and that is something really, really good to remember. And that’s something we need to continue to, um, cultivate as you know, the thing that we have been doing for so long looks so so differently. So, like I said, I want to bring Justin on and for us to have a conversation because he is the head of a creative agency Vers Creative which deals mostly with non-profits and in the commercial sector. And so, Justin, I just wanted to ask you how have you guys been able to sort of pivot or re-imagine how you guys do your work in this really weird and strange time?
Justin Price:
Mike thinks it’s gonna be a fun podcast. I’m really, really looking forward to unpacking a couple of these things with you talking about the church, talking about some of the non-profits and some of the for-profits. Uh, and what is what we’re seeing happening. It’s gonna be a good a good time.
Mike Mage:
Totally.
Justin Price:
So you’re good.
Mike Mage:
I’m great.
Justin Price:
I love doing these podcasts with you. Can I just get that out there? Just thank you. You’re my favorite podcast host.
Mike Mage:
That’s good. I hope that gets some traction.
Justin Price:
Of all the co-hosts I’ve done podcasts with, you’re my top.
Mike Mage:
I’m writing that down. I know. I’m writing that down in my journal
Justin Price:
For today. Ah, man, there’s so many cool things to talk about. First of all, uh, somebody told me the other day she was like, Man, you know, I’ve been sensing a like I’ve been hearing God’s voice saying like, Hey, there’s a revival coming and she’s like and I’ve been excited about it and I’ve been like saying like, man, like our country specifically, obviously, we know this is bigger than our country, but our country’s in need of a revival. Yeah, it hit her as we were talking this week, she was like, Man, um, I forgot that one of the biggest catalysts for a revival is a crisis like this. And we look at the history of our country. In the last couple 100 years, we can see, like our country’s best revivals have come out of crisis. And she was like, Man, it just kind of, it sucks to be in it right now, but it’s also incredible as a Christian to be in it. If you can see it through the lens, that there’s a sovereign God who has, uh, who loves us and who is looking out for us and who has a plan to come out of all of this. There is so much hope, and I would just say, like, this has been. This has definitely been in its own way, you know, for me, you know, we’re not a massive company, but, you know, we, um we’ve got 16 employees and we have, ah, about that many contractors that we employ as well. And we’ve had to pause a lot of projects. It’s been awful. I mean, just thinking about every single, every single person we have had to say. Hey, you know, we’ve got to pause you right now has been a phone call I have made. That is, that is not fun at all. And so, like, it’s in the midst of that happening. I still get to see God doing incredible things every day. Maybe that’s just the hope of Christ. Like, maybe that is just that’s, that’s the thing. Like, that’s it. Is that he gives us hope and he gives us just enough each day like, no matter what we’re fighting through, whatever we’re dealing with, Ah, he does that. But, man, I would love to unpack a couple of the really cool things that we’re seeing. I’d love to inspire our listeners. With some of the cool things that God is doing and ways in which, you know, we could sit around and, like, talk about like, uh, how to capitalize on the Coronavirus, which even just even having that come in on that sounded wrong. Please cut that out.
Mike Mage:
No, I’m not going to because, like, I think that you’re right. I have seen too many, already, I’ve seen too many messages, sermons. So I saw one message series that said “I tested positive” and the tagline was “but not for the Coronavirus”. And like, you can’t do that. You can’t do that.
Justin Price:
No. That came from a good place. Like it came from somebody trying to be culturally relevant. Which that’s step one is to acknowledge what’s happening.
Mike Mage:
You have to
Justin Price:
But. So you know, Vers, we kind of work, we partner with non-profits and for-profits, and we come alongside of them as their advertising agency, as their branding agency, and as their marketing agency. We have kind of combined it to be a strategic agency, which really focuses on bringing value to them. We cover all three of those areas because we can integrate all of our services at much more cost-effective way and help them actually grow and help them reach their fullest potential while spending a whole lot less money. Um, and so that gives us a pretty big breadth of the kind of work we do. And it gives us a lot of variety with the kind of people we get to work with. And, you know, as we were preparing for this, you know, I thought, maybe there’s, like, three kind of cases that we can unpack and my hope and my heart here, Mike, pick any of these things apart, ask questions. I’m happy to share whatever I can. But, I wanted to start with, like, maybe the most difficult situation to be in the heaviest and then, like, work our way up lighter. That sound good?
Mike Mage:
Yeah, absolutely.
Justin Price:
All right. So the heaviest one of all our client groups are our clients that are in product manufacturing. Who are not deemed a necessary business right now. And so there’s two issues with it is the stores they’re selling to are closed because they’re not necessary business. The kind of company who makes something like an art instrument like a paint brush, right? And so, ah, paint supply store. Ah, paintbrush. The arts and crafts store is not necessary to stay open in most states, and so the store’s closed down the store can’t buy more and the supply chain looks like this. Like they have an inventory at their warehouse that is full. And if the store doesn’t sell them, the warehouse doesn’t have to ship it out to the specific store. And so they don’t make this month’s order back to our client, the manufacturer of the paintbrush. And so you’ve got maybe a, factory with a couple 100 people who make paintbrushes and they supply. You know, maybe they’re one or two of the largest paintbrush suppliers around the world. And what happened was back in February, their order from China slowed down. So with us, they said, Hey, um, we need a little bit of help. We’re gonna need to slow a couple of things down because we just had a $1,000,000 order just not come in from China. But it’s OK because you know that $1,000,000 was only like, 5% of our global sales. But then Italy got hit and so within a month, ah, Europe, the Europe market was dry and not making orders. And then the U. S. Market, the North American market followed suit. And so the three biggest markets that they have Asia, Europe, and North America completely shut down the stores, distribution. They can’t ship, but even if they could ship to these places, they can actually get those orders because they’re not selling them anywhere. And so what you’ve got is basically an entire factory completely laid off. You have ah, any of the internal marketing people, the sales people, like, what are they going to sell? Yeah, um you don’t think about, like, just the whole impact of this. And this is the reason why I wanted unpack this is because the reality is is like that paintbrush company still has a little bit of responsibility to keep some marketing going in the lights on online. So insert Vers.So now all of these people who work for this company are not getting a paycheck. They’ve been laid off and we’re still getting a paycheck. The weight that just shifted on our plates, like the VP’s who are not going to get a bonus. The people that are way smarter, way more important than us are not getting paid. And ah, and the little bit of work that has to be done is in our court, it’s our responsibility right now. So for manufacturing clients like that ah, and product, you know, clients that are selling products that are not necessary, or anybody who’s not staying open right now who made a product like that. Serving them at this point and being a good partner for them means we’re basically, uh, cutting our costs down the like, 90% helping them keep their lights on and then looking at every opportunity to reposition them to either make something out of this time or not. And so, um, you know, one of the things that that has done is it’s just caused us to say we have access to people like we’ve never had before. You know, uh, people were too busy, but we could potentially make actual sales call on behalf of the account to a distributor who was not available three months ago. But now that person sitting at home, we can negotiate new contracts. We can work on product videos in a studio right now. Um, and we can do crazy things with the extra time we’ve got in preparation to launch a new product. We can also refine the product. We could do product development. Um, we can reposition, Um, what the usage of the product is, you know? I mean, one of the things that’s gonna come out of this is people just being a little leaner, a little bit scrappier and so it’s like man, let’s just go back to the paintbrush analogy, but like, a smart manufacturing company is now going to focus in on their most, uh, their product with the most viability and the safest purchase. You know, experience. And so this is the idea that, like a let’s focus in on, like, really pushing our product, that maybe isn’t our newest product, but it is. Ah, it’s our best seller. It’s like it’s the trustee faithful product. And in a time of crisis, people need to go back to something a bit more reliable. Well, it’s safer.
Mike Mage:
So talking about this company and, um, you know, with a large business manufacturing business like this, you kind of said that, you know, you you got to get back to whatever. Your people have to get leaner, you gotta focus in on maybe something that’s a little bit more reliable. So what is from you as like a creative agency, Um and really, I mean, we could make this this tied to, like, a church creative department as well. Um, I honestly, I don’t feel like it is too different what you do and what a church creative department does, anyway. It’s just the product that a church is, um, marketing is the church. It’s the mission of Jesus, obviously. So, like in this time for your creative agency, what is like your lean focus? What’s the thing that you feel is the most reliable thing that you guys can sort of, um, I guess lean on if that… it’s a terrible usage of words there. But, um, what’s like the most reliable thing a creative agency that you can sort of fall back into?
Justin Price:
That’s a great question. So you’re asking, like, how did we get lean? What did you do? Well, so immediately when we saw our budgets starting to shift. We had, you know, manufacturing clients say “hey, it looks like we won’t be able to pay next month”. It looks like you guys could potentially, you know, a lot of the projects you have been working on. May be the last production we’re able to do for a quarter or two, so be smart. We finished those things up. We had to be very, very quick on our feet, I think. One of the things. So, you know, I spent 10 years as a creative director in the church. I was very reactionary in the church. It was just kind of like when the chips fell, then we would respond. I don’t as the with thinking about, like, 16 families relying solely from our staff on Vers staying open. I don’t feel like I have the opportunity. If I see one chip starting to tip a little bit, I need to be ready and prepared and I need to be thinking about the runway we have. And I started being lean and so I mean, there was purchases that we you know, we spend a few $100,000 a month as an agency, and so there was purchases that immediately I just said, hey, let’s be lean right now on purchases. And it’s amazing, we were able to produce just the same amount of work. And just as good of work. Um, we just we held off on a couple of purchases. So just immediately just looking and evaluating at the necessity of, purchases, we quickly shifted there before we lost any kind of work or anything was paused. Um, the other thing that we have tried to do as an agency is work really hard to contract work out that is not stable, long term work. And so you know, we have already had 20 – 50% of the work force we had working on a contract basis. And so if those contracts dried up, that part of the workforce, you know, didn’t have any work to do we weren’t on the hook. And so I think that’s a big thing for churches to take away from this is like, man, how big of a staff do you really have to hold? Like you really need to have three video guys on all the time? You probably can keep them busy, but do you need it? And, ah, is there a more efficient way? And is there some contractors that you could be using or some people you can outsource to, um, and maybe even be saving money and maybe have less overhead so that if, if your church was to be hit, that you’re able to kind of shift quickly and go, OK, well, that’s just a luxury we don’t have right now.Totally. So a question I wanted to ask you is coming out of sort of, that whole thing. Was, how do you as like a creative director, as someone who manages people, as someone who is taking a organization of some sort and moving forward. So, how do you become more proactive as opposed to just reactive? Like what are some steps that you can, sort of, begin to train yourself in doing to become more proactive, as opposed to reactive?That’s great. Um so one of the things that we do is every Monday, the first meeting of our week, we actually forecast. So, we forecast the projects we need to be working on. So we’re not daily micromanaging, ah, how to be proactive. But, we look at every account. We look at every project, and the project managers have the responsibility of calling out and flagging, ah, potential issue. And so how we’ve been proactive is it has been just burned into all of our account management and project management roles that it is their job, they’re the only ones with eyes on the whole field. And if they see something starting to go south, so if they catch, they, some of it is just like being, aware and intuitive of about what’s happening around you. And that takes a little bit of training to say, like, man, I noticed, you know, I started to look at the trend and say I noticed X, Y, and Z. So and so has been asking more questions lately. Well, that’s usually a sign of distrust. It’s usually, people don’t just ask questions because they get curious. They start asking more questions and wanting more explanation when they don’t trust you to do it on your own
Justin Price:
That’s like a super small example of something that we might say, like, hey, what caused the disparity in trust? And what can we do to rebuild that? What can we do to surprise and delight them? And so as soon as something gets flagged, they get put into a category of accounts that need special attention, so that just might mean a phone call. So how do you be proactive with your main income source? Um, you leverage what you have, your relationships, the work you do, the value you bring. And sometimes people just need to be reminded of that. Sometimes people just need to see that in a way that they maybe haven’t seen in a while. So sometimes you have to rethink what you’re doing for that relationship. So, um, you know this is a great the way I translate this to church is like if your church is not responding to the new thing that you’re trying to do and people are not really engaging it. You can’t just be reactive and wait till people stop coming to church. Right? You have to actually talk to people at church. You can’t live in a production bubble. You have to actually talk to your congregation. You have to actually, and I’m not talking about your little group of friends, I’m talking about, talk to the people who you’re the furthest away from demographically, um, talk to people who are completely different space than you. Um, talk to people who challenge you and complain about the things that you do. Listen, to why they’re complaining and stop thinking you’re so above them because when they leave and they stop supporting your ministry, you’re going to maybe say, like, there may have been some of those people that actually had something pretty valid. Think how you can be proactive and not reactive. It really starts with humility and listening to the people that you’re serving and that you’re around.
Mike Mage:
Right. Yeah. I just I just wrote down like you have to follow up and ask questions and then follow up some more. Um and yeah, I was I literally wrote down like something about humility or whatever, but because that’s basically what you’re saying in this whole thing is like you have to, you have to get yourself out of the way long enough to hear what someone else has to say about what you’re doing. Okay, well, that’s great. So what are some other, what are some other things maybe that you guys were doing in your agency?
Justin Price:
Oh, man. So we just talked about the immediate. So we staffed. We built the agency to be flexible, so we immediately we put to action right away, as soon as there was talk, we didn’t wait until we didn’t get an invoice paid. As soon as we acknowledge that, we said, Hey, we have to be smart. And the smarter, the faster we moved, the longer the runway, we maintained for the valuable staff that we have invested a lot of money in training and developing and finding and recruiting and getting on boarded, and all the time that goes into that. When we started the agency, I never could have imagined how long it would take to train and recruit and onboard. All three of those things are just ridiculous. And so I consider everybody that we work with as somebody who we’ve invested a lot into and I want to protect them. It makes us really slow to hire. So that’s been kind of a fundamental part of how we built the business in the first place. So that was very natural for us to react that way. And then the last thing that we did is we kicked in as a strategic agency. Ah, and this is one, maybe, I think that, you know, I’m even. I love doing this. I love talking about it, and I love helping people with it. And so I’ll just throw it out there, If anybody needs help talking through this for half hour, an hour, like, call me. We had to look at every single thing that we were doing, and we had to be accountable for that money to be the best partner that we could be. We had to turn around and we had to change. So for that manufacturing plant, it was like there’s new opportunities for you, even right now, and the little bit of money you’re giving us to keep the lights on, we could take it and we could hoard it and we could do very little for you. Or, we could actually try to get some market growth for you right now. Yeah, there’s still online sales, and people are still spending a little bit of money, and you might still need some paintbrushes while you’re home. Right now, that’s something you can do at home. Instead of letting the heaviness of the event stop you and handicap you, you can look at the event, and I think this is the glory. This is like the the message of the gospel is that, like in its darkness and in sin, is a light that gives us hope in the fact that Jesus is the light is the hope for us. It’s kind of ingrained into our staff as a group of believers that work together at Vers, that like, and there’s no situation that is too dark that doesn’t have something in it. And we, you know, we take it pretty personally as an opportunity for the people we work with that are not Christians, but the clients that are not Christians to be a light. And to find that that thing that is still there, that the good that could still come out of it. That’s what we’ve been doing. We shifted every single strategy. We either pushed pause or shifted the strategy, wherever it made sense.
Mike Mage:
Yeah, instead of you focusing on how much things are changing and how much the thing that you and really prepping yourself to do, you had to pivot, you had to shift. And what you shifted to was how this one thing that you are representing is going to add value to people in sort of a time of crisis. Which it will like, none of that is wrong. You know, and so I think I do think that’s a really good thing for someone in a church to really start to grasp if you haven’t already. Um, but we are way more than just our Sunday services and our buildings being open. And so how can we leverage what we have right in front of us to be able to do that. And there’s plenty of ways to do that.
Justin Price:
It’s amazing to see there is a ton of opportunities where we are watching churches just totally step up. Mik, you’ve been saying that quote a couple of times that ministries like, the church is not closed, the building is. But, there was somebody else who quoted, um that the church has been deployed. Yeah, it’s not been close, has been deployed. And I think I’ve seen the church do so many cool things in the last couple of weeks. That is just like, man, why were we not doing this before? Why did it take this for us to start acting like the church to our community? Why did it take this for us to, like, speak up and say these issues matter, or we’re gonna be there and support people who are in need. Like there was people in need, like a month ago. Why were we not listening? The last point I wanted to talk about was, uh, such an exciting one, because it has taken a total 180. This is certainly the most challenging account we have. It’s a pregnancy care center. The topic of abortion in the advertising world is like, the most taboo thing. Um, and here I am, like a mid-thirties creative, and we have, we have to write creative that talks to sexually promiscuous 18-year-old girls. So this is a 180 story, and it’s absolutely beautiful. This is how I think God shines in the light of darkness so well. So we work with this pregnancy care center, and I thought it would be like a easy you know, we’ve done tons of ministry. Most of our staff have all worked at churches and been creative directors at churches and things like that in the past. And so I’m like, I take on this pregnancy care center, thinking like this will be great and we can do a lot of the things that we do in the secular market for them. Um, but the thing is like, even if you donate money to a pregnancy care center. You do not want to, like, do any kind of social awareness about it. Like there’s amazing people who are like, yeah, it’s not that I don’t care and I’m happy to give money, but, like, I’m not gonna share your post. I’m not gonna help you with your social campaign. As a donor, I will give my money, but not my voice to a topic as taboo as an abortion clinic. Or an anti-abortion clinic, which is like I’m just, like, paraphrasing like negative, uh, taboo thought around it. And like so that’s the client, right? That’s the situation is, like, very negative it’s very difficult. Like every time we talk about it, we have another ministry that helps single moms. It’s like the easiest ministry in the world to talk about. Everybody wants to help single moms. When in the last 25-30 years has, um, somebody with no money, that typically our demographic, that needs of a free pregnancy care center. Who has an unplanned pregnancy and needs free medical services. A, woman, a young woman. When has she ever had no entertainment available to her. Everything’s shut down. She can’t do anything except make babies. She has, uh, every reason not to go out and, like, you know, to use protection. Um, this scenario that this circumstance is causing is like, um is one of the greatest scenarios that this ministry has to capitalize on. It’s one of the greatest scenarios this ministry has to really live out their mission. And to love and to lead people who are walking in their doors to Christ. And to be able to help them walk through this crisis situation that they’re in. You know with the unplanned pregnancy. When has there ever been a time in the life of this ministry where it was ever more ripe? And so they have massive opportunities. Well, their clinics are deemed emergency necessary clinics that can stay open. They have four clinics in the Tampa Bay area. They’re a great ministry. They have a big staff. And so what we quickly talked about is like, man, you might be able to actually help more people, lead more people to Christ, and save more babies by doing telemedicine right now. And so they shifted, they have to shift, very quickly, into doing telemedicine, opening up only two clinics. One in each county that they’re in. And having people come into those clinics by appointment only. And they can cut their staff down by almost half. They can do more ministry with less right now. They can save more lives right now. And they can leave more people to Christ than they’ve ever had the opportunity to. But they have to quickly put in the technology. And people are willing to actually it behind this. So if you’re a donor and you’re watching all this unplay and the ministry goes, “Hey, we have to shut our doors were closing down our clinics cause our volunteers and our staff don’t want to be exposed” you know? But please keep giving. Are you gonna keep giving? You’re not. So the financial success of this organization is at jeopardy. But if they can be smart enough and they have been and they are, you know, they were amazing. They were jumping on calls, we were talking strategy very quickly, making these shifts. Like they can now go back to their donors and say, “We’re doing more than ever with every dollar that you’re giving.” We’re doing more than ever. And so there’s incentive for more people to give there’s incentive for those people to share about the great salvations that are being made, being had. And babies that are being saved. Every day there is something really cool that we’re seeing where God is clearly at work and he’s doing good. And I’m not saying God caused this. And I’m not saying that God wants this for us But I’m saying that his sovereignty is certainly greater than this virus.
Mike Mage:
I believe I don’t think that God causes these tragedies. I think that we live in a broken world and stuff like this happens. Um, just like Jesus actually died. Um and you know, But like, we serve a resurrecting, restoring, renewing God. And there’s always space, and there’s always a place for that. And so, like, you know, in these in these types of moments, you know, this shakeup that’s happening it’s almost like, um, you know, for you to plant anything of worth, you actually have to, like, disturb the ground a bunch. You know, you have to sew it. You have to dig it up. You have to move it around. You know, for something to grow and like, I really think that that’s part of what’s happening right now. This or that’s maybe that’s a perspective that we can have. Is this crisis is shaking us up, which it is. It is disturbing all of us, which it is. Ah, but like there is incredible opportunity for God’s restoration and renewal, to like take place. And if you are in ministry that’s the one thing that you can, capitalize on is, you know, like and at this point in time, because people are being so shaken up there might actually be more of an opportunity for you as a ministry to change and help people’s lives. Which is incredible because that’s the church’s, the church can do that, you know, right now
Justin Price:
I love it, Mike. So tell me a little bit about what it’s taken for you guys to be successful at Bay Hope. Give us a little bit of insight there because it’s been amazing to watch from the outside.
Mike Mage:
I think the first thing that you have to do is you have to define your reality for whatever is happening and be honest with your situation. Which I don’t think anybody is not being honest, that the fact that, like this is crazy and this is a crisis and this is all really weird. But that has to be a place that you start of of just the self awareness, and then simply asking, “What can you do?” And doing as much as you can within the the resources and abilities and talents that you have, and then trusting that God is going to do, whatever he’s going to do with it. So, like, we’re not called to make an amazing production right now. That’s not what we’re called to do. We’re not called to, you know, the stuff that we were doing six months ago, we’re called to be obedient with what God has given us. And so, we have, we broadcast our services every weekend, and so we just immediately went to this idea of like, Oh my gosh, there’s a lot that we could do online right now. About a year ago, we hired a digital pastor, which happens to be my brother, who did all of the hard work and understood the ins and outs of what it means to, you know, for the broadcast. So he’s been obedient for a year. So now, in just really putting in the hard work so that when a crisis hits, we actually have something in our tool belt to really make something happen. We set up a production schedule and a programming schedule and, we just said, You know, can we do worship every day from Monday through Thursday like, Yeah, we can do that. So that’s something we’ll do every day. What can we do, obviously, we need to have something for kids and for students. Well, let’s put that at 10 o’clock every day. So every day, 10 o’clock, we have some sort of message to students and kids. 12 o’clock is our worship time. At two o’clock, it’s a check-in with any pastor, we have a couple of different pastors on the platform. Or a couple of different pastors who are employed at the church. So that’s a two o’clock and then at four o’clock as we wrap up the day that is our lead pastor. That’s his time to sort of give, like a State of the Union address every, every day at four. So it was this, and then we started, we’ve started to see over time this consistency develop. So it’s almost like whatever you are planning on doing create some sort of consistent schedule because what we’re seeing is engagement through like, through the roof. Just not so much, you know, we’re seeing sort of the same amount of views. But we’re seeing the same people come back and then seeing them move to like deeper levels of engagement and inviting people to come into. So we’re almost seeing this, like exponential growth in engagement because of the consistency that’s happening. So then on top of that dude, and this is the thing that is like the craziest thing of all, is you’re seeing churches and businesses shut down. And you’re seeing people you know, lose their jobs and all that kind of stuff, and it’s terrible. However, our church in the month of March because of all of this stuff that we’re doing, it’s brought in, like, close to 90% of all of the of the money that we would need to keep the lights not, to keep things going, to keep people paid, to continue to do what we’ve been doing. To continue to bring value, and to continue the ministry that we’ve been doing. So we brought in close to 90% of what we needed. So on top of, like, all of our spending cuts, because we’re basically just not trying to spend any money. So on top of that, plus, you know, bringing in that much money, I mean, like, it’s a huge testament to what we’re doing. People are supporting it. People are getting behind it on so many different levels. And so based on that, you know, we’ve created a consistent schedule of programming, but then, you know, then it’s starting to branch out some more. So, like today, we had a home school class, one of our pastors, she homeschooled her kids and so she did an interview with our digital pastor, Andy. Just like an hour long conversation about the trials and the tears of what it means to home school your kids for someone who’s never homeschool before. Setting up prayer lines, setting up, you know, food drives and all that kind of stuff. So but, like, we’re thankfully at Bay Hope Church, we have, like, a relatively large staff, and so, like, it allows us to do, you know, a couple of different things. But, like, it could also allow us just because, like, oh, we have a big staff and we have a bunch of money and reserve like we’re just gonna sit tight and wait this out. You know, like there is very much. Because it’s not easy to try and create whole new schedules and whole new ideas of how you’re doing things and even why you’re doing them, you know, like I’ve come home the past three weeks more tired, and I mean, like, I’m physically in the building as little as I possibly can. Just because, you know, like of all the social distancing rules and all that kind of stuff, and we are very much keeping the six-foot distancing. In one room specifically, there is no more than 10 people. On the campus, I mean, like, we might have 15 people on the campus at it’s height anyway. So, like, you know, like, most of the people are working from home anyway. But, like, I come home every evening, like, more tired than I have been in, like, a long time. Just because we’re working, you’re working harder and like, that’s very much our reality. Right now, if you are a creative person in the middle of this crisis, like you are going to be more tired. And you should be because, like,
Justin Price:
You’re stretching the muscles. Yeah, you’re working out you that creative muscles hard it can.
Mike Mage:
Yep. So it is tiring and but like it is also, especially that first week and 1/2 like, you just get that thrill of like, you know, I mean this in, like, the most sensitive way possible. Like, obviously, the world is at a really tough spot. But from like a creative standpoint, like for those of you that get fired up about ministry and for those of you that get fired up about, you know, bringing people Jesus, wherever there at. Which is what we’re actually called to do. And figuring out new, exciting ways to do that and seeing people respond positively to it. Like that’s something that really lights a fire under your butt and makes you want to continue to do it. So, um, yeah, it’s been really cool, to see and to be a part of and to do, um, and super hard.
Justin Price:
I just I love that you guys air not stuck on like we can do our programming on Sundays. The fact that you’re like offering more programming is really exciting to me. I think I haven’t seen a lot of churches be as aggressive as you guys are. Yeah, and that’s to me. Just super impressive to see how hard you’re working. And I wonder how sustainable it is. I wonder if it’s like, well, this is fun for now, but, like, how would you feel if you were doing this next year?
Mike Mage:
Sure. Yeah, well, and we talked about that, too. Like like we said, Like OK, if we know that we’re doing this and this is, you know, two weeks ago. If we know we’re doing this until Easter, we can keep up this pace. But like, if we have to go further than this, like, how do we make this sustainable? And so we’ve had discussions like that, and, you know, this is for, like, we don’t have a studio. You know, like we’re having to like, make stuff out of, you know, rooms that we have that aren’t being used right now. And, like take pieces of equipment that were in other spots of the church and bring them to certain areas. Thankfully, you know, we have equipment to do that. But like, you know, we started saying like, well, like. Kind of like in the Steven Brewster podcast, like the playing field is being leveled right now. You know, like you’re seeing Justin Bieber do a concert on his phone. You’re seeing you know, Brad Paisley do a concert from his phone. You know, like the production quality is not what people care about right now. Thankfully.
Justin Price:
As creatives who work with a lot of production stuff, I just I want you to say that again because, man, it’s just so hard for us to remember and think about. It’s so painful. It’s just so painful. To think about the money we spend because it’s like, well, that’s the level that it needs to be at. And then to be like, yeah, but if you just deliver the good content on a cellphone, people would be just as happy with that. And it’s just amazing.
Mike Mage:
Well, and it is, it’s doing, because you’re right. Like it’s doing some weird things to our preconceived notions as to like what “good” is anymore and so, like it’s having to. We’re having to redraw the end zones, you know, like the end zone is not this brand new light that I got for $3,500 and it could do this cool, gobo. And, uh, you know, I don’t know, like, if not this brand new guitar that I got that…
Justin Price:
This is coming from the guy who just got a 45 foot led wall in his church. Just for his spotlight shot, just like his A Cam shot.
Mike Mage:
Just for me. But it’s a nice,it is a good check, to like for you to remember that, like those are just tools. Like that does not make the good content that you’re doing. And so you know, and like it honestly. It frees you up to leverage the things that you can do, like, get involved in the comments section, or, you know, have somebody get in on, like, ground level, almost like guerrilla style marketing for your church. And, like, have a share campaign, you know, like, just share this crap wherever you see it. You know, just immediately click that share button. You have no idea who this is going to. So, um, it kind of like Like I said, it’s kind of nice to, like re-evaluate like how you’re doing things because of why you’re doing it.
Justin Price:
It’s amazing. We think about churches, when I think about churches, A lot of people think like, well, churches are scrappy by nature. But some churches have gotten bloated. Like some of us have gotten really spoiled with big budgets. And it’s really cool to see how we’re responding and how we’re able to do more across the board. It’s, also been amazing just to see, you know, some of the inspiration that’s coming out of it. You know, you mentioned some of the shows. I was just thinking about, you know, just the connection It’s gotten us to some of our our favorite talent. You know, um, John Krasinski’s piece has gotten press from everywhere. I mean, he struck the jackpot with piece. Everybody just loves picking that up. He was smart to include his daughter, props to him. His producer was smart… but you know, I mean, I think we all are smiling right now at those good, authentic things that are being produced right now. And I think, what’s interesting, you mentioned about leveling the playing field a little bit. I was thinking like, man authenticity has always leveled the playing field. We just have ignored it. We covered it up. You know, we’ve like we’ve smothered it with bacon and cheddar cheese. You put bacon and cheddar cheese on anything and it’s like you can digest it. It’s my life motto right there.
Mike Mage:
Not anymore, Justin.
Justin Price:
Not anymore. Bacon and cheese no more. But you know what I’m saying? There’s just so much good coming out of this. I hope that anybody who’s listening to this could be inspired. I really, I really do. If you need any help, call Mike, reach out to either of us. My email address is Justin Justin@verscreative.com. Mike what’s your email.
Mike Mage:
My email is MMage@bayhope.com. So just my first initial and my last name at bay hope dot com.
Justin Price:
I’m so glad you got rid of your AOL the sexy guitar player @aol.com.
Mike Mage:
Well, there was so many of them I had to have, like, I had to add, like, three numbers on the back end of it was just it was too much. Too many underscores. Yeah, well, this has been an incredible conversation. Justin, thank you so much for just being willing to talk about this stuff. It’s our goal as healthy church growth and the podcast. To be able to sort of, you know, speak into this time as much as we can about you know what this all looks like for you and just know that you’re not alone. Know that, whatever challenge that you’re facing, we’re all facing together. So be encouraged. Know that God is still moving, and God is still working. We say this a lot in the podcast world and to share and to like and subscribe and rate and all that kind of stuff. But it really does help us. Not necessarily just get more visibility, but allows us to understand what content you are resonating with. And allows us to dive deeper into that. So engage with us, talk with us, rate, share, subscribe. We would love for as many people to be a part of this conversation is possible. So thanks again for listening. And once again here at healthy church growth, we believe that healthy things grow and growth means life.