Finding Your Uniqueness

Show Notes

Summary

Knowing what makes your church unique allows you to serve your congregation and community that much better. Know who you're talking to, and embrace what makes your church special!

Today's guest

Justin Nava | @justinnava
Mr. Church Marketer

Transcript

Jeanette:

Do you know what makes your church unique? How do you differentiate your church congregation from others in your community? Today, we're talking about your church's unique gifts, body, and people.

Bryan:

Hey church communicator, welcome to the Church Juice Podcast. I'm Brian Haley, the producer of Church Juice. And I'm joined as always by my co-host Jeanette Yates, and we are here energizing church communications.

Jeanette:

Yes, we are Bryan. And today I am so excited to welcome a good church communications friend of mine, Justin Nava. Justin is the lead consultant at Mr. Church Marketer. And so many other things, including Justin, something that you and I have in common. We're both big Marvel nerds, are we not?

Justin:

Yep. Short and sweet. I got to hold your back. You can't let me go off just yet, especially on Marvel. That's a different show.

Jeanette:

Yeah. That's like a whole different podcast, yes.

Bryan:

So why don't you take a moment and introduce yourself to our audience?

Justin:

Yeah, absolutely. My name is Justin Nava. I'm with Mr. Church Marketer. Thank you for having me, Bryan and Jeanette.

Bryan:

Absolutely.

Justin:

Very excited to be here and share with your audience some incredible value. My goal today is to leave you motivated and give you some next steps and very obvious practical next steps that you can go out and accomplish your mission and get closer to your vision.

Bryan:

Awesome.

Justin:

I've been in church communications since like 2006, I've been everything from an intern to a director, to a volunteer to part-time, to full-time in between interim transitions with full-time pastor, with what I call a legacy pastor, someone that's been there for more than 20 or 30 years.

Justin:

I've seen a lot of it. God has put me in a lot of tough situations, so I could glean from that. And I believe so I can share some more of that insights. So that's what I'm here to do and I love what I do, we are all about marketing your church, which is promoting your church, inspiring growth through inspiration and communication. That's what we like to say church marketing is.

Bryan:

That's awesome.

Justin:

So I'm ready to get rolling.

Bryan:

Yeah.

Jeanette:

Yeah. So the first question I mentioned, how much I love the name of your business, Mr. Church Marketer. I want you to tell us a little bit more about who or what, what is Mr. Church Marketer? What all do you do there?

Justin:

Yeah, sure. So Mr. Church Marketer was founded in 2018 by my business partner Roc Davis, started as a print company. It was something that we thought the print or he thought the prints market was a little complicated, you've got to deal with setup fees and shipping and shirt types and materials and all this, and placements and all that. He wanted to make it real simple, no hidden fees, free shipping. What you see is what you get and real good, guest gifts for all types of church budgets.

Justin:

And from there, he wanted to get into more of the online world. And that's where my agency merged with his. It was one of those things where I was reaching the limit of what I could do, he was reaching the limit of what he could do. So we decided to combine forces and 10X what we could do together.

Justin:

So we've combined everything. So the whole idea of Mr. Church Marketer is we want to be your go-to guy, whether that's for online services, design, print materials, t-shirts, gifts, swag, signage, banners. We're bringing on a video team later on this year, but at least we're looking at doing that.

Justin:

We want to be your go-to shop because you could hire your own. Even if you pay them peanuts, $35,000 a year plus benefits, or you can come to Mr. Church Marketer pay a 10th of that and get the same promotion and communication benefits. So that's what it's all about, it's about being your go-to guy, no hidden fees, and just being 100% available for you. And of course, doing everything with excellence, just as you would want someone on your own team to do.

Bryan:

That's great. So you guys deal with a lot of churches. What is one of the biggest hurdles that you see churches facing right now, especially as we come out of the pandemic?

Justin:

That's a great question. One of the biggest things that churches are having to deal with coming out of the pandemic, it's a bit of an identity crisis. So we've had to figure out A) how do we do church remotely? Some people would call that virtually or online I call it remotely, because you're taking your in-person congregation and you're basically decentralizing them and putting them into hundreds of houses or dozens of houses.

Bryan:

Absolutely.

Justin:

And so we had to figure that out, and we got into a little bit of a groove. We helped a lot of people get their websites set up to support streaming and all that stuff. But now that they're coming back, there's a little bit of an identity crisis in that, we don't want to leave anyone behind, but we recognize the importance of in-person gathering. There are a dozen different ways to look at these things and pastors are going to really tough spot.

Justin:

So the biggest thing I'm seeing right now, actually two things is number one, bad identity crisis of, "Well, how do we do a hybrid service? How do we be as Dave Adamson would call it omnipresent and continue that? Because it's really tough.

Justin:

One of the things that made online worship and community happen was we had a lot more budget freedom because we weren't paying electricity bills or all that other stuff that we have to do when people are here. Now that they are coming back, those bills are back up and now we don't have as much for our online services. So that's one of the things that we're working with people through how to build out that channel.

Justin:

The other thing too, coming out of this, I think 2021 going into 2022, a big theme is going to be mental health. There's a lot of folks that we're talking to-

Jeanette:

Agreed.

Justin:

... that are, we're talking to one person that wants to train pastors on better counseling techniques and recognizing mental health issues and how to get them the appropriate help. We've got a lot of clients that are adding counseling and mental health services and addiction and recovery to their list of ministries and offerings at the church.

Justin:

And then also church leadership themselves, we've had a lot of issues, a lot of stress and anxiety of trying to figure out how are we going to do this? And well, you can look at it as a good thing or a bad thing, a lot of pastors are like, "My livelihood is spinning around the drain because I don't know how to do it any other way." Seminary did not prepare us for a pandemic, church...

Jeanette:

That's right.

Justin:

So a mental is also going to be a huge thing coming up. I think those two things are the biggest things on our plates, as far as how we can guide first of all, into 2021, if you're not there yet, but also going into 2022. This is what people are dying for.

Bryan:

I really love that you guys are spending time focusing on mental health, I think that's a huge need in the church.

Jeanette:

Yeah, and you've talked about things that like you're seeing from things that churches are having in common, trying to figure out their identity, how to move back into that omnichannel situation or move to it if they're not used to it.

Jeanette:

And also like you were just talking about that churches speaking into that mental health space, not only for their congregants, but also for their staff members and people that are serving so important. But now I want to shift gears a little bit and ask you about the idea of helping churches find their uniqueness.

Jeanette:

Because on the one hand, if you ask a church like, "What are you here for?" They're like, "Well, we want to spread the gospel into all the world, and they resided a great commandment," which is true, but every church has its own uniqueness. And so why don't you talk about that a little bit? How does a church find what makes them unique?

Justin:

100%. So, first of all, you have to recognize that you are a unique body created to uniquely reach a unique group of people, in a unique way. The reason why we have so many churches in a city, even if it's a town of 15,000, like where my wife comes from, they have a dozen churches.

Justin:

And to the outside viewer, it might say, "Why do we have all these churches? Why can't everyone get along?" Well, the reason why we go out and plant churches now in 2021, instead of coming into an existing church is not a disk to the existing church. It's a fact that those churches have unique gifts and equipped things that aren't reaching a certain group of people.

Justin:

So we're going to start a new church, a new plant, and oftentimes in the church plants we work with, they're actually a new kind of church that will uniquely reach these people in a unique way that aren't being reached right now. If every church was supposed to be the same, then we should all be campus churches of one church.

Justin:

There should only be one church in town with maybe a north campus, south campus, east campus, west. But we don't, we plant new churches because we feel God's calling to do church in a unique way. And even within several, for example, Baptist churches, we all have different ways of conducting worship, conducting fellowship, conducting the way we do discipleship even.

Justin:

It's because we're all uniquely gifted. And while one church may be uniquely gifted to give and serve locally. Another church might be uniquely gifted to do recovery and more empathetic ministries and compassionate ministries. While another church really just needs to be a place to really focus on discipleship, and that church may never grow past 50 and that's okay, because there are down and dirty with doing discipleship, down and dirty in doing discipleship. And that's a lot of these there.

Justin:

And by the time they hit 50, they may go plant another church because that's the way they've been equipped and called to do ministry. So all that to say the mindset of that you are a unique church with unique gifts to uniquely reach a unique group of people. That's where it has to start.

Justin:

And so we talked about this, Jeanette, you'll know this is where Marvel Knights. I posted on Facebook, if you watch Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the government gives the mantle of Captain America to someone else instead of Sam Wilson who Steve Rogers wanted to be the Captain America.

Justin:

The government took the shield and basically said, "No, we're going to give it to this other guy." And when he puts on the Captain America outfit, it doesn't look right, the helmet doesn't fit, his nose protrudes out too much. He's got this weird wrinkly face cause the helmet's not working right. It doesn't look as good, even the suit is just too different. It's not that, it's this guy trying to be someone who he's not called to be right.

Justin:

And at the end of the show, he actually becomes a little bit of comic spoiler, I don't think they said it in the show, but he becomes the superhero US agent.

Jeanette:

I was going to say, all of us nerds know exactly who that is.

Justin:

Yeah, yeah. So that's who he is supposed to be. And so when we try to copy other churches, we end up looking like the fake Captain America, and it just doesn't work out, it doesn't sound good. And oftentimes, especially in the social media world, we get very frustrated because we're posting the exact kind of thing elevations, that we're doing similar typography, similar graphic design. We're doing kind of similar video styles. Our graphics may even look the same and it's just not working for our people, and we get frustrated.

Justin:

And we're like, "Why isn't this working? I saw it worked for them and it's not working for us." It's because God's equipped their people to do ministry in that way and that body to receive the message in that way, but your church is not. And just like pastor preaches the unique sermon, pastor spend eight, 10, 12 hours a week, preparing a sermon for the flock that they need to hear at that time.

Justin:

And the worship pastor picks songs and worship experiences to support that and give your unique body a unique way to worship, in the same way our digital world has to be the same. We cannot go and copy what someone else is doing, we can't just blindly pick templates and expect them to work. We have to put some work into it, right?

Jeanette:

Right.

Justin:

And so us just copying what someone else is doing, or just grabbing whatever we want, free resources or paid, is the same thing as just saying, "All right, well, we bought the newest Andy Stanley DVD. We're just going to play that in church service. And then we're going to play a Hillsong YouTube playlist to worship."

Justin:

And there are some churches that have to do that for a period of time and that's fine, but in the same way that pastor and worship pastor and even youth pastors, some of them write their own curriculum. Some of them, a lot of great youth pastors, they take what's already out there but they still mold it and transform it into something unique to themselves.

Justin:

So a college ministry can still do, for example, staying on Andy Stanley IMarriage, but it's going to be uniquely transformed to that church because they have a unique community, a unique body. And so in the same way, we have to realize that what's working for other people may not work for us.

Justin:

We have to put in the work and we have to look at our own data, our own bodies, look at their own feedback, what's working and double down on what's working because that's going to show you what is uniquely reaching your people and actually creating an impact.

Bryan:

True. How would you recommend a church balances inspiration and finding the elevations and the north points and those kinds of inspirational resources? How do you find that balance between inspiration and copying? What does that look like, do you think?

Justin:

So one of the things that I'm a very big proponent on, if you followed me through the years is creating what we call in the copy space, a swipe file. And this is whenever I see something I like, I copy the link or I download a copy or whatever it is and I archive it to use for future influence.

Justin:

Now, the difference is in a swipe file, the way you use a swipe file versus just copy pasting is you look at what about it is influencing? Is it the topography? Is it the design? Is it the colors? Is it the contrast? Is it the filter? Is it the way they presented it? Is the length, the format, the way that it's cut together, the music behind it?

Justin:

You really have to study this just like great pastors will listen to a sermon every day of other great pastors, and they'll say, "Well, what is it?" We've all been that point, especially if we're preachers, where we watch a lot of say Tony Evans. And then on Sunday morning, we start to realize we're kind of sounding like him in our cadence and the way we present things.

Justin:

But that comes out of that study, but then over time you take, well, I really liked the way Tony Evans has those pauses, the way he asks questions and pauses and lets you think, but then also I like how Andy Stanley uses a lot of visuals in his presentation. But I also like Steven Furtick, I liked the way that, yes, he gets excited, he doesn't pull back when he gets excited, he leans into it.

Justin:

And I'm just going to name all the big names. Rick Warren, I like the way that he pulls things out of versus that put a new 21st century context and take all those things together, you'd leave what doesn't work for you. Maybe you're not a passionate person, you're a very logical person, you don't use that from Steven Furtick, or maybe there's other things that we could go on. But when you draw those influences, you start to see why they're influential.

Justin:

It's not copying because you just need to get something done, it's drawing influence. It's the same thing as yesterday. Great example. My daughter put chocolate all over the chair, she had a chocolate cake, she spilled it all over the chair. We have this really cool vacuum. It's like a wet vac, but it like sprays cleaner and then it vacuums that up. It's like what they use that car detail shop.

Justin:

She's never used it before, but she's almost eight years old. I said, "You're going to help me clean up this chocolate stain that you made." And when I gave it to her, she's just like, "What do I do here?" Like, there's a button that squirts cleaning solution, the vacuum's like loud. And I'm like, "Okay, well let me show you." So I get her hand. I show her, first of all, I do one pass, and then I get her hand, put it underneath mine and I do another pass helping her and then I let her do one pass on her own.

Justin:

And at the end, she was holding it not in the same way that I hold it. She was going a little bit slower than I would, she wasn't spraying as much cleaner as I did but in the end, the job got done. The chocolate was off the chair. And so in the same way, when we copy others, whether that's preaching or whether that's on our social media or the way we edit videos, like it's fine to take what's working for someone else and put that in your own situation.

Justin:

It's not okay to just do a direct copy paste to where you're saying like, "I'm just going to take this one video and I'm going to do shot for shot remakes and cut it at the same place and use the same music underneath." You're not learning anything from that. That's my daughter with my hand on the vacuum, and she's just doing the motions as I do. But you can start from that point and say, "Well, what if I do the cuts differently? Or what if I do these shots differently? Or what if I adjust the music at this dip point differently?"

Justin:

And then you start to see what that works. Then you look at how people respond, how do they react? One of the greatest things you can do if you're in a Zoom Bible study is take it off a speaker view, put it onto grid view. When you have it on grid view, you can see how everyone reacts. And when you make a certain point, ask a certain question or say something a certain way.

Justin:

If you see everyone react to it, guess what? They respond to the way that you say something special. Your data will show you the same thing on social media. A lot of times we do free social media audits, we'd also do free website audits. A lot of times when we do social media audits, I look at 10, 20 posts and there's one post of people doing fellowship, people doing worship. And there's like 20 or 30 likes on it, five to 10 shares for a small church is great.

Justin:

But then they just have graphic posts and each one gets like one or two likes by the same people. And I asked them, I said, "Well, why are you doing so many graphic posts?" The people posts work better. And they say, "Well, it's just easier or we pay for these templates," or every time someone else does their first Baptist down the road does a graphic, I do a graphic."

Justin:

And you're not looking at your own data to see what's working, and it's not the graphics, it's the people. So often I might say, "Hey, start taking these pictures of people and just using those as posts to enhance the graphics." A lot of times it's not the easy answer, and that's a lot of people get really frustrated with this because the easy answer is just go buy this $40 packet or just go spend this much a month for all these templates.

Justin:

For social media, especially it doesn't work like that. You have to treat it like it's your pastor writing a sermon. There is something unique there that you need to reach people with, and there are some formulas, like we have what we call the beast formula, as far as posting strategy. There are some best practices as far as that, but you have to find out how your people fit in and what they respond to and when and how, and then double down on what's working.

Jeanette:

Yeah, I'm so glad that you talked about that. And it's funny that you just mentioned a formula because that's what happens a lot of times, especially when it's a church communicator that maybe is in a new church or in a different, they used to do something else completely. And now all of a sudden, boom, they're the church communications person.

Jeanette:

And they listen to a podcast or they read a blog post, or they even attend a training that says, "The best practices right now, post a question, do some sort of engagement post, ask somebody about ice cream." They had that, so they're like, "Okay, I'm going to do these four types of posts every week."

Jeanette:

And they do it and it doesn't perform, like they think it's going to. I just wanted to share a quick anecdote because this was my favorite. I was working for a church and I was doing the, "Okay, we're going to share this kind of thing and this kind of thing in this kind of thing."

Jeanette:

But one of the things I really knew about the church was the people that were already following the church page. So yes, I know I'm trying to get more people to see it, but right then I knew that people that were already following the church page loved scripture. And so I made sure that every morning, by the time they would be up opening their Facebook app, they were going to see a Bible verse.

Jeanette:

And by far, I could ask about your favorite ice cream flavor, I could ask about what was your biggest takeaway from this sermon? I could ask any of the questions that to try to get engagement, but I got more, thank you for sharing this verse today. I really needed it, likes, they would share it and be like, "This is what our church shared today."

Jeanette:

And I was like, this was something that a lot of the people in the communication space might say, "Don't just share a scripture." But I'm like...

Justin:

I'm one of those people, if you just share scriptures on your Facebook page, I'm going to be like, "You're not a biblical motivational scripture page or a church," fair a little bit more. But I would look at your data and I would say, "That's really good."

Justin:

My church, a lot of people, they say, "Well, what do you post on your church page?" I said, "Don't look at my church page, half of my church page has just memes and comic strips. Humor works really well with our church." I think part of that is our pastor is also a stand-up comedian, which is funny because when you watch his sermons-

Jeanette:

That is the coolest.

Justin:

... when you watch his Bible talks, you wouldn't be able to tell, because he actually purposely does not use humor in his Bible talks, but we at least do two posts a week that are comic strips, we do a joke of the week as part of that. Well on Saturdays, that's sometimes a lot of, I would say about half the time that Saturday joke of the week or as the video is our best performing post all week.

Justin:

And then at the beginning of May, funny story, in the beginning of May, I messed up my own schedule and I usually plan a week ahead. Well, one week I accidentally plan two weeks ahead. So when we got to the beginning of May, I had a blank spot in my church's social media schedule. And I said, "Oh, oh, what can I do here?"

Justin:

And I said, "You know what, it's going to be meme week, May is for memes." I posted two memes a day-

Bryan:

That's awesome.

Justin:

... and I still use the memes to express our church's values, our beliefs, made some funny anecdotes, talked about scripture because we do church uniquely. So I use memes, two memes a day. That was our best performing week of the year [crosstalk 00:21:04]-

Bryan:

That's really cool. That's awesome.

Justin:

Now I wouldn't do that all the time, but also some churches, this is a difficult conversation. I was consulting with someone last week on their social media. And I said, "Your best performing post was a meme you made, it literally did 30 times better than every other post."

Justin:

And he said, "I can't do any more because pastor doesn't want it to be a meme page." And I said, "I understand that. What we got to do is we got to get with pastor." And he's asked to look at the analytics because literally it's doing 30 times better. And what you have to understand too, is that you're not just because you tell one more funny post a week, doesn't make you a meme page, right?

Justin:

You give one more scripture, Jeanette, you don't become a Bible-y scholar, I believe scholar, biblical scholar page. And just like, if you tell one more joke from the pulpit, you don't automatically become a standup comedian. So, there's a balance there. And sometimes pastors, as much as they want to see success, they unknowingly put walls and limits on what we do as creatives and designers as well. And it's our job to make sure that we are that part of the brain for them.

Justin:

And it does come from good intentions, it does come from a desire to not see things ruffled, a desire to not offend, a desire especially not to cause stumbling. But you know what? Sometimes we got to try some new things, we have to become uncomfortable. So many pastors learned that last year when they had to learn how to preach in front of a camera instead of a hundred people.

Justin:

And I think we're all better for that, a lot of pastors are better for that, and a lot of pastors cannot imagine turning off that camera, even though maybe a lot of the elders do for whatever reason. So anyways, all that to say, you have to look at what's working and you have to double down on that. Now, I'm not saying go seven days a week hard on that, and neglect every other post you ever make or do seven testimonial, video stories and never do a single other thing in your life because that takes a lot of time.

Justin:

But there are things that you have to manipulate... Again, going back to social media, maybe you do find the pictures of people work really well, but you can't be at every event. So you look at, "Well, what can I do with one picture, with one picture, I can make a quote post, I can make a scripture post, I can just post the picture by itself. I can use it to tell a story about this person."

Justin:

Even if you took this picture of a person in a fellowship hall, that is a person with a story. So obviously you wouldn't take the picture of them like shoveling spaghetti in their mouth, but maybe you take a picture of them with their kids. And he say, "This is the Williams family, they came to our church five years ago on the verge of divorce and through counseling and helped with pastoral assistance. They are now stronger than ever, have two beautiful kids, one of them away. We're so glad that they're part of our family."

Justin:

And then you could go into an invitation there if you want, but that's like a random fellowship hall picture, but you can still tell a story with that. So already that's five posts that you can do with one fellowship hall picture, you got to just think, "Okay, how do I get more people in here?"

Justin:

Anyone can be creative with unlimited resources, but the most creative people will do a lot of great work with very limited resources. That's what creativity is to me. So all that to say, you got to take a look at what's working and double down on that. And if it's not things that aren't working, bring it back every once in a while. But if it's not going to work that, pastors do the same thing, we tried different intros, different routines, styles of like, do I do three points, four points, one point? How many big illustrations do I use? How many small ones? How many people do I bring up?

Justin:

A lot of churches now have seen a lot of success with the only word that comes to mind is council, but that's not the word where they put like four stools on stage and they invite four people up on the church and they just have a round-

Jeanette:

Like a panel?

Justin:

Panel. There you go. They have a panel of like, "Hey, we're going to talk about marriage." And they bring an older couple and a middle aged couple and a younger couple up. They just talk about marriage for a Sunday, there's no sermon there. You can't do that every week, don't nor do I think you should. But it's something you bring back every once in a while.

Justin:

So it's just a matter of trial and error, also the most important thing and I'll segue into something else here, if that's okay. It's a matter of always doing something. One of the biggest struggles we have as creatives is quantity versus quality. And we want to put out quality stuff out there, we want to be excellent in everything we do.

Justin:

But imagine it's Saturday night or Sunday morning and pastors just not sold on the sermon he's prepared. And so on Sunday morning, he says, "Ah, you know what, I wasn't really sure on the sermon I had prepared this morning. So I'm not going to preach, we're just going to sing some songs and we're going to enjoy the rest of our Sunday." That never happens. I don't know, I've never seen it happen, but pastor goes up and preaches and oftentimes when pastors most anxious and nervous and puts the most surrender into God, that's when God moves the most in the congregation.

Justin:

And so on the flip side, though, we, as designers say, "Well, this isn't looking that good. I'm going to post it tomorrow." And then you work on it tomorrow, and they say, "Well, I'm not really sold on this idea. I'm going to try something else, scrap it and work on it." Next thing you know, you've got one post for the week. Quantity says, "I'm going to post something tomorrow whether I like it or not, I'm going to post something the next... I'm going to get this video out and it's going to be done, whether I'm ready for it or not, it's going to be done and it's going to be posted on Friday."

Justin:

It is a scary thing, but when you commit to six posts a week, seven posts a week, two posts a day, when you commit to that and you just blast it out there. First of all, no, one's thinking about your posts more than you are, so get out of your own head.

Justin:

But number two, quantity is what gets you to quality, because at the end of the month, when you only have seven, 10, 14 posts to look at analytic stuff, I've got 30 to 60 and I can see exactly what's work. "Oh, the scripture posts are really working well." And then Jeanette, you might say, "Well, I only did two and they did well, but I don't think that's enough." And I said, "Well, I did 20." And those are working really well, so I'm going to do 40 more next month.

Justin:

The quantity gets you to quality. And that is a very nerve-wracking thing. I make typos, I say wrong stuff all the time on my social media. But you know what? That drives the most attention. People love correcting me when I make a typo, people love telling me when I'm wrong. So when I do make another post tomorrow with more truth in it, the algorithm shows it because it knows people are paying attention to me. You know what I'm saying?

Jeanette:

Yeah, exactly.

Justin:

And not only that, if you spend all your time doing a quality posts or a quality image or quality graphic, and it ends up being the wrong thing and no one cares about it. You pick the wrong verse, no one cares about, I love Ecclesiastes. If I spend all week on a great video about that, and it's not what people need to hear. I've just wasted a whole week versus I made a few posts about it, a few posts about something else asked a question and I figured out what gets people working.

Justin:

So quantity is how you get to quality, you just have to get up there and do it. And then over the years, people don't remember the time pastor flubbed up big time two years ago. They're not going to remember the one typo you put in a post two days ago. You're going to be okay.

Bryan:

True.

Justin:

Get out there and get it done.

Bryan:

So what is one piece of advice that you would give to someone listening today?

Justin:

The one piece of advice, take action. As we've been talking here today, there's been something that's coming up in the back of your head, something that you're struggling with. What kind of post do I need to make? How often do I need to post? What kind of video should I do? Maybe you're listening to this and say, how do I separate myself apart? Whatever that thought is, you have to take action on it.

Justin:

And not only take action, you have to take twice the amount of action. It's that thing where you say, "Well, this will take me an hour. And then it actually takes you two or three hours." You have to plan for that and prepare for that ahead of time. I know it's going to take me about two hours for me to do the week of social media for my church, we're very video heavy. That's another thing that I've discovered in our own analytics. We do at least three to four videos a week on our church's Facebook page.

Justin:

I know it's going to take me about two hours, I still plan for it to take four hours. That way that gives me the time to get it done right and get it done well without rushing it. Maybe you think, "Well, I need to be posting more. I need to be doing something else different. I need to be editing the site. I need to re-write the site. I need to re-design our church foyer."

Justin:

Whatever it is, that's in the back of your head today as you're listening to this, take action, unless you're driving stop and write down, what are the three things I need to do next? And then just start with the first one. We sit and we think about, "Well, I got to get it perfect, I got to get it done. I got to do all this stuff right."

Justin:

The only person that's going to get it right the first time is Jesus. And so no one else is going to get it right and get it perfect. And you even look at churches like elevation, their team will tell you. Look at elevation, stuff is breaking all the time. There is miscommunication all over the place at every church, north point, elevation, Lakewood. And from the outside, it looks like everyone has their stuff together.

Justin:

On the inside, there's miscommunication, there's emails firing off, there's HR departments handling employee, employee complaints. I mean, things are breaking all the time.

Bryan:

Absolutely.

Justin:

We're run by people of people, that's what's going to happen. So you got to get out of your head and just take action, just get it done. Commit now to getting it done by a deadline and then you're going to figure it out. It's that old thing like your college professors used to say, "If I give you a week to do this or a month to do this, you're either going to do it in a week, or you're going to do it in a month." The same assignment is going to fill the same amount of time.

Justin:

So just commit now and take action. The most important thing, stop planning, stop trying to figure out and get it perfect in your head. Just figure out the next three action steps and get them done, because as you do those, the next steps are going to reveal themselves. A pastor is going to write down several drafts of their sermon before they get to the final three points they send off for slides, and that's okay. So just get it done, take action.

Jeanette:

I love that you said that, for two reasons. First of all, your anecdote about the professor reminded me of my kids, right now I have two teen boys in high school, they love that last minute's push, they're like, "My best work comes at midnight, mom. I promise I'm going to get it done. So that's totally true."

Jeanette:

And also just what you were talking about, just like do it, just go do it, take action. And I was just reading in scripture this morning in 1 Chronicles and King David says that to his son, "Be strong and do the work." But I love that, so I'm sorry about preaching there a little bit.

Justin:

I'm here for, or maybe I said, "I am here for each and [crosstalk 00:31:22]-"

Jeanette:

That's right. Clapping hands. Clapping hands.

Jeanette:

Well, you just got me fired up Justin and you've probably gotten everybody who's listening today fired up.

Bryan:

Absolutely.

Jeanette:

So we want to let these people know, if someone wants to reach out to you because they're fired up and ready to get some stuff done for the kingdom. How can they reach out to you with questions, for help, or just to get more of your knowledge about all of this stuff? How do they do that?

Justin:

So the best thing is to find me on social media, I am @JustinNava everywhere. J-U-S-T-I-N N-A-V-A. That's the best thing, go find me whatever your favorite platform is, I love Twitter. I'm also on Facebook.

Jeanette:

I was going to say he's great on Twitter, go give him a follow on Twitter.

Justin:

Twitter is my favorite. Although, funny enough, I'll be silent on Twitter today. That's my favorite place. I'm just Justin Nava everywhere, but you can also email me if you prefer to email old school, justin@mrchurchmarketer.com. Like we said at the beginning of this, my job is lead consultants, I'm here to guide you on where you need to go, whether that's with us or just me telling you what to go do.

Justin:

My job is to get you to take action and you need to make a decision. There's so much that isn't done in the church because people are just sitting on their hands, waiting for an answer.

Bryan:

That's really great.

Justin:

God's giving you everything you need to take action, he's given you breath and your lungs, you take action. You wake up in the morning, you take action. You're not starving to death, take action. There's no reason why you cannot take action and make forward progress today. Any time you're not making forward progress is time wasted.

Justin:

God's given you the tools and the equipment to do something, stop trying to figure it out and just start walking. You're going to get their.

Jeanette:

Word.

Bryan:

Awesome. Thank you, Justin. Appreciate that. That's a good message, I love that. Thanks for coming on today. I enjoyed the conversation, I'm sure Jeanette did too.

Jeanette:

Yeah.

Bryan:

And I think that our listeners will really enjoy this when we publish this episode. So thank you.

Justin:

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Jeanette:

Thanks.

Bryan:

Well, we love being able to talk with church communicators from across the globe. And we believe that every church and every communicator story is unique and it's valuable. So this week we'll be continuing today's discussion on Church Juice's inside our Facebook group, you can join the group as well as get today's show notes for this episode, by going to churchjuice.com/podcast.

Jeanette:

Church Juice's podcast is a listener supported production of ReFrame Ministries, a family of programs designed to help you see your whole life reframed by God's gospel story. Church Juice is produced by Bryan Haley, with post-production by audio engineer, Nate Morris in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Jeanette:

For more information about Church Juice, visit churchjuice.com. For more information on ReFrame Ministries and our family of programs visit reframeministries.org.