C (2:48)

Yeah, thank you for having me. This is a privilege.

A (2:51)

This is going to be good. Real Life is one of the fastest growing churches in the country, as we said, for leaders who may not know the story, kind of know about the church. Can you give us a snapshot of Real Life, tell us a little bit about that and tell us about your role as communications pastor. What does that cover?

C (3:05)

Absolutely. So Real Life church started in 2007 like you mentioned and you know, it was a slow start. Everybody has this dream that, you know, out of the, you know, out of the gates, your, your, your church is just going to grow. And it took some time. And Pastor Adam and Kristen, our lead pastors, founded it 18, 19 years ago. And you know, it took years to the point where it's like, yeah, this is a church. You know, we feel like a church. It's not a constant grind. And it really wasn't until about 2018 that, you know, numbers aren't everything, but they give you a metric. Right. You know, numbers aren't everything, but it wasn't until about 2018 where they started to cross over the 5 to 700 mark, which is a really good sized church. Yep, yep. And you know, it took, that's, that's like, you know, that's 11 years. And so since then, it is just catapulted in both number and impact in the community. And this year we are averaging more than we ever have on our weekend services. This February, we launched our second campus. So our primary campus is in New Palestine and our second campus is in Greenfield. And this last week we are. So we have 500 people attend our second campus.

A (4:35)

That's amazing. That's huge.

C (4:37)

So this is nothing that we've done. It is all God and we're excited for what he has for us in the future.

A (4:45)

So. Nice. Well, I'm looking forward to learning from what God's doing in your midst and, and particularly around this communication stuff. It's so critically important. And you know, one of the downsides, people like the idea of being inside a quick, fast growing church, but it's like, it's difficult having lived in that space and communication complexity is really one of the problems that we deal with, particularly as a church's growth accelerates. It's like, man, there's a lot to pull together. What challenges have you run into as the church has been growing or that you've seen other churches that are, you know, making sure that everybody knows what's going on. What have been some of the complexities of growing quickly from a communication point of view?

C (5:26)

So when I started three and a half years ago as the communications pastor for Real Life Church, we had about 15 full time employees, full time staff members, and we were just starting the Steam Academy that you mentioned earlier. Now we've more than doubled that. So one of the first things that we recognized is just our internal communications was just in dire need of tightening up. And so as we prepared to launch this campus, we had to make sure that we were all speaking the same language, that we were, you know, all working towards same goals. And this is not to say that we weren't. Before we had a really tight knit group of staff, but as we grew in staff numbers and weekend numbers, we realized that we had to be on the same page even more. So, you know, when you've got 10 or 15, it's really easy to get into a room and to just talk things out. But when you're at 30, 35, where we're at now, like it's hard, like it's a, it's a large group conversation, it's no longer a small group. And so there have been a few things that we've had to do. We've had to change the makeup of, of our teams. We've had to have smaller meetings and then larger meetings and we've had to prioritize just making sure that we keep our relationships strong through all of that noise. Because, you know, we all know systems are great, but it's all about the people and it's all about relationships within those systems.

A (7:01)

Well, I want to come back to the relationship piece in a second because I think that's critically important, but talk me through how from a communications kind of keeping your team all on the same page, you talk about small, you know, small communication or small teams. Large teams. How do you think about ensuring that you're from a kind of system point of view, we'll get to relationship in a second, but from a system point of view, kind of keeping everyone on the same page and ensuring that the right people know the right things at the right time.

C (7:27)

Yeah. So over time we have implemented a series of, and this is going to sound horrible because not everybody loves meetings, but really connection points throughout the week where we make sure we talk through our weekend services, where we're planning four, six months ahead on large events and, you know, just strategically thinking through what it looks like, what our calendar looks like. Most people don't realize that, but a church's calendar can really dictate the ebb and flow of what is going on in the church. And so we've had to create some of those rhythms and recreate some of those rhythms as we've grown. As you know, we've hired staff and brought people in. And so even today, we're having conversations about what do our teams look like and what are the structures. And so making sure that everybody is in sync with that. And then we use simple tool like Slack. We. We don't text each other, we Slack each other. And that helps us to keep everything focused. It helps us because we can have lots of small groups. If you know about Slack. Slack is. Allows you to have channels and different groups, and that allows us to keep each other all the time in the loop and in the know of what's going on.

A (8:44)

Yeah, so. So I'm assuming that also would include, like, you're not emailing internally either. Like, any internal communication really is on Slack. You're trying to. The total number of channels get it focused on.

C (8:54)

I would say 95% of our communication is all in Slack.

A (8:58)

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting.

C (9:00)

Emails. So we look at it this way. Email is like, hey, you're on vacation. I need to send you something and I want you to see it. But it doesn't need immediate attention. Slack is like, hey, I need you to respond to this.

A (9:12)

Right? Yes. Please see it and engage with it. Can you talk us through what your kind of weekly or like the regular meeting rhythm looks like you mentioned, like, hey, we've got, you know, meetings throughout the week. What does that. What are those? What's the kind of form of that take?

C (9:26)

Yeah. So for the entire group, every week we have a time of worship and what we would call our chapel on Tuesday morning. And that's a time for us to get into God's word with a short little devotional, to pray together, to sing a few songs, and to really just bond spiritually together and seek God for whatever we have going on. And so there's a lot of times where our lead pastor, Pastor Adam, will get up there and say, hey, you know, let's. Let's pray together about these things coming up, because they're important to us, and we can't do this without Him. And then after that, we have a time of just connection. Our executive pastor will lead a one church meeting that allows us to hear from both sides, from our two campuses and what is going on in those places. And then we break into smaller teams at that point. Our pastors and directors get together and we discuss what is going on, detail our dream team, our volunteer corps, what are some things that maybe roadblocks we're running into and how do we retain and how do we recruit. And we're talking through those things in a smaller core for our campuses. So that's just three of the things that we do every week.

A (10:46)

Yeah, I love that. And even listeners, the thing I love that's built in there is there's like an. There's a natural kind of echoing out cadence there. It's like it's naturally set up for like, hey, here's, here's kind of a big direction thing. Let's talk about it a little more detail. And then we're going to get down into small groups, into our individual teams and talk about it. Not that that's necessarily the structure you're going to follow every week, but we've got to cascade our communication, make sure that people, you know, understand and get a chance to talk about it. Even just in your weekly meetings. I love that.

C (11:19)

That's, you know, already another form of that is our executive leadership team meets on Mondays.

A (11:24)

Okay. Yeah.

C (11:25)

Again, it's a great cascading of information and then it just sets our week up to succeed.

A (11:32)

Yeah, that's great. Love, you know, love that. Well, let's loop back on the relationship piece. You had mentioned this. That caught my eye. So true. You know, I think as a church grows, like when you were all, you could all sit around one table, you know, order a box of pizza, everybody knows what's going on. And it's not just that information falls through the cracks, but actually you can, you know, step on people's toes, lose relationship there. How are you keeping focused on the relationship side as you continue to grow?

C (12:00)

So one of my roles as a communication director is to keep alignment with anything that is internally, but also, you know, primarily going out. And so that includes working with our worship experience pastor and what is happening in our Sunday and weekend services. That includes working with our lead pastor, making sure we're carrying his vision through what they printed, through what's on the web, through what's in our social, social markets, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all those different things. And so one of the things that, like, I hold near and dear to my heart is this passion for people and passion for relationships. So, you know, I mentioned slacker. My slack is full of DMs and people. I'm constantly talking to almost every one of our pastors every single day about something that is going on in their world. And our team, our goal is for our comms team, is that we're facilitating their ministry. So yes, we have our directives, but we are not living and working in a silo. So we may own something, but we're not working alone.

A (13:09)

So I'm sure this never happens at real life, but sometimes comms departments can be seen internally as like, those are the people that just say no to things. Like, those are the people that are like, no, you can't get an announcement. No, we can't make a video for you, no. Or, or like you did this thing that was off brand and like, stop it. You know, like, it's like they're like the communications police or whatever. How do you ensure that you're not that for real life?

C (13:37)

That is a really good question. If you have a miracle drug, I would like to know because I think that plagues every communications team in some form or another. I don't think you ever are perfect at it. But what we do is we. You know, yesterday I had a phone call with our lead pastor, said, hey, I need five minutes of your time. I have a very specific question to ask you. And he said, sure, so I'll call you about, you know, 11 o' clock or whatever time it was. And he called me and I said, hey, I have a very specific question for you. I want to ensure that what we're about ready to do, you are okay with that's good. Not because we're going way out of the bounds of our values, which are super important to us. Not because this is against our mission, because it's a tiny little change, but it's highly visible. It's changing a name and it was just a small change of that name. But so we had ran that up through our executive pastor, our comms team, our events person, all in agreement with it. But I wanted to double check before we put it in print that our lead pastor was okay with it. So a two minute conversation over the phone ensures that one, he's aware of it, two, if he has any concerns, he can speak into it now. He was like, hey, I'm good with it. We're good, let's double check this. But in that, but we're good. And that allows us to stay Aligned, keeps him informed, and then allows us to proceed with confidence. If you do that across all of your channels and have that respect up and across peers, then it really helps to break down those, those conversations that you end up having of like, hey, you went off base here, right?

A (15:30)

Yeah, that's good. That that aligns with some advice I recently heard where similar kind of advice that, you know, lots of times lead pastors particularly, they're. They just, they want to be, they want to know what's going on. They don't necessarily need or want to even be able to like change everything. But, but if they're operating in a low information environment, if they don't actually know what's going on, they're going to be more likely to step in and micromanage that actually by, by doing lots of informing that, you know, gives them the opportunity to kind of see what's going on, get a sense of what's there, which I thought was, you know, I think that's.

C (16:09)

And I've had to work at that. And I'm not perfect at that. Our team, we're not perfect at that. Because what we want to do is we want to, we want to tell them, hey, we've got this taken care of. You don't need to worry about this. You worry about lead pastor stuff, we'll worry about comm stuff. But the truth of the matter is we. The church is a communication platform.

A (16:28)

Yes.

C (16:28)

Everything is communications. Yeah. So we really have to work hard to make sure that we're aligned in that.

A (16:35)

Yeah, yeah, that's good. Okay. So how, how are you balancing. To me, there's these two kind of tensions and communications that we deal with in particularly fast growing church. There's like the urgency of needing to promote what's coming next. Like, there's always something coming down the pipe. Right. Like, it's like. And, but doing that in a way, the other side of the tension is like, we want to reinforce our culture. We want to reinforce who we are and we want to build. We want to use the communication that we're doing that to kind of build that culture. How do you. And those. They can be at odds sometimes. They can be kind of. There's an inherent tension in that. Talk me through what that looks like.

C (17:14)

So it really comes down to how you define excellence. So we strive for excellence. I believe that's one reason why God has blessed our church is because we strive to be excellent in everything. We're not trying to be more than he wants us to be. We're just Trying to be excellent in whatever that we're doing. We don't want to allow things to fall through the cracks. We don't want to do things halfway. And excellence, in our words, is defined by doing what you can with what you have.

A (17:47)

That's good.

C (17:48)

And so when it comes to the communications department, that's rough. Like, that's hard because we, we see what's available to us via social media. We. We see what other churches are doing. There is always something more that a communications department could do if they had the time. You could always do one more video, one more social post, one more print piece. And so balancing the enough is difficult. And so some of that, I'll. I'll be honest, some of that is a God thing. It's like, okay, God, what is enough? We need you to bless what we have. We need you to bless. We need to bless. We need you to bless what we're doing. We're going to do our best. We're going to be as excellent as we can.

A (18:37)

Yeah, how do you, as a communications person, it's kind of a related issue, maybe adjacent to that. We live in a very noisy culture. Like there is, you know, our people are, you know, they're distracted all day long. And so I think we've got to raise the value in what we do. Yes, it's our responsibility to push that up in their priorities to make it, you know, important for them. How do you balance that off with not just contributing to the noise that is, you know, the kind of broader culture. How does that work out for you as you think about that with the people at real life?

C (19:15)

I think there's a couple of things that are in play here. You need to have a strategy.

A (19:20)

Good.

C (19:21)

And by strategy, you need to know why you do what you do and then follow that. You need to have a plan. When you don't have a plan. Everybody is sending communication this way and that way. And, you know, the, the average person in a church is many, many, has many, many faces. So they're a parent, they're a husband, they're a man, they're. They're a giver. So the possibility of them getting multiple pieces of communication a week is super high. And so one, you've got to have a strategy and a plan, and two, you have to bring value. I think you said that before. You've got to bring. It can't be just a reminder. And then the last thing I'll say is you need to keep certain lanes for certain things. So keep lanes clear. We will not text people just because that's what they answer. We reserve text for personal contact, we reserve email for responses to something that they've done, but also reminders. And then we don't send over. We don't over send communication.

A (20:29)

Yeah, what, what would you say? How else would you define the kind of certain lanes?

C (20:33)

That's a. That's a.

A (20:34)

It caught my attention, this kind of certain lanes for certain things. Are there any other kind of boundaries you follow there?

C (20:40)

Sure. We try to balance. So we don't send more than one email a day.

A (20:44)

Right. Okay.

C (20:45)

So if, if kids is sending an email to the parents, we try not to send a giving email. We have a weekly midweek update that goes live, goes out and goes live every Wednesday night, Wednesday afternoon, evening. That's a reoccurring. So people know, hey, let's not send an email unless we have to. Wednesday. We try not to overlap.

A (21:09)

Yeah, that's good. That's good. Yeah, there's definitely the kind of the air traffic controller part of your job, which is the like, hey, how do we try to coordinate all of that that gets to the kind of the. No. You can be the no person, you know, like, or the not yet person. How do you balance, you know that off at the kind of the intersection of staff expectations and then congregational or your church attention? You know, what have you learned about saying no? Maybe there's a new comms director that's listening in. You do actually have to do that sometimes. What's the right way to do that? How do you do that in an elegant way so that you know you don't create enemies internally? So true.

C (21:46)

So true. The best way is to not say no. The best way to communicate no is not in what you're not going to do, but in what you're going to do do.

A (21:58)

That's good.

C (21:59)

So, hey, we have a new strategy for email. This is what our plan is.

A (22:03)

Right. That's good.

C (22:04)

Does anybody have any issues with the plan? You know, float it through leadership, you know, wherever you need to go with that, float it horizontally to your peers, to other pastors, or to other directors. Hey, does this work for you? Is it okay if on Wednesdays it's not that you're looking for their approval, you're looking for their collaboration, and they might see something that you didn't see. And so having that opportunity to float that up or float it horizontally allows you to, to kind of prepare them again, communicate with them, but also keeps you from having to say, oh, I'm sorry, we're not doing that. Why aren't we doing that? Well, we're doing this and they don't have to ask as many questions when they're in the know.

A (22:49)

Yeah, that's good. So as you think about, you know, there's a lot going on here to try to, you know, pastor the communication side. It's not just like, hey, we're trying to be good at communications. We're really trying to move our organization closer to Jesus. How do those two sides of your role intersect? The kind of communication piece and the pastoring piece. How does this help us push people towards relationship with Jesus?

C (23:14)

So our goal for communications is to disciple people between Sundays.

A (23:20)

That's good.

C (23:22)

So that's kind of what our overarching big goal. Then we partner with small groups and we partner with our dream team, our volunteer pool and our next steps directors and pastors. We, our goal is to partner with them to help their ministry succeed in the communications, in the technical side of things. We're not really here for ourselves. We don't have our own silo. We're really just helping bring everybody together and to kind of be that glue amongst the church leaders so that we can really, like you said, we want to bring people closer to Jesus. And so that, that is our goal. Any social media post that we do, any email is to either remind them, to inspire them or, or to push them closer to Jesus, give them opportunities to draw closer to Jesus.

A (24:16)

What's your. So this is like a bit of a slightly different direction. What do you see that's like a low hanging fruit problem that lots of churches are getting wrong on the communication front that like, you see it consistently. You're like, oh, it's man, we keep fumbling this ball. Is there anything that you see, see that we're, we're just not doing well. That from your seat we should be doing better.

C (24:39)

Yep. That is such a good question. And it could go so many different directions. So many different directions.

A (24:45)

Yes.

C (24:48)

You know, there's a couple things that are popping into my head. So from a graphic side consistency, you know, when you're a small church, it's like, hey, you're just happy to have a graphic to stick up there for the potluck on Sunday afternoon.

A (25:01)

Right.

C (25:02)

Or for the, the ladies night. And you're just, you're just happy to have it. But as you grow larger, people expect things like graphics and they expect them to be unified. They don't look the same, but they expect to have the same feel. I will say probably one of the Biggest things that I feel is low hanging fruit is just truly understanding their demographics and their church, their people. Because if you know who you're talking to, you change the way you're talking.

A (25:36)

Yeah, that's good.

C (25:38)

We're in the process of creating some, some drip campaigns for different demographics in our church where, you know, after an event we want to communicate consistently over time with our ladies, with our men, with our married couples, etc. From different events that we have at the church. And so like what, who are we talking to? What value are we adding to them when we send them an email and say, hey, you know, it was great having you at our ladies night and here's a short devotional or have you considered these small groups? Ladies, this would help you build community in your church. So knowing who you're talking to, your demographics is completely knowing who your church is made up of. So, you know, again, this, you know.

A (26:25)

How do you do that? How do we do that? How do we, you know, beyond a couple hundred people, it can be really difficult to understand who's in our church. What are you guys doing to try to understand your people?

C (26:35)

So we have a, a bunch of tools that we use. One is our CCB Community Church Builder. We use that to manage our people. So we are integrally in part of an in, in CCB understanding who our people are. We're also using a new product called Nurture, which helps us identify, helps us identify those who are at risk of going out the back door because, you know, as your church grows, so do the number of people. And it's super easy for somebody to come in on a Sunday morning and really not feel noticed, really not feel known. And it's easy for them to walk out the back door. They had a hard week. You know, maybe they struggle with some kind of addiction and you know, they love Jesus, but it's just easy for them to stay home and not come on a Sunday. Or maybe it's sports. You know, sports is like the number one killer right now of people coming to church or that opportunity because they, hey, we've got stuff going on this weekend. Sorry, we're not going to make it. So knowing your demographic and who those people are and then using tools like Nurture, your church management software. And then we, our volunteer team, our dream team is made up of captains who care for people. And so we are constantly training and meeting with them, having them care for those who are underneath them and making sure that people don't fall through the cracks.

A (28:01)

That's cool. That's Great. I think that's a, that's a real issue for so many of our churches, for sure. Again, slightly different categories. Category. You mentioned it at one point, the Steam Academy. This caught my eye, you know, and, and how does all tell us what that is and how does that fit into the kind of overall family ministry strategy at the church or kids ministry strategy? How's that all fit together?

C (28:22)

So when we moved into our new building just a little over three and a half years ago at the time, our county, Hancock county, is one of the fastest growing in Indiana and just exponential growth happening all around us. Like out my door here is a cornfield. You know, so we're surrounded by cornfields, but we're also 20 minutes from Indianapolis. Okay. Yep. And so it's one of the fastest growing areas. And one of the biggest needs in our area is a preschool childcare ministry. Call it a daycare if you'd like, but it really is, it's a childcare ministry. And so when I arrived, they had been in talks with the county and different groups of like, how could we do this? And within gosh, three months of my arrival in 2022, we started the Steam Academy. And we're actually in a construction phase right now to double the size of our Steam Academy. Right now we have 65, 70 kids every day that are dropped off to our building. And so not everybody goes to our church church. So this is, it's available to the community. And our goal is to double that over the next three years or so. And we see that as a huge ministry. And we've seen both teachers that work in the academy as well as parents begin coming to our church, get baptized, give their hearts to the Lord, because we have this environment for them that is good for their kids.

A (29:54)

Hmm, that's cool. And what does it run like five days a week? What's the kind of frame of that?

C (29:58)

Five days a week? It's Monday through five, Monday through Friday, all day.

A (30:02)

That's incredible. That's good. I love that. You know, one of the things I find interesting about communications is from my, from my seat, communications is a professional discipline like accounting or bookkeeping. You know, when a church is starting, there might be somebody like a volunteer, somebody who's doing the accounting, or maybe it's even, you know, it's like the pastor's wife or the pastor's spouse is doing it or something like that. But then eventually get to the point where the church grows and you've got to bring on some help. You get a bookkeeper maybe an accountant, eventually a cfo, that sort of thing. But communication is exactly the same. The church grows to a certain size, and I think because pastors talk for a living, they think they're good at communications. But communications is more than just like getting phraseology right. Like, there's a whole strategy, a part of it, that it demands, you know, an expert like you to really help draw this thing together. If you're thinking about a church that's out there today that's maybe listening in, maybe they're a church of a thousand people. So they're, you know, that's a sizable church, but they feel like things are just scattered and like they're. They're not clear, they're not aligned. What would you. What would be some first steps that they should take to try to get some more clarity, get some more alignment?

C (31:18)

Yeah, I think that is so true. Communications is so broad. You know, you could say, well, video is communications and print and design. These are all different disciplines within the communications. And then you've got, you know, some churches have their next steps programs under communications. Ours is separated out, but we work very, very closely together because that's texting and emailing and those different things. And so you've got all of these micro disciplines within this idea of comms. And it is super easy to kind of get lost in all of that and go, what do we need? And I think I love Pat Lincione's working genius assessment because it helps us know how we work together and making sure that you have not just disciplines, but also things like, you know, creative people and people who are tenacious and people who like to help with things. And looking at your staff and your volunteer base and saying, do we have a complete package that's good? People who are furthering the gospel now, disciplines, you know, I can teach you how to use mailchimp. If you're a smart person, which, you.

A (32:38)

Know, you're a smart person, I can be able to figure out mail mailchimp.

C (32:43)

I could teach you how to use mailchimp. So it's easy to learn some tools. What's difficult and what you're not going to do is you're not going to change people's personalities. And so making sure that you have a staff or volunteer base that's well rounded to fill in those blanks, I think is great. And then just growing your knowledge. So looking at what the disciplines that your church requires, some churches love videos. They want to do story videos. Other churches don't. So if that's Something that your church is your church values, then maybe a second or third hire is a full time video person, you know, but if your church is somebody who values weekend services more and, and it's more auditory based, maybe you, you hire an assistant or a copywriter, somebody who can, can help write and help be creative in that. Now, you know, now these days we have AI and everybody's an expert, but it still takes a skill set to even work, you know, the chat GPT to get what you want and make it sound good. So there are a lot of things but I believe this, this is how we lead it real life. And that is people are our biggest asset because they have God given gifts. And yes, ChatGPT can write better than all of us, but nobody can channel the Holy Spirit like his creation.

A (34:03)

That's good. That's good. Well, just as we're coming to land today, what any other kind of final advice has been really good. I've got a page of notes here, some stuff to think through on you know, on our side. But, but anything else you'd like to share? Just as we, we wrap up today's conversation.

C (34:16)

I just, you know, want to encourage the communications pastors or maybe the person who's out there who's just their job is communication. They've found themselves in that because yeah, maybe they were good at the video editing or they were good at the design and it's a side thing for them or it's a gift that they've been given. And I just encourage you to continue to focus on your relationship with Jesus and those around you and like collaborating with people is the best way to see God's vision and plan for your lives and for your church succeed. And so I think that is the, the biggest thing that I've learned over the last couple of years. Couple years.

A (34:57)

That's so good. Well, Luke, this has been great, super great, helpful, challenging. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?

C (35:08)

Sure. They can go to reallifechurch.org they can hit up our Instagram or our Facebook and watch both handles are Real life church by the way. That's real Life Church with 1L so R E A L I F E. And so that, that is different. There are, there are a couple of those and there are other churches where it's one word and real life and that's a whole nother story for another day. But Autocorrect, you know, saved me many times on that. But yeah, so they can meet us there and then I'd be happy to field any emails@luke cornwelllifechurch.org and my email's on the website, so that's great.

A (35:49)

Luke, Appreciate you being here today. Thanks so much for your being on the show.

B (35:52)

Thanks thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Unseminary Podcast. If you found today's conversation helpful, I'd share it with a friend in ministry. It's a simple way to spark new ideas and grow together. Also, don't Forget to visit unseminary.com to sign up for our email list. You'll get exclusive resources and practical tools delivered straight to your inbox to help you lead your church more effectively. Most importantly, take what you learned today and put it into action this week. Ministry impact starts with small, intentional steps. See you next time.