Modern Church Leader
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Modern Church Leader
Making Church Communication Simple and Effective w/ Wes Gay
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Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Modern Church Leader. I'm here with my new bud, wes, all the way from Atlanta outside of Atlanta. And Wes your title says StoryBrand Guide, so I feel like we need to start with educating our universe of pastors and church leaders as to what StoryBrand is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you know, most companies, organizations, nonprofits, et cetera, really struggle to know how to talk about what they do, what they sell, what they promote, et cetera. So StoryBrand is a framework based off the book Building a StoryBrand by Donna Miller, which is a name some of our audience may remember from 20 years ago blue like jazz. But we don't want to go down, don't want to talk. That's not what we're talking about here. It's a framework that helps businesses and organizations really clarify their messaging. You take seven core elements of how to tell a story and use that as a structure for whatever you're going to communicate. So in my world, I often, most often, work with businesses. So it becomes how do we talk about our business? How do we talk about our products? How do we talk about our services? How do we say it on the website and emails and all the different ways that we communicate so that people engage and take a next step. In churches it might mean giving, it's serving, it's attending, it's joining, it's whatever you're asking them to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love it. Well, obviously we serve churches and you're a church guy. So why don't you tell folks a little bit about your background and kind of how you grew up and then, I guess, fast forward all the way into now how you get into doing the StoryBrand thing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I grew up in a. My dad's a minister of music in Southern Baptist Church. So I grew up in that world kind of old school churches. It was kind of a stereotypical story Dad's a minister of music, mom played piano. So Sunday morning, sunday night, wednesday night some of our listeners may be with me I was a champion in Iwana Olympics, which is a throwback, but Iwana Olympics, ras did all the things. Growing up as a kid Kind of worked my way, you know, went to church and went to a Christian college. Eventually we started working in churches. I was kind of a. I used to. My title was like media and communications. It really meant pictures and words and then eventually, because I was over production a lot of times, it meant pictures, words, buttons and knobs and occasionally power switches. So, like any of those things was my responsibility.
Speaker 2:That's what you did.
Speaker 1:It's basically, yeah, people say what do you do? I was like, if it, if it has pictures, words, buttons or knobs, I'm somehow responsible for it. Um, so, um, so, anyways, by 2016 yeah, by 2016 we kind of had a transition season and wound up, uh, kind of looking for new opportunities and this donna miller guy was had started doing story brand workshops and was promoting this thing they called a copywriter certification. Now, I had worked in churches, I'd worked in non-profits as well, had no idea what a copywriter actually was, because most listeners know you don't hire those in business. A copywriter is just a person who writes all your copy for emails, websites etc. I'm sure y'all have them at typhoon. So, anyways, he's like we're gonna have a copywriter certification to train people on how to use story brand in their business.
Speaker 1:And I thought, well, I don't have anything else going on right now. Um, not really getting any traction and kind of a new trajectory for life. So let's go try this thing. And I and my wife and I said let's go do this. She said you're a pretty good writer, let's see where that goes, and then we'll do that until I get a quote, real job.
Speaker 1:And so this was fall of 2016. And within six weeks I basically got a full-time client load and I started a business essentially helping people understand and implement this framework in their organization. So that's kind of how I stumbled into where I am now, and what a day-to-day looks like for me is working primarily with companies B2B companies who are selling to other businesses, helping them say how do we explain what we do in a way that's clear, compelling and concise so that people will buy from us? And then I've worked with some nonprofits. The question is how do we raise money? I've got a client right now. They're trying to raise a million dollars for their annual fundraising gala and the question is who do we talk to? What do we say to get them to give to our gala so we can hit our million dollar target? That's really what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that particular nonprofit. I'm sure they've done that event before and they've raised money before. Why'd they bring you on to help them? What do they see? Or what do they see they need to do different?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they brought me in because they said we've got to really nail our messaging on this.
Speaker 1:How do we communicate in a way that's really clear and compelling? Partly because they're in Southern California, there's like three other galas going on at this time and there's a little bit of overlap in kind of who and what these organizations do, and so in some ways, like with churches and what pastors compete with and church staff, churches in general you're competing for attention, and so in today's world, it's harder than ever to get somebody to not only pay attention but to engage enough to where they will give. They'll give their time, they'll give their money, they'll give their influence, whatever you're asking them to give. And they brought me in because they said hey, how do we reach more people? What do we need to say here? And also, who do we need to talk to? That's most likely to give to what our organizations does in our community, and so we've built a strategy for them, created content for them, and they're off to the race to just raising a ton of money to do more good in their community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. Well, let's connect it to churches.
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously you grew up in the church I'm sure you've done this work for some churches along the way, even if it's volunteering in your own church to help. You know, think through some of this stuff. You know, churches are always like, I guess, at a real practical level. Right, they're trying to engage people. They're trying to get more people to attend the church. They're trying to get more people to take a next step or engage in a small group or become a volunteer or give financially. There's all these things that churches are trying to do to help people grow closer to God. So I don't know, it seems like it's harder and harder. How do churches kind of take some of the concepts you've learned and start applying them to do these things better?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, first is, one of the ways that churches are unique in how they communicate is that they think guilt is a default way to engage people.
Speaker 1:You know, like if you really love Jesus if you really love Jesus, then you'll volunteer for the two-year-old's nursery duty every Sunday for the next three years. If you don't, we use guilt quite a bit, which doesn't work. And then the other side is. What's so funny to me, having been out of the church world for several years now, is we also default to things that don't actually move the needle. We will spend 17 hours designing the perfect graphic for our Saturday men's breakfast and won't spend 10 minutes deciding why should anybody want to come? What value will this add to their life? What's going to make them want to trade a Saturday morning to show up to our event?
Speaker 1:I think one of the biggest reasons churches struggle these days it's not because of short attention spans. I'm a big believer that short attention spans don't actually exist. We just have more options. You can't tell me short attention spans don't actually exist. We just have more options. Like you can't tell me short attention spans exist in the same world where binge watching exists. Right, right, like a new show drops on one of the streaming platforms and if I drop all episodes at once, people will talk about oh, I finished it in two days, right, yeah, that's not an attention span problem. If people have short attention spans and stuff that just means your stuff's boring, like so set that aside. Yeah, I think the biggest thing for churches. You've got to pause and ask the question if I put myself in the seat, in kind of the eyes and the hearts and the minds of the people that I want to engage with what I'm doing?
Speaker 1:Essentially, what problem does this solve for them? Or what problem exists in the world that they can, by them, participating, they can solve, because the reality is, when a problem is presented, we pay attention. I always say people pay attention when there's tension. I was with a company last week that's doing about $3 million in sales, about to launch a new product in the fall and they wanted to lead with features and benefits, and I said we literally have to connect this to what is the problem that your audience is facing that your product that you're going to launch is going to solve for them, because if it's not connected to a problem, people just won't pay attention. Right, right.
Speaker 1:There's a reason why in movies, for example, in the first, usually in the first 10 or 15 minutes something goes wrong. Something big goes wrong, right? Top Gun Maverick the biggest movie of 2022 is 1.6 billion, I think, at at the box office Within the first 15 minutes of that two-hour movie, we know what Tom Cruise is after because he's the main key, he's the hero of that story, he's the main character. But we also know the problem at stake, and I think too often with churches, when we're thinking about our events or thinking about ministries we want people to involve with or to give we don't think about what problem does this solve for the person whom we were asking to participate, or what problem are we presenting? Exists that, by participating, they can help solve?
Speaker 1:Years ago I worked for a church that we had to raise $100,000 for a roof, which is like the most uncool thing you can raise money for in churches but we had to do it. The roof had been put on 32 years prior but it was a 20-year roof, so we were 12 years overdue. We found 256 patches on the top when we walked around. I only knew that because they had numbered them and 256 was the highest number we could find.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's, somebody numbered them though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy, right, like somebody was so meticulous in number of the patches but nobody thought, hey, what if we just bought a new roof? But it was so bad every time it rained, it was flooding, it was starting to be mold and mildew, damaging equipment, et cetera. And so we said we've got to do a campaign for like six or eight weeks to try to raise an additional a hundred thousand. But we were going into the summer, which we all know is a terrible time to ask for money, and so we're trying to figure out how do we communicate this. I said, well, what if we make it about something? And what we decided was that building the third, the top floor of that building was our student ministry area, and every time it rained, that area would be out for weeks because of the mold, mildew, damage, whatever. And so for like six months, our students had been meeting in our fellowship hall, which is, again, not a great place for students, and so the campaign became around we need to have.
Speaker 1:The problem was the roof, for sure, but the real problem was we no longer had a space that was built for and tailored for our student ministry, our high school students, or sixth to twelfth grade. And we went a step further and said, based on the high schools in our area in Metro Atlanta, I said, and I looked it up and I said it one Sunday, the first Sunday of the campaign high schools in our area in Metro Atlanta. I said, and I looked it up and I said it one Sunday, the first Sunday of the campaign. I said 15 minutes in any direction of where I'm standing right now, we estimate there's between 25 and 30,000 middle and high school students and we don't have space for them because our roof there's a damage, it's a problem.
Speaker 1:And so what it became was how do we hook it to a problem to be solved? Because people either want to get involved and solve a problem or they want their problem to be solved. Somebody on staff came to me during this campaign and said hey, here's a sample of the shingle we're going to use and here's the spec sheet. I think it'd be great if we talked about this on Sunday and I said thanks so much and I put it on my desk and then I never saw it again. Right, yeah, b boring, you're not a person in that room who cares what shingle you're using, not a one.
Speaker 2:Maybe the guy who's?
Speaker 1:a roofer cares. I'll talk to him on Sunday afternoon. I'll email him the spec sheet if he wants to see it. All everybody else wants to do is I said, man, we really want to invest in our next generation. So it became not about. The problem was not the roof. The problem was we don't have a place for our student ministry and without a place for our student ministry we can. We can invest in the next generation of middle and high school kids who are coming through our community. So the biggest thing is connecting it. What is the problem that exists or that somebody wants solved that makes them want to come to this? You start answering that Again. You start asking that question. It starts helping you be a much better communicator for all the activities and things you got going on in your church.
Speaker 2:Right, right, have you done any work with churches? Maybe more recently Again, I know I know it's not. You know your business isn't church necessarily, but you know just doing what you do and being around churches, like or maybe just thought experiment while we're here, you know if a church is, you know looking to. You know get more people to, you know improving how they're communicating it and you know what the problems are there and the benefits of the people that are. You know when they go, like how do you get in the weeds with people and help them craft something that's, you know, special?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if I'm following my typical, the typical kind of path I would say for small groups. So the first thing is what is it people want? I think people really want even in our world, where they're, we're hyper-connected all the time, I think people still want a small group community setting. Like they want 10, 12, 15 people they feel really close to, they feel really connected with. Yeah, so I would first identify what is it that we really feel like people are after.
Speaker 1:Nobody woke up today and said, man, I want to join a small group, that's what I want. Like you know. Like nobody woke up no offense, frank but I woke up and saying, man, you know what we need to do. I want to sign up for a new giving platform. That's all I want to do. Nobody said that, right, so we want to go a level deeper and say, well, what is it they want? I think they're going to want community, but what's keeping them from getting in right now? Maybe they haven't found a group yet. They don't know what small groups are like.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to figure out in a church setting, in this setting, what keeps people from getting a sense of community. Maybe it is they just don't know where to go. They don't have a place where they can land, they really feel connected to people. One of the things we often look at when we talk about problems and you see this in movies and stories, and I do this with companies and organizations all the time it's not just about surface level issues, right. We don't just say, well, they don't have a place to really, they don't really have a sense of community in their lives. So what does that make them feel? Maybe disconnected, isolated, those kinds of things. Now I want to start to get a little, a little deeper and to say, okay, now what's under the surface? And I'm going to look for some kind of a statement that says, hey, we think you shouldn't do life alone, which is what a lot of churches will say. Life is meant to be done together, right? So I'm going to start figuring that stuff out and say, okay, now what? Now I'm going to start looking at what does it mean for us to figure out those statements and then show them what small groups are like.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of times in churches we make the mistake of saying, well, come, join small groups. What does that mean? What is your small group like? If I've been in churches, I know what a pastor's small group was like. But explain it, just say hey. Here's how I would say. I'd keep it super simple. Here's how it works. We have options on our website at firstchurchorg slash small groups, where you can see all the options and where they're located to find the time and location that works best for you. You know, step. That's step one. Step two I want you to find, I want you to contact. You can contact the group leader and to make an introduction so they can be ready to welcome you on your first time coming.
Speaker 1:Step three get connected in community. Like I'm going to, I want to give people a real clear one, two, three. We assume so much people know what's going on and how to engage, because churches are just like everybody else in that they forget the audience they're speaking to does not work for them. Right? You know even your most faithful people, attenders. You know your deacons, your elders, whatever. They're not in your building 40 hours a week. They're not in your Slack or Microsoft Teams. If you're on Teams, let's pray for you right now, but like they're not in your email threads, they're not in your meetings, they don't know. So just say hey, step one go to the website and find a time. Step two pick one that works for you. And step three be ready to connect it in community. So that's the story I would start to tell. Then I say so. The next step is you can see the qr code.
Speaker 1:If I'm I'm assuming I'm on a sunday morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sunday morning. Sunday morning announcement right On stage.
Speaker 1:Hey, and I might even say like, if I'm going to do the pitch using that on a Sunday morning, I'm going to walk up and say, hey, let's face it, too many people feel like they're living life alone. They may have family here, they might even have friends. They just don't feel like that deep sense of connection that most of us long for, and we found life is better when it's in a sense of community, that is, you're connected with people at a deeper level, you're engaged in there, walking with you through all of the ups and downs of life. Right, they're the people you call when your kid is sick and you've got to take them to the ER, but you need somebody to watch your other kids. They're those kinds of people. They're the people who celebrate your promotions and and grieve when you have a loss. Yeah, that's so what we want you to do. We have our next season of small groups is starting in, let's say, august 8th.
Speaker 2:I'm just making that up, I don't know what date all the small groups are Coming?
Speaker 1:soon. Yeah, yeah, coming soon, yeah, it's coming soon. Here's what we'd love for you to do. We'd love for you to get involved. So go to firstchurchorg slash small groups's what you can expect. When you attend, you're going to be welcomed by your host and during that time you're going to talk through some Bible, some questions and also have some great conversation around to just start getting to know everybody as well. Step three find the community that we think everybody deserves to be involved with. So the next, or go to firstchurchorg slash small groups so that you can find a group where you can get connected and get that sense of connection that everybody wants. So it's that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:As opposed to what would normally happen, like, hey, thanks for being here today. Small groups are coming, so make sure you check out that on August the 4th, that'll be great. Sweet Lord Jesus, we're glad we have small groups. That's not compelling, they're awesome. Yeah, we're glad we have small groups. That's not compelling, they're awesome. Yeah, we love them, don't miss it. It's like, don't miss what? What are we talking about? But that's the kind of stuff that happens In today's world.
Speaker 1:One of the things I found with businesses is that most companies waste a tremendous amount of money in their marketing and sales. Churches don't waste a lot of money because they don't usually have a lot of money. What they waste is time and attention. Businesses and organizations would love to have 60 to 70 minutes of time every single week directly in front of their audience, because so many churches squander it and don't pause and say, other than the sermon prep, which will take 8 to 10 hours or 30 minutes, we never think to say we're putting all this evidence, all these other things, we're designing all these graphics and planning all this stuff.
Speaker 1:How do we get people there? Well, it's about the words we use. Are we telling them things that are engaging them, that are speaking to the problems they're having or the issues that may exist in our community they want people to get involved with and then giving them a clear path, to say here's how you get started. Don't tell me to go to information station, I don't know what that means. Tell me to go through the double doors on my left, your right, and you'll see a desk out there. Go there after the service. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know one of the things I do quite a bit with an arc of businesses. In story we talk about this idea of a slippery eight pound bowling ball. In storybook we talk about this idea of a slippery eight-pound bowling ball. And that is imagine. Every time you say something confusing to somebody, you're taking a bowling ball, covering it in Vaseline and then asking somebody to hold it. Now that's an instant awkward image. Right, yeah, now you can do it with one. Now, if I hand you two, it's 16 pounds and it's slippery, it's cumbersome. I hand you three, you just drop them. The example I always use sorry churches, but you're such an easy target on this one. If somebody comes to your church on Sunday and you and your kids go to a new church, frank, and they go, you walk in and go hey, welcome to First Church, how are you? And you go hey, my name is Frank, this is my wife, these are our kids for middle schoolers here and they'll go well. Collide meets in the attic for Impact.
Speaker 2:And you're instantly going.
Speaker 1:Why does it sound like? I need a medical release form and a helmet for my kids to go to whatever you just described, and then they say hey, frank, don't miss Driven next Sunday. And then, oh, your wife, don't miss Birdsong, which is an actual church event. I saw one time in three weeks and you're like what did you do? What is happening Instead if I go? Hey, our middle schoolers meets Wednesday nights upstairs at six 30 and we have a men's event next Saturday at nine. Right Simple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, clear, that's what. That's what works, right. Yeah, you can brand it and whatnot, you know, maybe for the with the clarity part of it. Yeah, so now, I love that.
Speaker 1:We have too much at stake to be confusing, cute and clever. Yeah, you know, we'll try. We'll spend hours naming every, every room, every group, every ministry, every meeting time, and then nobody knows what in the world is going on. Yeah, like I worked at a church one time and I transitioned to be student pastor for a season and our Sunday mornings and when I forget which was which Sunday morning was like exchange and Wednesday night was collide or vice versa, right, and nobody could explain it to me. And so I went and sat down in the past in the office of the pastor's executive assistant and she had been there for a decade. Her boys she had two boys. The oldest one was about to graduate from high school, so she had been a student ministry mom for 10 years, had attended the church for 25 years. Her husband's family donated the land for the original church building in the 1800s. So like they went back. Yeah, right, that's crazy, it's nuts.
Speaker 1:And I said, miss Beth, I said what are canvas and exchange mean? And she just stared at me like you're staring at me now. She's like I don't know. I said that was not what I expected and I said, excuse me, she said it. She said it was like two youth pastors ago and we just kept it and they explained it one time at a Wednesday night parent meeting. But I don't remember, I don't know what it's for. And I'm thinking, if she doesn't know, the most productive person on our staff, by far the most organized on our staff, by far one of the most involved people in this church, nobody knows Right. So what if we just call it Sunday morning, we just call it Wednesday night, simple, yeah, and eliminate the confusion. Instead, if I go to a 10th grader and say, hey, do you want to come to exchange? Yeah, is this like a merchant thing, like what is what is exchange? It's like a currency thing. What does that mean?
Speaker 2:Why do you think churches don't spend? And I know we're we're generalizing, so it doesn't mean every church out there, but you know, why do you think churches don't spend time like thinking about this stuff?
Speaker 1:I think they make the same stuff.
Speaker 2:Like the, you know it's not it's not it's not in the dna. They don't have the resources. The people that understand this like it's just not their thing yeah, they, they fall into.
Speaker 1:Well, there's, I think there's two reasons. One is the. It's a problem that impacts so many other businesses and organizations the church is not.
Speaker 2:It's not just churches, it's literally every everybody. Organization is on the planet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they don, they make too many assumptions. They assume people know what they're talking about. They assume people remember. They assume people know.
Speaker 1:You know it's like I said earlier. They assume that their audience knows everything that their staff does, but their audience is not. They don't work there, you know. They have their own lives. Their kids are in school, they're planning for vacations. Kids are in school, they're planning for vacations. They got spring break, they got family stuff, they got stuff going on. They just don't know.
Speaker 1:So that's one is a big one, is they? Just they make the same assumptions that so many incorrect assumptions that so many other companies and organizations make. So that's one reason I think. A second reason is churches are unique. Out of everybody I've worked in dozens of industries globally Churches are unique in that they're the only people, the only industry I've seen that has a weekly deadline every week, 52 times a year. Right, the NFL doesn't, the NBA doesn't, so Sunday's always coming right.
Speaker 1:And there's that, plus the sheer volume of things that a typical, a normal church communicates is tremendous. Most companies might be doing 5 million in annual sales or revenue and they're really only promoting like three things, maybe five. There's three or five products. They're not a ton of stuff. But if a church has got a $3 million budget, that probably means there are 1,500, 2,000 people in weekly attendance. They've got preschool children's, middle school, high school, college, young adult, married, small groups, senior adults. They've got a whole range of stuff They've got to achieve.
Speaker 1:So I think some of it is the ministry is running 100 miles an hour with your hair on fire and I think it's the pace of that where we don't stop enough and say, okay, let's pause here. Enough and say okay, let's pause here. What do we need to say that's really actually going to connect this event or this ministry or this giving opportunity, this campaign, to the problem people have? How do we pause longer to ask that We'll spend a ton of time on graphics, which are great. We love the graphics of our visual friends, but we got to nail the verbal side.
Speaker 2:If you were to do a workshop with a bunch of churches, do you start there? What's the problem Everybody's got to think about?
Speaker 2:because, like you just said, like in all, of the things you just mentioned there could be 50 problems, so it's almost like okay, write them all down, put them in order. What's the most important problem that your church is trying to solve for your community? Let's start with that, or yeah, like you know, because there's a lot going on, but just start there and simplify it down in order to take like a step in this direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would. I mean, with churches I usually I I oftentimes say it's really effective if you take a bottom up approach. But what I mean by that is look at what you have to promote this Sunday, like the next thing on your list, like what are your? What events is it? What campaigns is it? Is it back to school stuff? Well, I think we're kind of past vbsc, we're past vbs season, past youth camp season at this point, yeah, like what's coming up and I would say what? What problem does this solve? And we'll talk about this in my set, my breakout at the mcl. It's a modern church later event, but in october. But the reality is like we, we have to say what problem does this solve? Right, you know, I look at Tidely as an example. Tidely does solve a lot of problems for a lot of people, but at the end of the day, the core problem that Tidely solves on the giving side is churches don't have an easy, simple way for people to give. That's it. We could talk about 49 other things, but the reality is that's the problem.
Speaker 1:If I'm thinking about what's coming up like fall, obviously it's a big back to school.
Speaker 1:One of the things a lot of churches may do is fill up backpacks for kids who are under-resourced, families who just don't have kind of school supplies.
Speaker 1:I would stand up on a stage and say, hey, we're getting ready to go back to school. Here's something we all know that some of the kids who are in the same class as your son or daughter, their parents, just are in a place. They can't afford school supplies, and we think every, every child in our community needs everything they need in the classroom to be able to thrive. So that's why, for just $20 or $25, if you give today, for just 20, 25 bucks, you can get all the school supplies for one kid, right. So I made it really simple Go to first churchorg slash back to school to figure out how to do that. Yeah, and now all of a sudden, it's like I'm connecting that now instead of saying, hey, uh, we have schools in our community and, and, man, there's some backpacks that need to be filled and it'd be great if we could fill those and I'm in the room, but I'm like I'm not engaged, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally yeah. I mean, the giving thing is an interesting, I guess, circ for how to do it better using kind of story brand, sort of guidelines or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Mm. Hmm, yeah, again, I go back to in the moment, like, if I'm thinking of Sunday morning, I'm thinking about what's a problem we can talk about. So when I work one one example I love to I love is I love when people say they don't want to give to the church because it just goes to the power bill. Well, let's talk about that. What happens when we pay the utility? What happens when we meet budget? That's a boring thing to talk about. So now, what I'm going to talk about here is let's talk about this problem, and it's kind of an objection really, why people don't want to give. Well, the problem is people say we're just giving to the budget. But let's look at the future.
Speaker 1:In storytelling and in movies and the storyboard and stuff, we always want to look at visions of success. So many great products are sold because we see examples of life on the other side. You see this a lot with health and fitness, success stories, case studies, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm saying, hey, what does it look like when we meet budget? Well, one of the things we pay is the power bill. Well, what happens on the power bill? Well, on thursday mornings we have people who come and fill backpacks with food so that on friday we can take them to the elementary school across the street and make sure that kids who need it can take a backpack full of food home because they otherwise they may not eat a meal until they get back to school on monday.
Speaker 1:You know, on tuesday nights we have, um, uh, we, we host, celebrate recovery groups for people who are coming out of it, some kind of addiction journey. Or we hear we hold grief care on, you know, monday nights for people who are going through stages of grief. You know, you know just all the just tell people what's going on, right, right, I saw a church one time years ago that I attended when I was in a summer job. They were a large church, thousands of people. But it was amazing to me how the senior pastor took time and just said, hey, let me tell you what happened around here this week, and he just started listening to all the stuff that had happened in the building. I mean, people were celebrating or cheering and applauding. It was incredible stuff. But he even said, like this is a normal week for us, but most people don't know what happens here.
Speaker 1:So that's one way to give a moment. I'm thinking how do I just lean into just explaining to people what happens because you give, and because you give we're able to go do. So when you give more, we can go do more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, connecting it to impact.
Speaker 2:I mean a lot of churches don't do that super well, not because they don't want to and not because they're not making an impact, it's just learning how to connect the giving to what's really going on. I mean I love just the pastor getting up and saying, here's all the things that happened this week in the building, like it's a great way to do it, cause a lot of things that every church doesn't matter how big or small the church is, it can be a the a hundred member church you know, in the middle of nowhere and there's still great things happening there and people's giving helps that happen. So yeah, absolutely yeah, that's cool, man. Well, we've been here for a while. We can keep chatting all day long, cause I could just keep asking questions, cause I'm curious where should folks go to learn more about you know you and how you help on the story brand side? Or even if a church just wanted to like dive into some of this, yeah, think about telling their story better, like what? Where could they go educate themselves?
Speaker 1:yeah, uh, go to my website, westgatecom slash mcl and I have some things there for churches, uh, to to learn from and use. And I'm on, I'm on the I think I'm old enough now where I'm supposed to say the facebook, the facebook yes, I'm on the facebook, I'm on the instagram, I'm on the twitter or the x. I don't know what's the x.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not on the tick I'm not on the Instagram, I'm on the Twitter or the X, I don't know what we're supposed to call it. The X yeah, I'm not on the TikTok, but I am on the LinkedIn. But yeah, I'm at Wes Gay at all those. So just look me up on everywhere with TikTok, because I don't have time for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know that's another one to figure out. Well, that's cool man on the show. Thanks for sharing some of your knowledge. Hopefully churches will you know, just get interested in like how to tell the story better. Obviously, what churches do you know?
Speaker 2:changes the world, so being better at telling our story, being better at highlighting the impact they make, like all of those things are good, Right. So going through some kind of program talking to someone like you, if it can help them, help them do it better, like they should all do it. So, uh, love all your stuff. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for having me. I look forward to being with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Conference coming up, MCL in October. Um guys, thanks for listening. Uh Wes, thanks for coming on. We'll catch you guys next week on another episode of modern church leader. See ya.