Should You Trust a Church That Markets Itself? | Brady Sticker

Should churches be using social media and digital ads to market themselves? Does this lead to real growth or just transfer growth? And how should we view our modern tools and discipleship today? In this episode, I had the privilege of interviewing Brady Sicker from the social media marketing company Churchcandy, and we discussed all of these issues. This is a bit of a controversial topic because there are people on either side of the divide.

Some people believe we have to be leveraging modern tools to reach and disciple people, and others feel like these tools are just borrowed from the business world and have no place in the church. Regardless of where you fall, you're gonna wanna hear this conversation because it's relevant to you, to discipleship, to evangelism, and everything confronting the modern person attempting to faithfully follow Jesus outside of the church. You are going to enjoy this episode. Brady is a great guy. So check out the entire thing.

As always, I wanna remind you to check out Steiger because this mission that this podcast is a part of is dedicated to reaching people outside of the church, which means we are constantly looking for new ways to communicate the gospel in a clear and relevant way. And so we're grappling with things like digital marketing and online evangelism and digital follow-up tools. This is something that we care about because like Paul before the Athenians, we wanna know the language of the people so that we can clearly communicate who Jesus is to them. If you go to seiger.org, steiger.0rg, you can find out more. And as always, if this podcast is meaningful to you, if it's encouraged you, please invite others to be part of this community.

And together, we can strive to faithfully follow Jesus outside of the church. Alright. Let's get to the conversation. You're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast. We are already recording.

Grady, new friend of mine. We just met about thirty seconds ago. I'm excited to have this conversation on the Provoke and Inspire podcast. But first, thank you for taking some time and, talking to me. Of course, man.

Of course, dude. Love your setup, by the way, man. Like, your camera quality, the whole background, it is looks great. Thank you. Your setup looks dope too.

Setup looks dope too. It's very, looks alive. You got a nice plant in the background. Yeah. You got the great fake Home Depot plant.

It actually it still has the tag on it. Let's see how much Dustin, my producer, paid for this. Oh my god. This fake plant from Home Depot, I'm embarrassed to say, it was a $150. What?

Still have the tag on it, and so I'm gonna find the receipt. I might return this. Probably still can. This is America, man. It's the greatest returning society that's ever lived.

Probably church, man. But hey. So like I was saying before, our whole heart and passion is to reach people outside of the church. I would love to hear a little bit about what you're doing through your company, through your initiatives in digital marketing, working with churches, because I think it's a very profound and interesting conversation. There's even some areas of, tension, I think, around how some people view it, and I would like to get into all of it, dispel some myths, and have a robust conversation about digital marketing, the church, the the world we're living in, and all of it.

So do you wanna just hit us with a quick introduction Yeah. About who you are, what you do, and then we can just see where this thing goes? Yeah. My name is Brady Sticker. I'm the founder and CEO of Church Candy.

We help churches turn online views to butts and pews. That's really what that looks like is Facebook and Instagram ads for churches focused not on, like, clicks or likes or followers. It's just like, how do we get more people inside a local church? I've made it my personal mission. I wanna see a million people connected to the local church from what we're doing, and we track that.

Like, every week, we're seeing about 2,500 to 3,000 people get connected to a local church somewhere across the country out of one of the I mean, we've worked with over a thousand churches at this point. But all of this started because I was a youth pastor. Our church couldn't afford to have me on staff full time. So throughout that season, I was actually working for my dad's company, and it was great because I was working for his company. We were doing Facebook and Instagram ads for chiropractors of all people.

Interesting. And that allowed me to serve in ministry without, like, depending on a paycheck Sure. From a church to provide for my family. Ironically, now I depend on a lot of churches for paychecks to be able to provide for my family. But, you know, in that season, my pastor was like, man, like, I I I love what you're doing at work.

I would love, like, here's your church credit card. You have $500. We have this event coming up next month. Let's see how many people we can we can get. You have a $500 budget on ads.

Mhmm. Where I was ecstatic. I was like, man, we're gonna have so many people. We're gonna reach the lost. People are gonna be saved.

Like, this is gonna be awesome. I I set up these ads. I'm spending hours. I'm watching YouTube tutorials. And keep in mind, I had already ran ads for, like, hundreds of chiropractors at this point.

So, like, I knew my way around. It wasn't even called Meta back then. It was Facebook and Instagram ads. And, man, I'm pumped. I'm so excited.

The day of the event comes, and not one single person comes from the ads. Interesting. And I'm like, man, we just, like, earned $500 just out the door. And, like, I had watched these podcasts, and my friend Brady Shearer had been talking about Facebook ads and how, like, you just spent a couple $100, you know, all these people. And now I'm seeing, like, oh, wow.

It's not as easy as it looks. Right. And luckily, my pastor wasn't, like, didn't shame me or, like, he gave me a lot of grace. He was like, hey. Let's try again.

So it and it took a while, but finally, like, I remember one Sunday. I think it was Memorial Day weekend, because I'd preached, and that's, like, Memorial Day Sunday is, like, national youth pastor gets to preach Sunday. Right? Because it's when everyone's out of town. Yeah.

And Lowest risk opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. So I get off the stage. I'm in the lobby, and someone comes up to me, and they're like, pastor Brady.

Pastor Brady. Man. It's a guy I never met before. And he's like, man, I knew God was calling me here because every time I turned around on Facebook, I just kept seeing you guys. Oh, funny.

And, man, like, inside, I'm, like, ecstatic. I'm like, yes. Yes. Finally. Because up to this point, I had never really met anyone that found our church that we could directly point to and say, oh, this person, like, found our church from Facebook and Instagram.

And so, like, I'm just smiling. Go like, amen, brother. Like, we're down here in Texas. Hey, man, brother. Like, I believe God was calling you here.

Like, that's so exciting. Tell me about yourself, man. Like and so we get to talking, and, that was kind of, like, the the chrysalis or the beginning of, you know, what has birthed church candy because then we kinda doubled down on Facebook and Instagram ads at our church, and then, COVID happened. Church shuts down. Like I said, we're in Texas.

We were able to meet again back in, like, May. So, like, we just had a couple months off of church. But then once we got back into meeting in person again, my pastor's like, Brady, people are hurting, depressions, loneliness at an all time high right now. People need the Lord. People need God.

And so, he gave me, like, a monthly budget to run Facebook and Instagram ads, and we started seeing all these new people come to our church. And within twelve months, by 2021, we had doubled our church size, what it was pre COVID. And this was 2021. And that's when my Facebook DM started getting flooded because people, other pastors, and ministries would see that our church was growing throughout COVID when most churches' attendance was, like, an all time low where they couldn't even meet in person. And my pastor is, like, yeah, our youth pastor, he's doing our Facebook ads, and, like, that's how most new families are finding us.

And pastors would be like, hey. Could you help me too? Could you help me too? And that's kinda how church candy started, man. And so it just all started from me being a youth pastor, helping our church, and God just, like, was super faithful and blew it up.

And now, like, we're like I said, we've helped, just over a thousand churches. I have, like, a full staff of 30 people. Wow. And, dude, it is crazy, the testimonies that I'm getting from pastors. It's like, man, there was this guy, Tyler.

He was a drug addict, alcoholic. He didn't have any custody of his kids, wasn't allowed to see him because his life was so messed up. Saw an ad for a church, like, got connected to them. And he says he doesn't even remember filling out the the info form because he was so strung out on drugs and alcohol. But the pastor connected with him, introduced him to Jesus.

Now he's six months sober. He's in his kid's life. And all of that happened because he saw an ad on Instagram or Facebook, got connected to the church, and then that allowed pastor Brandon Holmes in Waco, Texas to do some really cool ministry with Tyler and his life. And that's just one of the hundreds of thousands of people that we've connected to churches all across the country, man. You know, it's hearing you describe it this way, it seems so obvious, and it feels as though it should be universally celebrated.

But as I was saying before we recorded, I was looking through some of your content, and inevitably on the Internet, you're gonna get criticized. That's just Yeah. That's the nature of the beast. And and and yet there is a sentiment, I think, and to what degree or what percentage. I don't know.

I don't care. But there is a there is skepticism. There is cynicism. There's criticism. Given what you just explained and how obvious it seems, why what is it that people don't understand about it?

What is the common pushback you get or objections you get? And and just how would you speak to the skeptic? If I'm like, I don't know, man. Like, really? Facebook ads?

Like, is that really leading to to church fruit? How would you Yeah. How would you convert me not in a CTA Facebook meta Insta ad way, but as a as a skeptic of your approach here? Man, I I get that question a lot. And if you ever want a good laugh, if you ever see an ad from me or church candy on Instagram or Facebook, go read the comments because they're like, people are Oh, yeah.

They're either like, oh my gosh. They're charging money for this? Like, it should be work for the Lord. And it's like, man, I got 30 people that we're employing. Let me call up Gabe, one of my account managers.

Yeah. Hey, man. I'm gonna take your salary away. This is just a work unto the Lord, man, because John on Facebook says alright. So Right.

That's one of the things. But, a big criticism that I get is why should churches need marketing? Just preach the gospel. Is the gospel not enough? Right.

And I I hear where they're coming from. The thing is all that, like, we do and that I teach churches to do, people will say, like, oh, like, just preach the gospel and and people will come. I hear that. All we're doing is letting people know, hey. We're preaching the gospel here.

Yeah. There's good news. There is a God that created you and loves you, and we wanna tell you about it. We're just helping churches, like, tell more people about that. Yeah.

That's all we're doing. And people feel icky when they hear the term marketing in churches. Right? But it's no different than twenty years ago, it was really common for churches to do boots on the ground door knocking campaigns. Yeah.

Right? You and I might not remember that as much, but our parents' generation definitely do Yeah. Where that was super common. And I guarantee you that people were a lot less critical of why would we go knock on these doors? Like, isn't preaching the gospel enough?

Right. It's like, no. We're sharing the good news. We're letting people know that there's a God that created them and loved them. Right?

Our LDS cousins, I don't even wanna call them brothers, but, like, Mormons Step cousins. Their beliefs are crazy. Right? Yeah. But one thing they are really good at is proselytization and evangelism.

Right. They're sending people boots on the ground knocking on doors. Did I start getting ads from mus not Muslims, from Mormons? And it takes you a while to realize that it's actually, like, LDS. Oh, interesting.

Because they're like, hey. Are you looking for a community of people that wanna grow in their relationship with and it's like, you would think it's just like a regular non denomin church out there until you, like, click on it, engage with it, and it's like, oh, these guys are Mormons. And, like, because it's just very invitational. Right? They're just trying to reach people.

And so, that's one thing that we can take from the Mormons is, hey. Let's be better about inviting people into our spaces. And, whether it's boots on there. I'm not, like, anti like, some people will think I'm, anti mailer or anti boots on the ground. Sure.

It's like, no. Do whatever you can Right. To make the gospel known. Let people know, like, hey. There's a God that loves you.

Hey. We meet here. This is our church. We would love for you to come and join. All all of that is great, but I'm also all about efficiency.

Yeah. And what's gonna get you the most bang for your buck and most bang for your effort? Right. Right? And so, yeah, those are a lot of the criticisms I get Sure.

Is, like, is the gospel not enough? Right. And then another thing that I've gotten is our Facebook and Instagram ads for churches just transfer growth. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Are you just stealing people from other churches? Yeah. I was gonna ask that. Yeah. And here's the truth.

Is transfer growth happens whether you use Facebook or Instagram ads or not? Sure. People are gonna leave your church to go somewhere else. People are gonna leave another church to go to your church. That is that has happened way before Facebook and Instagram ads.

Mhmm. Now that being said, from the pastors that I have talked to and from the churches that are using Facebook and Instagram ads and seeing fruit from it, they are not seeing transfer growth. What they are see now here's another thing is they're not necessarily reaching the lost of what you would think of as, like, an atheist or satanic person that, like but what they are reaching is that person that was plugged into a church, and then COVID happened, and they had to move, and they just, like, walked away from God. Right. And they just haven't found a new church since they moved into a new area or they stopped going during COVID.

If you wanna consider, I went to a church five years ago, then COVID happened, and I just haven't really gotten back into it. If you wanna consider that transfer growth, okay. Maybe. Right? But it's a lot of the times people that had that foundation, they were plugged into a local church.

They had a relationship with the Lord, and whatever reason they walked away. Right. Right? So you've got the prodigal sons in that aspect. Yeah.

And then on the other side, you have the seekers. Right? There was a study, that the New York Times did showing that for the first time in American history, young men under the age of 30 are more likely to go to church than young women under the age of 30. That has never happened. Right?

Wall Street Journal reported that Bible sales are at an all time high. We even saw, like, culturally a shift in Gen z voted more conservatively in this last election. Now I'm not necessarily saying, oh, if you're Republican, then you vote for Jesus. That's not what I'm saying. Yeah.

But what I am saying is that points to a shift in culture. And with that comes a lot of young people wanting to go back to more traditional values, and that includes getting plugged into a local church, believing in God, reading their bible. And so there are things that point to this in society, the stats show, and that's a lot of what we're seeing too. Mhmm. Right?

People that are younger, they're hungry for the Lord. Maybe they just graduated for college, moved to a new city, and they're not plugged into a local church yet. Right? And then another group of people that we're seeing are broken. I mentioned the testimony of Tyler who got connected to a church in Waco.

Man, this guy, he he in Waco, Texas, bro, bro, in Texas, everyone's a Christian. Right. We we we got our Bibles and our 12 gauges. Like, everyone's a believer. Right?

Right. But that doesn't just because you call yourself a Christian doesn't mean you have a relationship with the Lord. Obviously, he wasn't living that out. And with that, he was able to get connected to a church and have his life turned around. So we're seeing a lot of, like, single moms who don't have a place to turn.

We're seeing a lot of people that are grieving that lost a loved one, or someone close to them recently, and they're they're searching for answers. And the local churches that we're connecting them to are able to be that answer and connect them to the one that made them, which really God is the answer. The local church isn't the answer. That's just the vessel getting them connected to the answer. You know what I mean?

I think part of the challenge from my perspective, and I'd love to hear how you approach this, is first of all, the the transfer growth thing is, like, in the end of the day, we have a hyper individualistic culture, right, where everyone comes into everything as consumers. And, unfortunately, that's true sometimes of church culture where people are always shopping around. And if the music isn't exactly to their taste, boom. Now they they they see a really cool trendy looking ad, and maybe they'll go to a different church. But at the end of the day, that's kind of a personal problem.

It's a cultural problem. And, you know, in theory, you'd hope that whatever churches you are drawing them to would be places of real discipleship where that would be confronted. And if it's not being confronted at their current church, may maybe they should move. But the question I have is, you know, you must feel a little bit of a weight of responsibility. Right?

Like, if I'm taking on these churches, I'm helping bring people to them. How do you navigate the vetting process? And, again, I'm not putting a trip on you, but at the same time, man, if I'm gonna get a million people to sit in church, I better be sure I know what church they're sitting in. And and we know, right, as we know well, not all churches are exactly what you and I would call a place we'd wanna send someone. Yeah.

So how how do you navigate that? Yeah. Man, I'll tell you right now, we probably turn away close to 200 churches a month. Okay. Yeah.

It's tough, though. I bet. Yeah. That's another thing. People will complain in our ads saying, like, oh, church community, they don't wanna work with us.

Like, they declined our church. And we know that not everyone's a good fit. And here's here's a couple of reasons why we would turn a church away. Like, some churches, I would say, like, I don't want you to market yourself because of the heart of the pastor. Like, one time I was at a conference, and this pastor comes up to me, and he's like, man, Brady, I've seen your stuff.

I love what you guys do. How many giving units a month can I expect from, Church Canyon Brain? And I was like, give giving units? I was like, man. So, on average, we're seeing churches get, you know, 30 to 50 get connected, like, 30 to 50 families a month.

But, like Yeah. That question revealed the heart of that pastor. Right? Jesus said that out of the abundance of the heart, your mouth is gonna speak. Mhmm.

And so that that's one of the things where, like, if if that's the heart of the church, it's like, we're gonna grow so we can get more giving units. And so I can, be like Kenneth Copeland and get myself a private jet too. Like, if that's the thing, like, we'll tell churches straight up, like, hey. I don't know if we're the best fit. In, like, in the secular world, you would never do this.

Like, I've straight up just given our competitors' websites and, like, hey. Here's three other companies you can reach out to. I don't know that we're the the right fit to work with you guys, but you can go that way. And so that's one of the things is I wanna make sure we wanna make sure the heart of the pastor, is aligned with ours. Yeah.

The second thing is we'll oftentimes turn churches away because they are too small, and they get so offended. And it that sounds bad. It's like, why would you turn our church away if they're too small? It's a couple of reasons. Number one is oftentimes, I feel like a doctor.

Like, a patient will go to a doctor and be like, hey. I saw an ad for Ozempic on TV. I wanna lose weight. Can can I get this Ozempic? Right?

And And it's almost like, okay. Cool. You want Ozempic, but what you need is a healthy diet and exercise. And so I don't know that you're the best fit for Ozempic. Sure.

Because sometimes churches will come to us and say, hey. There's five I I we've got a house church. There's five of us meeting in the living room. We wanna sign up for church candy. Can we can we talk about that?

And I'm almost like, hey. I love what you guys are doing. That is awesome. I don't know that church candy is the best fit for you guys right now. I don't think you guys need Facebook ads and stuff if you're wanting to grow right now.

Like, it and because here's the thing. If I was all about the money and, like, I wanna make as much money as possible, I'd be like, yeah, buddy. Come on. Yep. Sure.

We'll give it a shot. Yeah. But it's like, no. At the end of the day, I know that, like, you guys don't need church candy right now. Like, if you're wanting to grow, there's some organic things you guys can do.

There's some systems and things you can implement organically to grow. Don't waste your money on Facebook ads and paying us Yeah. Right now. Yeah. So I thought whenever we, like, implemented this, people would be it it's honorable.

And it's, it I have the view of, like, I'm using integrity of, like, I'm not gonna take your like, do not give me your money. Like, you don't need Facebook yet. You need systems. And I'll I'll refer them to some other programs and networks and resources that are free. And I we have free resources on, like, all of this as well that we will give to them.

But then they're like, I don't know if it's pride or what. And then it's like, they only wanna work with big churches. And it's like no. And then it puts me between a rock and a hard place, and I'm like, okay. I wanna do what's best.

I I wanna do and so, sometimes if there is, like, a church plant to where they went through, like, the Assemblies of God has, church multiplication network, or there's AARP, the association of related churches. They have some really good resources, and these are church plants where they might be small. Right? But they've got really good systems, and they have a plan and and and funding and all of this to where we know, okay. Great.

There's some things we can do with Facebook and Instagram ads to get you connected with people and help you guys with your church plan. But if it's Bubba and five peep not to quote Brandon Lake. If it's Bubba and five people in a, in a living room, like, I don't you guys don't need Facebook ads right now. There's some systems and things you guys can do. Yeah.

So so we'll oftentimes turn people away because they're small, and it they get upset about it. And and I'm like, fine. Give me your I'll take your money. Whatever. Like, I don't think it's gonna work.

Like, I don't think our process and the things that we found that work good for churches, like, you have to have a little bit more footing and be a little bit more established. That's just what we've seen. Yeah. And then people turn around and make me the bad guy. And it's like, dude, I'm just like, if you are my brother or cousin and you were a pastor, this is what I would recommend for you to do Yeah.

Is do some more organic things. Here's some resources. Go through this first, then let's let's chat. We can talk about Facebook, and then you'd be ready for that. So that's another thing.

And then the third one is, like, doctrinally, they got pride flags out outside of their church. And and a lot of these things, it's like, hey. I don't know if I feel comfortable sending people there. Yeah. Right?

And with that, we have hundreds of churches that reach out and apply to work with us every single month. It's hard to approve every little thing that they believe and kinda go through that and, like, vet them. And I and I've spent a lot of time in prayer about that. Like, alright, Lord. How how do I be a good steward of this?

How do we do we turn people away? Like, I'm scared if I turn people away. One, we're not a nonprofit. We are set up as a for profit, LLC or s corp. I don't know.

My tax people know that better than I do. So I'm not exempt from the, like, religion discrimination Yeah. Interesting. Too. And so then there's the whole argument of, like, okay.

If I decline someone because they're LGBT affirming, can they turn around and sue me? And now I'm having to go to court and pay all these. And so then it gets me stuck between and then it's like, okay. Sweet. I'll just set up as a non and so, man, like, I've I've done a lot of research on this.

But what I've basically come down to is, I have four people on our team that kinda handle the vetting and onboarding, basically, like a sales department where it's like, hey. I'm interested. Talk to these guys. Abraham, he's a youth pastor, and he's volunteer youth pastor and then full time for us. Alex is an associate pastor at a church plant.

Anna leads leads their church's young adults life group at their church. Gabe is a pastor's kid, was a youth pastor for several years. Him and I went to, bible college together. Now he's full time with us. So every single one of these guys and gal, they have an extensive ministry background, and I trust them.

And I've told them, I was like, look. If you guys don't have a piece about working with someone, just say, hey. I love what you guys are doing. You're bringing people to Jesus. I don't know that we're the best fit.

Mhmm. Here's some resources. Here's some other companies we can get you connected to. Have a blessed day. Yeah.

So far, we haven't had anyone sue us because of that. Now if you're listening to this podcast, please don't sue us if if we turn your church away. We'll send me a DM on Instagram or shoot me an email, brie@churchkina.com. We'll work it out. But, man, that's one of those things that, I struggled with.

Like, how do we how do we steward that? And there's some, like, other projects and things we're working on that would open us up to more churches and that we have to, like, look at, okay, how does some of these other organizations vet? Like, how does ARC how do they vet these church planters? And the ARC has a network now. And you can go to ARC and go to, like, find a church, and it's got all these churches that are ARC affiliated.

Right. How do they do their vetting process? So I'm trying to look and, like, learn from what they're doing, for that for some other projects and things that we're rolling out that, would would open us up to some of those, like, liability things too that so, anyways, I don't know if that even answers your question. It did. It's, man, it's complicated because, again, as you said, it's not an exaggeration to say that what you are what you have developed yourself and built your team to do is to literally get people into these places where they are then going to be influenced very heavily by what's being said there.

And so that's a big weight, as you said, in the whole added component of being, of course, for profit and the liability that comes with it. I mean, as someone who does get to operate in the nonprofit space, I I'm grateful that I don't have to contend with that because that's that's significant. And that's not to say that you don't deal with backlash no matter what realm of society you find yourself in if you're willing to stand up for Jesus. So can I tell you about a the one of the new projects we are working on that is, like, around this? Sure.

Go ahead. So one of the things that we have found that works great for churches, and I'll recommend those small churches, those five people that have a house church, go run this ad campaign. Like, this is this strategy is great for small churches, big churches, all alike. Basically, instead of running ads, inviting people to your church to send a service, you run an ad and say, hey. Do you have questions about God?

Are you curious about the afterlife? Or maybe you're looking for a local church. My name is Brady. I'm a local pastor in the area. I'd love to grab coffee with you, hear your story, and share my testimony what God said in my life.

Tap below to schedule a time. We'll meet at third gen coffee right here in the Woodlands. Yeah. That's awesome. And, we'll see that.

And so it's like a coffee with a pastor campaign. And we're just seeing God move, like, dramatically through this to get because there's so many people that are driving by your church every single day that are lost, broken, and they're so ashamed of what they have done. Mhmm. And they're telling themselves, like, man, I would love to go visit this church if they even know your church exists. But I I wanna go to church, but I'm ashamed of my past.

Yeah. I I'm embarrassed of what I've done. Right? And, like, recently, I I've been wanting to go to the gym, and my sister used to do CrossFit, and she swears by it. She loves it.

And I'm nervous there's a CrossFit gym local to me, and I'm like, man, I wanna go check it out. I just don't know anyone there. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I don't know.

Is it weird? Like, when I show up, they have a 6AM class. Like, is is it gonna be weird? People wanna look at me? Like, I'm not in the best shape that I have, but, like, I Yeah.

Yeah. Wife had a couple babies. I had I I added some sympathy baby weight too. So, like Yeah. Yeah.

And then I'm like, oh my gosh. Yeah. This is what people feel like when they go to church. They're embarrassed. They're maybe a little nervous.

They they they're maybe ashamed of their past. Yeah. So now I'm like, man, these CrossFit gyms need to do, coffee with a trainer. So you go meet one on one with a trainer first, and so you're more, because I was like, man, I wish I, like, could connect with someone first so I would know someone when I go and visit this CrossFit gym for one of the sessions. And I'm like, oh my gosh.

This is what churches need. Like, this is, it's the same thing. And so, we bought coffeewithapastor.com, and we're in the process of getting our, like, paperwork with the IRS for having a five zero one c three to where basically anyone that wants to get involved will find a local church. But maybe they're embarrassed or maybe they just have questions about God. And they might not go into a church, but they would love to go grab coffee with a pastor.

They can go on there, enter their ZIP code, and find a local church in their city, and go grab coffee with the pastor and, like, schedule a time with them. And with that, it opens up that can of worms of, okay, what churches do we allow on coffeewithapastor.com? How do we vet them? Right. How do we what level do we do we run this at?

And, like, we I have a vision, like, I wanna have a Super Bowl commercial and, like, almost to compete with the he gets us Yeah. Campaign that's, like, the woke Jesus, but it's just like, hey. Do you have questions about God? Man, there's a there's a pastor in your city that wants to meet with you and share the good news of Jesus. Go to coffeewithapastor.com to to grab coffee with them.

Right? So that's the long term what what we wanna build it up to be. But there's all the, like, back end logistics of, like, how do we vet them Yeah. Get that situated. Yeah.

You know, it that hits at a different question I was gonna ask, which is that, you know, obviously, our culture and society, while I think you're right, there is a rise in spiritual curiosity. There is an a hunger, I think, that's a unique moment in time right now. I I do think at the same time, there's a skepticism of institutional religion. And geographically, it might be stronger or weaker. You know, here in Minnesota, it's definitely not Texas.

Yeah. In general, there's a rise in spiritual curiosity, especially among younger generations and a sort of a coinciding or parallel skepticism of religion. And that would seem to me to cap or limit the market for Instagram to Facebook to my church. Right? Because barrier mentally in terms of not even the things you were just mentioning about maybe feeling uncomfortable or ashamed of your past, but just literally, like, do I have to be vote this way politically?

Do I have to look like this to go there, or aren't they all just abusers and want my money? And all of the things that come up in people's minds when they think of church is going to limit a pretty, I would say, growing percentage of the population. What limits have you found given that paradigm in terms of what the more baseline approach that you take in terms of, you know, add get someone to be interested in a church to go? How have you gotten around that? And it sounds like one of the ways that you're getting around this is this brilliant concept of meeting people outside of the church to create that point of connection.

But just in general, how have you navigated that? Have you found that you kinda hit a ceiling in terms of the type of person, or is that overplayed this idea that people are not interested in coming to a church? How have you wrestled with all of that? Yeah. Yeah.

It's a great question. So I guarantee you, there are so many people in your city that would love to visit your church. But just like if you were nervous about going to a CrossFit gym because you don't wanna embarrass yourself, you don't know anyone, They don't know anyone in your church. Yeah. They they don't wanna be embarrassed or ashamed of their past, right, walking into the church.

And so one way you can overcome that is coffee with a pastor where you go and and grab coffee with them beforehand. But let's be real. Pastors, church staff, they're already overworked as it is. Like, whenever I I pitch this to them, the number one impression is, that's great, Brady. There's not enough time in the day.

I would love I would love to do that. But we got VBS next week. Yeah. Yeah. I I got I got a plan for that.

Right? There there's all of these things that pastors will fill their calendars with that aren't just, like, one on one across the table ministry. And that's a conversation for another day. Right. Right.

But one of the things that we have found that works well that is another way is invite people to plan a visit to your church and use this verbiage. Say, look. I know it might be intimidating. You might be nervous visiting a new church where you don't know anyone. That's why if you plan your visit below, like you say this in the ad, you say if you plan your visit below, I will reach out to you.

Like, if you're the pastor or staff or say, someone from our team will reach out to you, make sure you feel welcomed whenever you show up, get connected before you show up. That way you know someone when you come. Have a blessed day, and we'd love to see you Sunday. Right? So you might be able to plan a visit to your church beforehand.

So even if you're not connecting over coffee, you can at least connect over the phone, text message, phone call. Like, even if the CrossFit gym down the street had that, bro, I would plan my visit to a CrossFit gym, and I would already been there because I could've planned my visit Sure. And then gotten connected. And then that's an opportunity now that I'm connected with Michael, the trainer at CrossFit. He would have an opportunity to basically sell me on the idea of actually getting up at 6AM and going to the Right.

Going to the gym. Right? Because then that gives the opportunity for pastors and their staff if someone plans a visit to their church to because right then, just because someone plans a visit to your church doesn't mean they're gonna show up. Right. They're just interested.

They're seekers. And then let's face it. I got young kids. Life is busy. Like, it's it's easy to see something out on Monday and be, yeah, I think we might visit this church.

Fill out the form. Well, then Tuesday comes around Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Life happens. And then they're like, oh, man, Mike, I don't know. I'm just gonna sleep in Sunday or, like, they they get busy.

They forget about it. Right? And so with the, like, the plan your visit ads, you're able to make that personal connection and basically sell them on the idea of, like, hey. I love you. God loves you.

We'd love to meet in person. Like, I think it would be so great for you and your family to join us in getting them to actually make that next step. Mhmm. Right? Because the thing is, like, like, that what we'll see too is when we're running when we're running ads for churches is they'll say, man, like, we're getting a lot of new guests that see our ads, but they didn't necessarily plan a visit.

And a lot of the times, people that plan a visit aren't showing up. And I'll, like, work with the pastors. Like, okay. What are you doing to follow-up with them? It's like, oh, like, we schedule a text to go out as like, tech they get a text as soon as the Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. They plan with it, and then they get a text the night before Sunday, and then Sunday is like, yeah. I wouldn't show up either. Yeah.

Right? They're planning a visit because they want to be seen. Yeah. Right? And so if you're just sending out automated text that say, hey.

This is New Life Church. We'll see you Sunday. Yeah. No. You're they're just a number.

Right? But if you get on the phone with them or you, like, just have a conversation with them via text, just or starts with text and it gives you a phone call or, like, some of the pastors, what they're doing is, they're, like, recording a video where they're like, hey, John. This is pastor Brady from Vibrant Church, man. So excited to see you on Sunday. Let me know if you have any questions.

If you have have any questions, give me just my phone number. Give me a call, and we'll see you then. Right? Bro, that is, like, the fact that a pastor would take time to record a video for for them and, like Yeah. Go above and beyond that's, like, you say their name.

Dude, little things like that are gonna make people feel welcomed, and then that's gonna actually, like, get them in the door because the reason people plan a visit and don't show up it's either because number one, they life happens busy. They kind of forgot or two is they're a little nervous and hesitant about visiting your church. The thing is there's power in the personal. And so if you can make and really create an authentic personal connection before they ever pull up onto your church's parking lot, you're going to eliminate those two objections and dramatically increase the number of people that actually show up. Yeah.

What people crave even if they are not able to express it consciously is real community to be seen as you keep saying. And so all of the things that you are utilizing and probably all of the criticism is rooted in this misunderstanding that you're not claiming to be the thing. You're the conduit to get people to the thing. Yeah. And this is where they live.

This is where they are, and we need to get them to the thing. And so, again, the more that the approach can be personal, the more the follow-up can be real and not automated, the more that there can be time made in schedules perhaps to actually follow-up in person with these people and meet them on their ground in their territory. But, again, I imagine you run into all sorts of naive people, not to be rude, but who just say, hey. Just slap $500 down and get me a 100 people at my church. Yeah.

And they just don't understand that it's, yes, it's digital amplifying the real. It's not Or they're like, hey. Can't we use, like, one of those cool AI chatbots Oh, gosh. Like, to follow-up with people in our church? And it's like, bro, you're missing the point.

Like, people go read the comments when you see, like, post online about AI and stuff. Yeah. Slap. People are already tired of it. Slap, baby.

Everyone's done. Yeah. Us us as the church, we have an opportunity to counterculture. It's like, look. Everything's automated.

Everyone's robots. Here, we are real people that really love you, and there's a God that really loves you. And that's one of the things that we're always trying to solve. Right? Because we have churches, and I'll be honest.

Like, the churches that work with church candy and don't get good results, typically, it's because we can't bridge that gap. But we're we're getting people to plan a visit, but the church, their staff's overworked. They don't have anyone that can invest time in following up and connecting with people, and so they end up having to cancel their account with us. So me and my team, like, that's one of the suggestions. Like, what if we have, like, an AI bot that can follow-up with them on behalf of the churches?

And And I'm like, guys, no. Because I will be honest with you. I have there are competitors. There are companies out there. I have no doubt.

I have no doubt. Help churches get new people in the door that do their marketing, that use AI chatbots to talk talk to people. And it makes me sick to my stomach, and I I never want to be the reason why someone never goes back to church. Because I guarantee you that there is someone out there that found a church running that play and texted with what they thought was the pastor and then found out that it wasn't the pastor they were texting, that it was AI. And that is someone that you know, there might be someone out there that has left the church and has left the relationship with God and all of that because one church staff member or pastor wanted to phone it in and sacrifice personal connection for what comes easy.

Yeah. And that is a soul that we don't know what's gonna happen for the rest of eternity because you make that decision. Yeah. Yeah. Right?

And and I'm not trying to get, like, super deep and spiritual with it, but the thing is we're we're in the world of being super deep and spiritual. It is super deep and spiritual. And our actions have consequences, man. And so, anyway and so, like, one of the solutions we are looking at is hiring bible college interns to do the follow-up on behalf of these churches for them. That way, it's at least a real person.

And and so, like, there's there's things that we're we're looking at there to to bridge that gap. But, man, it's one of those things that, like, if you're gonna use AI in your church, use it to replace things on your calendar that are administrative tasks that you as a pastor don't need to be spending time doing. Right? Don't use AI as a pastor to replace personal connection, like following up with people in your church and connecting with people, or, like, hello, using it to write your sermons for you. Mhmm.

Right? Don't use AI for that. Use it as like, for me, I'll use chat at GPT like how I used to use Google five years ago when we're sharing a message. When it's like, oh, I need an illustration that talks about that. So, like, like, I I'm it's not a sermon, but, on Friday, I am teaching my we have our staff retreat, and I'm doing a session all on one of our core values on pursuing excellence.

And I'm looking for an illustration. I want it to be, like, from the corporate world, like a story about Steve Jobs doing something really cool that that was just going above and beyond or, like, from true Cathy from Chick fil A. So I'm just having chat GBT. It's like, hey. Find me a story that matches this.

Right? I'm not having chat GBT. It's like, oh, write me a inspirational talk on pursuing excellence and how my team could do it. No. No.

No. It's like, I'm doing that, but I'm just using it as, like, supplemental tool to help me in that. So that that's one of the things with AI. And, like, there's all these AI tools now that write messages for the pastor, and it's like, same thing. If I knew my pastor was just using chat g p t to write all of his content for him, I would have questions.

Yeah. And that might cause some church hurt. Yeah. It's it's there's an irony to the idea that, you know, I think a lot of people would probably accuse you of being Yeah. Wary of and critical of in the sense of you're just leveraging digital tools, and it's all about numbers.

It's all about units. And I think, to me, you seem like someone who is very sober minded about what it can do and what it can't do, what it should do and what it should not do. And it's far from just sort of a crass means to an end. It it's a recognition that we live in this unique time with unique access, that we need to take advantage of that, but that we need to be cautious, like, with any tool. I mean, in my context, I'm part of a band that we go all over the world, and we use this very creative show to share the gospel.

And for a while, we've been trying to use digital ads as a way to get people to come, and we kind of had a breakthrough because we'd we'd throw ads out and we'd get a lot of superficial engagement, but nothing super tangible. And then we came up with this idea that, you know, we need to gather their information so we can continue to, hey. The show's coming up. You gotta come. It's gonna be in Munich.

It's gonna be in Berlin or whatever. And so we had this idea. Hey. Sign up for this official tour bracelet. And that little bit of, like, tangible CTA related to the ad, the whole thing changed.

So now now we are getting thousands of these perfectly targeted, you know, like, 17 to 30 into punk rock music, into live shows, signing up signing up for these bracelets. And, dude, when we dialed this in, we were we're not a famous band. I mean, what our whole our whole model is get into a big city square somewhere in Europe or Latin America where a lot of people naturally gather. We have this really visual, really compelling show, and thousands of people come, but it's not typically because they know who we are. But we were having people bunches of people show up two hours ahead, an hour ahead because of the digital ads.

And then those those young people, those they were hearing the gospel, and they were getting connected with a church in this city. And so, dude, I am like I totally see the power of that. Like, that is profound power. Now at the same time, we still had to preach the gospel. We still still needed to work with local churches.

We needed a follow-up strategy. They still needed to be discipled, All of that. Yeah. So it's not like I'm going, well, I do a digital ad, and I'm done. But, man, to discount the power of that, there are people who know and love Jesus today because of digital ads.

There's a there's a guy in in Argentina Yes. Saw an ad. Oh, do you like blink one eight two? Come see this thing. Shows up, gives his life to Jesus.

We baptize him in a bathtub in the apartment where we're staying during that tour. Digital ad. So That's crazy. So I'm I'm all about it, man. And I just, yeah, there's limits.

But, dude, it's so powerful too. Yeah. And I know people who they're, like, people on staff at their church found their church and found the Lord because they saw an ad on Instagram for the church. They were not believers. They showed up to the church one Sunday, gave their life to the Lord, got plugged in, got so plugged in.

Now they're on staff there. Right? And so there's so much power in it. And, like, one of the things that I love doing and this is, like, this was this this if you were listening to this podcast and you were hoping for some really tactical things on how I can use digital ads, this is gonna be one of the most tactical things that you can take away. K.

There's a strategy that you can use called retargeting. And, go to YouTube. There's tutorials on it. I have tutorials on my YouTube channel on it. But, basically, the the concept is, like, when you're going to Amazon and you're looking for a podcast microphone, then you go to Instagram and you see ads for the microphone you were just looking at.

It's like, okay. How can I do that for my church? Because this is something that we started doing in our church, and it's super powerful because people might over spiritualize it. But, like, I really believe that the Lord works through this. Of course.

Because what you do is you set it up to where anytime someone goes to your church's website. You set it up anytime someone engages with you or if you're, putting videos out on your Instagram, like preaching clips. You can set it to where anytime someone watches that, you put them in what's called a custom audience, and then you target that custom audience of anyone that is engaged with us, whether it went to our website, watched one of our videos, engaged with us online. If they live within a 10 mile radius of our church, show them these ads inviting them to church. And that's whenever you have people that it's like, oh my gosh.

Pastor Brady, every time I turn her on Instagram, I just kept seeing you. Yeah. Like, that's whenever they say those things. Is my phone listening to me? Right?

Yeah. And then what it is is it's holy spirit. I believe, like, we shouldn't put God in a box, and it's like holy spirit can work through social media. Of course. And all we're doing is planting those seeds, and they just keep getting invited to church, invited to church, invited to church.

And then I'm just letting God do the rest and work on these individual people's hearts. That's like, hey, God. If you're calling into the church, you're gonna use this to make it happen. Yeah. And so my prayer is, going back to your question earlier, it's like, okay, maybe a church signs up and they're not preaching good doctrine, and they're a heretic, and they're leading people astray.

I would pray that if that's the case and God doesn't want their church to grow, that they would get terrible results with church candy. Like, straight up. It's like, god, if this is not your will for the church to grow, if it is not your will for people to go to this church, I would pray that they would get terrible results. I would pray that they would hate us. I would pray they would go leave negative reviews saying, we tried church candy.

It did not work. And I'm not saying that anyone that they tried church, and it didn't work. Like, oh, you must be a heretic, and God didn't work. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm praying that, like, god, if this isn't your will, if you are not wanting people to go here, then let it fail.

Yeah. Let that's something that whenever I was a a intern at a youth camp, the director used to always pray, at our, like, preservice rallies. He would say, god, we did the planning, but, god, we would pray that it would all fall apart if it's not your will. If you're not getting glorified, God, I'd play that all of our plans fail Yeah. That nothing goes right if you are not the center of everything we do.

And so that's the prayer for what we do here at Churchcandy Brown. It's like, if if God's not being glorified, if people aren't being brought to the Lord, if lives aren't being changed, then I don't want it to work. Yeah. And I can feel that. I can honor that in you.

I you know, I know we don't know each other well, but I can feel that. And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it's a recognition that even the most well polished five loaves and two fish are still just that. Like, God has to do the multiplying, and men are not convinced by human wisdom, but by God's power. And and yet I think of Paul in in describing how he would do anything. I'd become all things to all men.

Right? And and I'm pretty sure and don't cancel me for this, but I'm pretty sure Paul would have a pretty dope Instagram account. And, I'm pretty sure that social media would have been part of the part of the plan. Like, this is the world that people are living in. And and so Yeah.

Like, we continue to say, don't wanna, you know, beat a dead horse. There are limits. We have to be cautious, like, with any tool that exists. And, also, obviously, people are so inundated with content and ads, and and there's that weird tension of that is where they are, but we also want them to, like, throw their phone in the trash and live life. So it's all that tension.

But while it's still a thing, let's let's be calling people to to encounter Jesus like you're doing. So, Brady, dude, I appreciate this conversation, man. I, I I knew this would be entertaining, and I, yeah, I I'd hope we can do this again. I'm I'm cheering you on. Keep doing what you're doing, and, yeah, hopefully, we can find ways to partner together for the gospel going forward.

Amazing. Yeah. If I can plug anything Yeah. Plug plug away. Yeah.

So one of the number one questions I get is, like, okay. I wanna run ads for our church. Where do I like, how do I even like, what do I say in the ads? Like, what should we do? We took our framework for the best ads, and we made an AI bot that you basically give the bot your church's website.

It'll scan the website on all the verbiage you use and your vision statement and all of that, and it'll write ads for your church using our framework. And so to check that out, it's just churchcandy.ai. It's free. Doesn't cost you anything to use, but you can basically use our chatbot to write the proven ads that we've used for over a thousand churches. Cool.

Yeah. Churchcandy.ai. Sweet. Well, dude, we'll put all the links and all the stuff in the show notes and in the descriptions and all all those good places, but, I appreciate it, dude. This has been a fun conversation.

Absolutely, man. Thanks for having