CoffeePods
A series exploring Christian healing in a handy coffee-break sized podcast. Plug yourself in, pick up your mug of coffee, and let's go.
CoffeePods
Sacred Scrolling: Finding Divine Purpose in Our Digital Lives
What happens when ancient faith meets modern technology? This question sits at the heart of our fascinating conversation with digital media expert Calum, who brings fresh perspective on navigating spirituality in our increasingly connected world.
Contrary to popular belief, churches embracing digital tools are seeing remarkable growth among younger generations. We explore how livestreaming, social media, and digital content creation serve not as distractions from faith but as powerful vehicles for sharing timeless truths with new audiences. Calum's experience implementing digital strategies in church settings provides practical insights for communities seeking to connect with tech-savvy believers.
The conversation takes a thought-provoking turn as we imagine biblical figures encountering today's technology. Would Paul have sent emails instead of epistles? Would Jesus's ministry have utilized social media? Beyond mere speculation, these questions help us consider how digital tools might serve eternal purposes. From WhatsApp prayer groups that connect believers globally to healing ministries reaching beyond physical locations, technology presents unprecedented opportunities for spiritual connection.
We challenge the false dichotomy between traditional and contemporary expressions of faith. Like diners at a buffet selecting different foods according to their preferences, the modern church can offer various worship experiences enabled by technology without compromising core values. The key isn't uniformity but unity—recognizing that diverse worship styles can authentically connect people with God.
For organizations like Acorn Christian Healing Foundation, effective digital presence isn't optional—it's essential for extending ministry reach. Through thoughtful branding, engaging content creation, and interactive platforms, we can communicate the healing message to those who might never enter a church building. Yet authenticity remains paramount; our digital presence must honestly reflect our ministry's reality.
Ready to explore how your faith journey might be enhanced rather than hindered by technology? Listen now, then join the conversation by sharing how you've experienced God in digital spaces. Together, we're discovering what it means to be faithful followers in this brave new digital world.
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Coffee Pods, a podcast of the Acorn Christian Healing Foundation exploring what's happening in the world through the lens of Christian healing.
Speaker 2:Hi guys, welcome back to Coffee Pods. I actually wanted to bring a bit of an expert in to help me process what is kind of an important topic and that is how we remain spiritually grounded in a digital age, Now AI. We're little bit about how technology and Christian healing can interact with one another. So, hi, Callum, good morning to you and good to see you Good morning.
Speaker 1:good morning, yeah. I think an appropriate title for today's podcast could be Tech and Faith. So a little bit about me, if that's okay with you to share.
Speaker 2:Sure, tell us who you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my name is Callum. I am Chris's son. I've been working for the past year up in Harleston in northwest London Beautiful place, vibrant place and my time there is soon to draw to a close and I'll be staying in North London to continue ministry up there in another church. But my background has been kind of nerdy. I've been in digital media work in churches across the last few years, basically since COVID hit. I've been one of the many people trying to get live streaming started in churches and doing social media. I did a short stint with a band in western North Carolina called the Kruger Brothers Band where I helped them with their social media. So social media has kind of been a bit of a bedrock for me in a sense, and so today I'm hoping we can talk about digital media as a whole, how that impacts our faith and our church life and where to go from here.
Speaker 2:You sound like the kind of nerd that the church needs these days. People like you that have the skills you have can replace relics like me who really don't know how all the stuff works. Because the younger people today people under the age of 40, they're all connected and they seem to know how all this stuff works, and so the older people who are trying to continue to be relevant and to continue to kind of live the gospel in the world are having a great difficulty because the way we used to do that in the old days doesn't seem to really work to a younger audience who really are experiencing God in a kind of different way these days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's important to remember to meet people where they are. I think I mean I don't want to get too preachy and you know far more about this than me, but when you read the letters from Paul, I mean he's all about meeting the people he's writing letters to where they are, and so I think digital media today is a way of meeting younger people where they are yeah.
Speaker 2:Would St Paul have sent emails instead of epistles if he had the ability back in the day?
Speaker 1:What would Jesus have?
Speaker 2:done if he had access to digital media and communication tools that we have to share.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a weird thing to think about, but if you think about how technology, if it existed in the first century, what would that have changed in terms of global awareness of what's going on?
Speaker 2:If you crucified a man unjustly in Jerusalem, today there would be TikTok videos all over the internet with people showing their perspective of firsthand evidence of what they saw, and back then it was all rumor and word of mouth and you would have stories of what people saw and what the witnesses saw, and it would just slowly expand. Nowadays, when something happens, it's like instantaneous global awareness of Air India. Plane crashes and we see a man who walks out of the crash and he survives the crash by some miracle, but instantaneously we have all sorts of videos and technology and then that's pushed into Facebook and on X and all over the place. You just suddenly are inundated with the information and so there's really accessibility globally, 24 hours a day, and that surely must change how people's lives feel and your sense of stability must be kind of off kilter all the time, because all the bad news of the world finds your phone every day, every hour.
Speaker 1:I'd love to ask you about the efficacy of our ability to storytell in the modern age. The stories in the Bible are vivid, alive stories. And how do you think modern, not 1980s DJ equipment I know you're familiar with that DJ equipment, I know you're familiar with that, but modern digital media impacts our ability to tell the story of the gospel in today's world.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's kind of cool that one of the biggest phenomenons in recent times is the television movie program Chosen, which uses movie making and storytelling the medium of the movie, to tell the story of jesus in a new way. And some people don't like the fact that it it takes license with the words from the gospel because they try and fill in the gaps of the things we don't know. When you try and create dialogue with j talking to Peter and things like that, people are going to get annoyed. But I love the idea that they've been kind of using creativity that way. There's the use of music and the amazing developments within modern music poppy kind of praise music, but also sacred music. You can even go online.
Speaker 2:I saw a friend who actually was using this artificial intelligence to write Christian music and it was really strange because it was pretty good music and it was really strange because it was pretty good and suddenly he's got these, these songs, these praise songs about jesus that were written by ai and you can, and he even has the actual music to go with the lyrics, and so you can, um, you almost have the ability to replace some elements of creativity with AI, and so that's interesting. The other thing is using some of the AI that creates images and videos. Now is spooky that you can enter a prompt and say you know, create an image of Jesus flying on a unicorn over the Alps, and this AI can do that.
Speaker 1:It's completely ridiculous, isn't it that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's boundless. And so I guess the thing that you know, how do we continue to remain true to the story of the truth of God, remain true to the story of the truth of God while at the same time embracing some of what this new technology can actually bring to society? I think the problem I find with older people sometimes and nothing against older people, but some people that are in their 70s and 80s who have never really fully embraced technology and they're kind of slightly hostile to the idea of the integration of technology into all parts of life and they will say, well, the church is this one place that needs to remain sacred and it needs to not be digital. There shouldn't be screens, the idea of contemporary things invading sacred ancient liturgy. I find that quite tough because that position and that ideology will die with those people. And so the churches right now, I think, are starting to become more creative and they're letting more creative people do more creative things in the church, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 2:And actually I was reading a study. It was, I think about a week ago there was a new study done showing church growth statistics, because somebody had moaned at me and they said oh, you know the church is dying, the church is dying. And then I started looking. The church growth statistics show that amongst the demographic of my age, the kind of creeping towards 60 people and the 60 plus people is actually dropping off, are you?
Speaker 1:almost 60? Is that right? Are you almost 60?
Speaker 2:Your dad's old.
Speaker 2:Your dad's an old man, sorry, I had to say it, but the cool thing was that the under 40 demographic was growing in huge ways.
Speaker 2:And so I looked and I thought well, so you have this real resurgence of faith amongst young people, even though the older people are falling off slightly, but there is this groundswell amongst young people.
Speaker 2:And then, if you go into London, there are a whole lot of churches in the heart of London that, on a Sunday morning, are heaving with hundreds and hundreds, even thousands of young people who are in their 20s and 30s. And these churches often embrace technology. They embrace the creative. They actually have social media managers, they have people running their Facebook pages, they love live streaming. They even have breakout rooms during their live stream so that if you're not in the church building, you're not abandoned to a static picture on your screen. It is an embracing of where the world is, and I think it's not just London. The world. Lots and lots of churches are starting to see that the way of the future is to truly embrace some of this technology, not to the detriment of the truth of the gospel, but to the goodness of the product of presenting the gospel to a world that needs to hear about God.
Speaker 1:So here's a—I'm going to test your ability to speak quickly or in a concise way. So, to those who are hesitant with social media, with digital media tools they're scared, maybe, of technology overload or fatigue of the soul or from these new forms of worship and new forms of communicating. What do you say to them, regardless of age, people that are just worried about these new things.
Speaker 2:I say, you know, it's kind of like going to a buffet restaurant. You know, when I was a kid we used to go to this place called Ryan's and you walk into Ryan's and you feel like there was this endless bar of food and then you turn the corner and there's another endless bar of salad and soups and breads, and then you turn another corner and there's an endless bar of dessert and sugar.
Speaker 1:Did you get any salads on this buffet you're talking about? Let's be honest here.
Speaker 2:But that's the point. That's the point. You go to Ryan's and you may say I want to fill my plate with salad and a bowl of soup and ice cream, and that's your choice for what's going to fill your tummy. In your experience of Ryan's with your family, Somebody else may go in and say you know, I've just been really looking forward to a steak and some sweet potatoes and some cabbage and some homemade green beans. We all sit at the table in the restaurant and you look around in a buffet like Ryan's. You look around and everyone has a unique plate and that plate is determined by what they want for their meal. And so you have the same table and the same purpose of gathering, which is to eat and be together, but the products in front of each person is unique.
Speaker 2:I would argue that the modern church today has great potential for variety, maybe more than ever. You can wake up on a Sunday morning and you can choose the style of worship you want. You could go to All Saints Margaret Street and never utter a word and sit on your knees the whole service before the sacrament and have the most vivid encounter with the risen Lord that you've ever had, and listen to the music and smell the incense and have an experience. You could go down the road and you could have a rock and roll band that blows your socks off, with disco lights and a smoke machine and have somebody literally come and lay hands on your back and pray for you and love on you and give you a cup of coffee and introduce you to some new friends. There are different ways of doing church church.
Speaker 2:What ticks me off is when people decide that their way is the only way or that the other way is somehow intrinsically bad, and I think that denies the possibility of someone finding God the way they want to find God. That's like someone telling me Ryan's is a terrible restaurant. You know why? Because people always make bad choices. They go into Ryan's and they eat bad food. They don't eat the good stuff, they never go eat salad. And I say, well, yeah, there's an element of truth in that that some people migrate to the less healthy options of a buffet mentality in terms of the church because you have prejudice inside you about how somebody else might want to worship God. That seems to me to be really destructive and unhelpful. You know, that's like saying, oh, their church lets gay people serve up front. Well, I can't possibly go and worship there because I don't believe that gay people should be up front. Well, don't go worship there.
Speaker 2:But by all means don't be the guy who says that they can't do that, Because the minute you start saying that women can't do this and gay people can't do this, you're one step away from saying black people can't do this and black people I mean. You realize that you're turning your brain back to the 1960s in the South in America, where the civil rights movement was alive and well and we had people drinking out of different water fountains and many of those people that made those arguments about separatism also went to church. There were good church-going people who decided they knew better what you needed than you knew for yourself. There was a certain level of arrogance in that time in the church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd like to, if it's okay, steer for the sake of time, steer our ship in the direction, into the realm of healing as we are with ACORN Sure. So how do you think digital media impacts specifically healing our ability to heal, our ability to pray?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's really cool to think how the modern age and all the developments with technology have impacted medicine. You really truly can do miraculous things now in the hospital because of technology. There's robotic surgery, there's, you know, micro neurosurgery, that there are all sorts of things that are being developed coiling in the brain to prevent aneurysms, and all these amazing developments, thinking that you can stick a wire in somebody's femoral artery and run that wire into their brain and actually do surgery inside the brain. You could argue that technology developments are transforming the landscape of healing and that when we pray for healing sometimes you could argue that we're praying for the scientific developments and the competences and the physicians and the nurses and the people who have those skills to be turned loose on a condition that is treatable. I had someone I think we're celebrating glioblastoma awareness this week and it's brain tumors and survivability is just brutal and people die every day with this horrible condition. But then there are occasions where doctors can go in and surgically remove the tumors and treat and their skills are so remarkable that they are seeing incredible results, where people get life after what was a death diagnosis. And I guess what I'd like to say is that the church can embrace the possibility not only of divine intervention in healing prayer but also the use of technology in the digital age to bring about some of that healing. There's a combining of those two things.
Speaker 2:You know the old country churches up in the mountains. They would resist going to the doctor. You get snake bit in a snake handling service. One of the things they would say is as a sign of faith, you don't go to the doctor, you just sit there and you pray through it. And a lot of those old preachers died from the poison. But the idea was we're being faithful by not going to the doctor. And I would argue that is absolutely the opposite of what God says, because in the Bible it says don't put God to the test. And what they're doing by having that kind of faith, they're testing God and they're saying well, you heal me or I'll die. And that's a test to the divine. And I don't think God wants us to be responsible individuals, which means doing responsible things, taking precautions. You know, wear your seatbelt. Don't say I trust the Lord and drive 100 miles an hour without a seatbelt on, thinking you're not going to get hurt because God is on your side. That's irrational and irresponsible, but I don't know if that answered your question.
Speaker 1:It's interesting you zoomed in and it makes sense, coming from a hospital chaplain background recently into kind of the medical world and the new technologies that help us with our health. And it's interesting because I come from a place where immediately I'm going to Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and Twitch and Twitter well X now and how those impact us. And so I was kind of hoping that you would answer kind of the question I can't, I can, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I love the fact that, like each morning, I wake up and I have a WhatsApp group and my WhatsApp group is a healing WhatsApp group where people can with with our, with Acorn Christian Healing. We have a digital healing hub which is kind of like a non location hub of people who will pray for other people, and so people can actually submit prayer requests and each morning when I get up, when I pray, I'll often have messages about individuals who have asked for prayer and it's really cool because suddenly there'll be seven or eight people around the world who will be praying for that request because of that technology, and so it's a really cool. It's one example of a tool where we use it. Another one would be a recent bereavement of a person who was very, very popular in Virginia who died, and suddenly social media is inundated with photographs and tributes and comments and prayers for the family and comments to children, and you know, and then I even participate in that myself and I think, oh, I'll share some pictures that are meaningful to me, because we're all trying to think what can we do to send love to people who we know are hurting? And also, by sending that love, it sort of helps us to deal with our own hurt. And so there's where you know Facebook, instead of being this tool where we argue points and we make arguments about our position being right or our politics or whatever, suddenly it becomes this vehicle for grace politics or whatever, suddenly it becomes this vehicle for grace and we use social media to kind of share prayer with other people. We also use it to notify people. I mean, it's quite an interesting new way of communicating.
Speaker 2:In the old days, you know, I'd wake up in the morning, I have my morning paper and I'd sit and read the paper with my cup of coffee and you'd look through the paper for advertisements, coming, events oh, there's a yard sale. And you would look at things and you would make note of these things in your newspaper. And then I usually went quickly to the funny pages or the sports column to see scores of games and things like that. See scores of games and things like that. Nowadays you have groups on Facebook, garage sale groups, or you have local. You know where you live. We live here in beautiful Surbiton, just south of London, south of Kingston, and you can go to community forums and people post into these forums and it's not just about you know what musical events are happening or what run club exists in north of here, um, but also things like, you know, comments about what's happening with the traffic patterns because of wimbledon going on up the road last week and uh, things like that.
Speaker 2:And I'm just so intrigued at how communication has changed. And then I can click a button and see a composite of all the scores of Major League Baseball or the highlights of the English women's national team defeating Sweden. It's all right there at your fingertips. And in the old days you had to have your newspapers and read through and it was much slower process and more deliberate. And now it's like quick, quick, quick. You get the bullet points and then you get to decide whether you want any more detail. You just kind of are like a rock skimming across the surface and then occasionally you'll go oh, I want to deep dive on that one. I want to deep dive on that one. And that's a different way of consuming news information than before. And I don't know how that impacts ministry, but I think it does.
Speaker 1:Can I ask you a question? That's a big question, but I think an important one, are you okay?
Speaker 2:with me throwing one at you, Brace myself yeah in the sunshine, brace yourself.
Speaker 1:one at you, Brace myself. Yeah, in the sunshine, brace yourself. So it's. I'm going to read you a quote from Romans to get us into the swing of things, this is from Romans, chapter 12, verse 2. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Fantastic quote, so important, and I'm so glad that this is written down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've preached on it so many times.
Speaker 1:So here's the question Can God and I'm not talking about all digital media here can God be present in social media and if so, how?
Speaker 2:Well, it's a personal faith statement, but I believe God is omniscient and God is omnipresent, that God is in all and above all and over all. So that means there is nothing that is apart from God. So that means social media is enmeshed with God's goodness. You can't say social media is here and God is over here, but that I actually see everything in the world through the lens of God, and so that means that even my cup of coffee is rooted in the presence of God. There is something of God in the whole of creation rooted in the presence of God. There is something of God in the whole of creation, and that means God created me in his image, but he created the world also in his image. That we are living in the very imago dei, the image of God.
Speaker 2:And be not conformed to this world has more to do with worldliness. It's like saying when we fail to see the presence of God in the world, then we become focused on the world which we see apart from the divine. And if we're conformed to the world, that means that our obsession and our focus is on earthly things, not heavenly things, but we're called to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. Our focus is on earthly things, not heavenly things. But we're called to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, and so that's kind of like saying a daily change of perspective so that you look at everything through that God's lens and you're called to be transformed in your perspective, that you're not called to continue to live in this kind of ordinary, indifferent state. It's kind of like the Good Samaritan story we're called to not only notice the guy that got beaten up in the ditch. We're called to be transformed so that we respond to the needs around us.
Speaker 1:That we don't remain indifferent. How do you do that? I mean, we're talking about ways of communicating that were not around, and nowhere near being around, 2,000 years ago. I mean, facebook is arguably something that we are totally a lot of us are totally unequipped for.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think technology has outpaced our hunger for using it for the gospel and so Christians have kind of they need a bit of a kick up the rear end to get excited about using the tools that we have for sharing the goodness of the gospel. We've become kind of bashful and shy and I think people are like, oh, I don't know if I can put that on my Facebook feed. I don't want people to think that I'm some crazy Jesus freak and you're going well. Why wouldn't you share encouragement? Why wouldn't you share something of the joy of God in all aspects of your life? It's not just walking down the street saying hello, good morning, god bless you, but it's about waking up and using every available tool that you have in your life to radiate God's love without shame, without fear and without worry about judgment and being inclusive and being tolerant and all these things which basically disarm us.
Speaker 2:And I don't think we're called to be disarmed. I think we're called to be empowered. Empowered means you know, if you're in war and you're fighting a battle against an enemy, you're going to use every tool that you have in the toolbox, every weapon available, to win, to do what you can to achieve your goal. The crazy thing is that Christians today, they're reluctant to use the tools in the toolbox because they're worried about what it might look like. And so the crazy thing is, love bombs can be dropped anywhere in the world. There is no way to drop a love bomb in the world and cause offense that you can't defend yourself from. I'm telling you somebody says oh, can you believe that guy? He loved too much, he was just loving too much, he was recklessly loving people.
Speaker 2:You're going what's wrong with that? Why can't we become those kind of people instead of dogmatists, people who have dogma and we lead with our theology? We walk into a room and people try and sum us up, wonder what he believes about this issue or that issue, women's ministry, gay people you know who is he and instead of saying man, he really loves God and love is just, it's just coming out of him. Every poor seems to have love coming out. Wow, that's a great way to live. All the other stuff, yeah, we can discuss it in a side room, we can have a Bible study, we can have groups and chew on all the hard truths that come from Scripture. But why not live in love so that we don't find ourselves conforming to the ways of the world? We don't want to just become another political party arguing about right-wing ideas and left-wing ideas and socialism and communism and democracy. We want to rise above all that and be followers of a transformative Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you are saying, if I try to summarize that we want to shape technology, not technology shaping us in terms of our faith journey.
Speaker 2:I think it's really important not to let the tail wag the dog. I've got a question for you. You asked me about digital stuff and you're actually the expert, not me. So maybe if you were the rector of a small church, what are some of the digital things that you would list as priorities? What are some of the digital things that you would list as priorities?
Speaker 1:If you had a limited budget. You know, what kind of things do you think are important to ministering to the under 40 crowd in today's world? So I think there's. It would be two major things Having worship live streamed or, at the very least, posted after the fact so people can participate in whatever form of worship is happening at this, uh, this made-up church we're talking about. The second thing would be, uh, advertising uh on on social media, mainly if it's under 40s, on instagram, maybe facebook. Uh, instagram is kind of the hub for younger people nowadays, it would seem. And then if I added a third thing.
Speaker 1:So those are two essentials putting and a lot of churches do this already They'll make a poster on Canva and they'll post it to Instagram and that's their Instagram post. I think the third piece that many churches are starting to do is to provide content that is engaging and hopefully enriching to the people following the page. So that would be like making a fun TikTok. So TikToks have kind of transformed how we do social media. There's a great example of this. I think his name is Father Andrew. You've run into him up in. Where is he In?
Speaker 2:the South. He's just south near Vauxhall. Yeah, he's near Vauxhall.
Speaker 1:I love his content. He's figured out how to make content that's both grounded in his parish, in parish life, but also adds some substance. So, whether it's a joke or whether it's showing behind the scenes, I think making content out of regular church life is a great idea because it gives people an insight into something that otherwise they'd be completely probably clueless about. And I think it takes, it humanizes clergy and, you know, I think it's a good thing. It puts the church in a welcoming posture, I would say.
Speaker 2:Andrew recently got a drone, so he has been playing around with a drone in his church, which is kind of fun. His content recently had a drone flying around his church.
Speaker 1:He's the king of that sort of content.
Speaker 2:Andrew's a great guy, oh gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seems like it and I'm praying for him at General Synod this week, so I know General Synod's happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's in our diocese. He's in the Diocese of Southwark, so he's a rock star.
Speaker 1:It's good.
Speaker 2:Truly, yeah. Well, what about a non-church organization like ACORN, whose mission is to encourage more people to pray for more people, and the idea of creating hubs, where you really need to get the message out that the hub exists and to promote so that when people are thinking, oh, which I had somebody to pray with, that they have the ability to find those hubs and find the times when the hubs are open for prayer. What, what would you do for an organization like Acorn to to increase the their footprint digitally?
Speaker 1:This reminds me of one of my master program questions about. It was when I was typing a paper on digital media literacy. So I think there's two components to effective organization. I don't want to sound too fancy. Social media, it is interactive content, engaging content that provokes or pushes people to engage with it. Whether that's a simple like or actually clicking a link, that'd be great. The other part of it is making content for both people who know how to use social media really well, they can click their way around and they don't know, all the shortcuts People that might be on their first day of Instagram.
Speaker 1:People that might be on their first day of Instagram. So the fancy way of putting it in my graduate program was to have a posture that pushes people in the direction of literacy on social media.
Speaker 2:So if that makes sense, it's a bit, no, no, it does. That makes sense, it's a bit. It's a bit, no, no it does. I like the idea of interactivity and that when we, when we post even like posting these coffee pods, to have the ability for a person who's watching a coffee pod at the end to click here to find out more, or to click here to make a donation to the charity or whatever that the idea that there's a click-through with technology whenever you post something, that there are ways to continue.
Speaker 2:So, when you.
Speaker 1:Put the hook in it or something. Yeah, absolutely, when you walk into a church I went to St Mary's Bryanston Square I think they call themselves St Mary's London now a while back and something they did really good at the door is you walk in and they engage you and then they give you little laminated cards of the various ministries that you can be a part of music ministry, prayer ministry, young adults ministry and I think if we take that approach, that works really well. It's effective. You can see it happening every Sunday. It works. And apply it to your digital media strategy. You have a post. That's like you walk through the door and then you are supplied with various ways to engage with that post. It doesn't have to be one link, it can be different accounts, it can be different channels. Your YouTube channel can be your podcast, your Facebook can be your daily prayers but it is a doorway into the organization if you see it that way.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you one other question what do you think that branding is important? Explain to me what your thoughts are on like branding and logos and stuff, because I know we were playing some game in our family not too long ago and I remember the game was you had to identify the company by the shape of the logo and it was really a kind of interesting thing because you re you suddenly realize how recognizable some brands are, even if all you see is the outline of them. And what I really want to know is kind of what are your thoughts on the importance of brand when it comes to Christian ministry, church ministry, charity in the community? What are your thoughts on brand and branding Right?
Speaker 1:I mean, branding is the starting point and sometimes also the ending point of organizations. Truly, if Nike had a dent in their swoosh, would it be Nike. If Apple didn't have a dent in their apple, would it be Apple. So, when talking about Acorn, what makes Acorn Acorn? And I think that is a branding question. So, to create, we're talking about creating identity. Really, we're trying to establish identity, or reestablish identity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and it's critical. I mean, imagine you're going in for an interview as a person, your in-person interview, and you don't have your shirt tucked in. I mean that wouldn't make a good impression. So, in terms of a logo or a catchphrase, you want it to be such that it's going to put your best foot forward, essentially, with every person it comes across. So it's absolutely critical. And it's tricky though. It's tricky because often you don't get it right the first time or it's not as effective as it could be the first time, especially with logos, because logos they can be a hit or miss. But I think that doesn't mean you give up. I think you keep trying and I think you can see an effective logo in work pretty quickly. And so with Acorn, I think that there's always room to try new things and kind of take a view of things with new logos, new branding.
Speaker 2:It's very tricky to think the word acorn. The most important thing is that it's Christian, a Christian-rooted organization in Jesus Christ. But how do you embody the idea of healing, christian healing, in a logo shaped like an acorn?
Speaker 2:And I think that's something we prayed about it and I know one of the trustees doodled in her notebook a few well, it's been a month or so ago some conceptual things in a doodle and I think we've been playing around with how to bring that to life and to give us the ability to have kind of this new brand recognition.
Speaker 2:I was joking at the town hall meeting the other night that if we had a poster in the underground in London inviting people to go visit a healing hub, it would be awesome if our logo was so identifiable that people saw it and then they began seeing that logo over and over again. That acorn would pop up in places and then the acorn itself would become recognizable and it would be connected to the story of Christian healing, because the acorn connects the story of healing and it's kind of like Samaritans or the Red Cross or even McDonald's. You know, you see the arches for McDonald's and you think French fries and it's just. You know. I think Acorn is in the cusp of beginning a new chapter where we have a new identity and a new brand that says who we are a Christian healing where we want wholeness for all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think branding doesn't have to be cold, but it partially has to be calculated, it has to be well thought through, there has to be reasons for what you're putting out there. But I think coming from a place of inspiration, like with this logo, is super important because that puts the love and the culture of Acorn into the new branding that might be coming out soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, I really think that with digital media, people want to be proud of what they see and they want to be proud of what they hear. And they want to because because, ultimately, you're you're trying to get people to share it. You make something and you put it out there and you want it to be good enough that they go. Oh, I want my friends to see this. I want my friends to know about this, because word of mouth is like the wildfire of the modern age, because no longer do you wait for um, you know the phone call from your auntie on the landline, because we don't pay for landlines in most homes anymore. There are a lot of people that do, but the, the new, the new day is all internet driven. And so you send an email and you cc 15 people or you bcc people and that's how the word gets out. And so how does an organization like ours create the kind of content where everybody is compelled to share it? This is too good not to share with everybody on my list.
Speaker 2:I'm going to share it with everybody on my list because I want everybody to see this. This is awesome. It's like the best TikTok video you've ever seen. I've just got to share it with everybody on my list because I want everybody to see this. This is awesome. It's like the best TikTok video you've ever seen. I've just got to share it. I've got to share it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's important to note that there's a big YouTuber named MrBeast that coined a certain type of editing and that editing is now prevalent across all of YouTube, Twitter, all social media platforms. It's called Beastification.
Speaker 2:What does he do?
Speaker 1:So he does lots of challenge videos. He likes to record himself doing charity things like this. He's now gotten into Amazon. He's done a recent show on Amazon called Beast Games, which is a takeoff of Squid Game.
Speaker 2:I saw that. I actually saw something where people I mean, isn't it like a money giveaway where people do things?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's people that are desperate for money and will do crazy things to win. I think it's a million dollars. Yeah, it's so, but beastification this term where you become your editing on your videos. Think organizations shouldn't strive to be the best and have the best content, but be real and be honest with who they are, because, at the end of the day, if someone shows up at a healing academy and they have all this expectation from your social media posts, it could be a letdown. So being true, to who you?
Speaker 1:are is of the utmost importance.
Speaker 2:I think that's one of the dangers of digital media is the lack of authenticity, because I've heard so many people say the person they are on Facebook is not who they are in real life, and I recently saw a video of somebody walking in a beautiful place, but then the tagline on the video pointed to the fact that you see this beautiful person in a beautiful place but you don't realize how she's battling with depression, and I thought, wow, that's so real and I think the more authentic an organization can be in the digital space, surely the better that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad we chatted about this, I think.
Speaker 2:Are there any other things you would say? I mean, you've worked in a church for the last year. What is your as a young person, dealing with lots of older people? What's your kind of rub when you think about how hard it is to push this concept of digital media onto an older generation? I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the generation above me who might be resistant to some of the ideas you have. Some of the ideas you have. What is like if you had a group of people that were kind of standing in the way of digital progress? What would you say to them? You know, in terms of encouraging them to get out of the way to make room for this new day in the life of the church?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's a hot question. I think I would say what you said in the question, that not necessarily they have to get out of the way, but they are in the way. They can become a part of progress or they can resist the progress. I think that we are heading in a direction. Whether folks like it or not, digital media has become, and will continue to become more of an integral part of church life, of Christian organizations' lives. So what do I say to old people? That sounds so blunt. To old people, that sounds so blunt, but older folks resistant to change.
Speaker 1:I see the writing on the wall and I think that embracing at this point you're not going to get ahead of it because the wave is already here. But I say, try our best to embrace a new world. And I'll say it again. I said at the beginning of this podcast, I'll say it again. I said at the beginning of this podcast, I'll say it again it is so important to meet people where they are. Where are young people? They're on Instagram, they're on TikTok, and so how does Acorn reach young people? Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2:Do you think it's important to tell older people or old people because I'm starting to feel like an old person? Do you think it's important to tell older people or old people because I'm starting to feel like an old person? Do you think it's important to tell them that they don't have to understand it to embrace it, that you don't have to understand how it works or why it works to actually facilitate the shift, instead of being somebody who says until I understand how this works.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to say yes to it, but to actually be the person who enables ministry rather than restricting ministry, because you just don't understand it.
Speaker 1:I hear you. I think we all have limits. I think folks that grew up in a different world have limits, and I think there's something to be said about people who just can't figure out these new technologies, and that is something.
Speaker 2:But they want printed newsletters, they want printed paper. They want us to go back, in every way that we do things, to the old way of doing the newspaper. In every way that we do things to the old way of doing the newspaper. It's the mentality that it worked when we had a newspaper and the churches were filled with people although they weren't really poor people In their minds. Back in the day the post-war reconstruction everything was great, everything was perfect, we had newspapers and everything you needed could be found in that newspaper. And we need to keep printing bulletins and we forget about this whole thing of using smartphones in worship and using smartphones for communication. There's a real resistance and I guess I'm trying to figure out what do you do to help that generation to kind of go hey, this makes sense. This really seems to be what God wants to do.
Speaker 1:I think it's about informing people, show people the fruits of digital media. How do you do that, though, if they're not on digital media? That's the question, because I don't think people are bad people. I think people are just living the life that they've lived, and so how do you put in front of someone who's resistant to social media, digital media's eyes put in front of their eyes the positive impact that these tools have on our churches and our charities, etc. Etc. And that's a big question.
Speaker 2:I know. I was an interim in a small church for a while and we started live streaming. We bought a fancy PTZ camera and started live streaming and some Sundays we'd have 30 people in church and there would be 40 views of the service online and we actually regularly outpaced the attendance with the online viewership Of course.
Speaker 2:And that went on for over two and a half years, where the online viewership would almost always outpace the people that were in the building. And once I started showing those numbers, people were like wait a minute, so well. Of course, some of the people were like, well, what can we do to get them to make a donation to support the ministry of the church? You're consuming the product without actually contributing to the product, but that's a totally different issue. But the idea of utilization of digital media for the greater good. I think that was a case where some of my older people who didn't use the internet I had one person she's like I don't have internet, I don't have a computer, I'm not interested in that.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm I'm too old. She would say and. And yet you could look at her and you could say you do realize that lots and lots of people that you know, they really get a lot out of this. And and she became a person who said look, it's not for me, but I think it's what we need to be doing.
Speaker 1:I think we have a tendency to undervalue the view count on videos. I think if we humanized social media more, we'd find that the value social media provides is far greater than we probably once thought. So 10 views and you know this, you and I have looked at analytics before together 10 views on a live stream doesn't just mean 10 views. It can mean 20, 25, because two or three people can be watching these live streams.
Speaker 1:And these are real encounters with your worship service. These are real people. Whether they watched it for five minutes of the whole time, that's a different story, but these are real people encountering your church in a way that was unheard of 15, 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:I think that's so important and the Healing Academy that ACORN has has the same kind of possibility, because there are literally thousands of people around the world who want to know more about what this thing called Christian healing is, and the technology that we have with integrating digital media means that we can take the information of the Healing Academy the classes, the lessons, the segments, these modules and we can make them available to people around the world to watch when they want to watch them. There's also the live version, where people can go to the academy and actually sit in an academy, which is interactive and you talk to other people in breakout rooms and you listen to kind of presentations. But I think the possibilities of doing more of these things is even greater and I'm kind of excited about exploring some of it.
Speaker 1:All right, so finally the last question. It's kind of a funny question, but I'm hoping it'll wrap us up here. So what's one way you can utilize digital media to improve what you're doing with ACORN?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great question, and before I answer it, though, I just want to say thanks for hopping online and having a chat with me, because the answer to that question does involve you.
Speaker 2:I'm embracing digital media and social media and all things technological, embracing digital media and social media and all things technological.
Speaker 2:I'm excited that you're going to help me with some rebranding stuff for Acorn and also, you know, help us to spiffy up the website and do some other things so that our socials, our social media, all of our platforms have a certain look and unity about them, because I think you've convinced me that the most important thing about growth is to make sure that your digital foundation is solid as a rock before you kind of start reaching out to younger people.
Speaker 2:And I'm really excited that the message of ACORN and the message of healing, the training that we offer in the academies the Listening Academy, the Reconciliation Academies, these teaching programs really are combined with actual healing hubs where people are there to pray with people, and the idea that our technology can get grounded and established to the point that we really have a consistent message that is online and that is available for people to see around the world, and I'm kind of excited about doing some of that brand reworking and doing some more fancy stuff, maybe with intros and outros to our coffee pods and other things that we do. I just want Acorn to be the professional organization that everybody knows that it is. But it's a new time and that means that there are new demands to that call to professionalism. We need to have a real think about looking like we belong in the marketplace.
Speaker 1:I think it's about spreading like we belong in the marketplace. I think it's about spreading love and spreading the good news. I think that's what it comes down to and I think if this is a way that could improve that, then go for it. Absolutely. I have to echo what you said. I'm really grateful to be able to help out and, um, I'm really looking forward to to getting cracking on some things with you.
Speaker 2:So and I did see a. I did see a sneak peek at one of the videos you were working on with where the the acorn becomes a tree, and I'm actually really excited that you have caught the whole vision of the idea of acorn is not to to kind of sit and be this stasis thing, but it's to be broken and grow and share and that we would grow trees under which other people would enjoy their shade long after we're gone. But the idea of ACORN is that the truth of God's healing love in Jesus is something that will outlast all of us and ACORorn is just an organization to continue to kind of tell that story to a hurting world.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Transforming lives through healing prayer. I guess you could say so great Fantastic. I think that wraps us up. Thank you all.
Speaker 2:We'll see Lisa next time. We miss you, lisa, and we're excited to have Lisa back with us next week Awesome.
Speaker 1:So thank you all for watching this episode of the Coffee Pod. If you want to watch previous ones, go over to the YouTube. There's some great discussions that they've had in the past and we look forward to seeing you next time here at Acorn Christian Healing Foundation.
Speaker 2:Like, follow and subscribe.
