Celebrate the 100th episode of MyCOM Church Marketing Podcast as host Ryan Dunn and guest Dan Wunderlich discuss ministry, technology, and the role of improv in church communications.
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In this episode
In this milestone 100th episode of the MyCOM Church Marketing Podcast, host Ryan Dunn welcomes former producer and host Dan Wunderlich, an elder in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church and pastor at Lakeside UMC. Join us for a deep dive into digital ministry, church communications, and innovative outreach strategies. Discover how technology and improv can enhance your church's visibility and engagement. Perfect for church leaders seeking to adapt to changing tech trends and improve their digital outreach.
Topics Covered:
- Dan's journey from pastoring to podcasting
- Using improv techniques in ministry
- Adapting to new technology in church communication
- Future trends in social media and youth tech use
- Strategies for engaging sermon content
- AI tools in ministry and social media strategies
Don't miss this insightful conversation that's packed with valuable tips for church leaders! Be sure to subscribe and hit the bell icon to stay updated with our latest episodes.
Related episodes:
- Digital storytelling with Sabrina Joy Stevens
- The 1-page church social media plan with Brady Shearer
- 3 techniques for getting to know your audience
Episode transcript
Ryan Dunn [00:00:03]:
Welcome to the MyCOM Church Marketing Podcast, your resource for outreach, communications, social media, and new technologies to bring your congregation into the digital age. My name is Ryan Dunn. And this episode of my comm, we get to visit an old friend of all of ours, former my comm producer and host Dan Wunderlich. This is my comm episode number 100. Yeah. So it felt like a great opportunity to look back while we also talk about moving ahead. I'm so thankful to have this opportunity to speak with Dan. He's been an influential voice in my own journey into the world of ministry and digital space.
Ryan Dunn [00:00:46]:
I attended a training that he offered about social media for ministry a number of years ago. And what he offered that day got me really excited about how we could use social media to reach people and offer a pastoral presence beyond the limited time that we got to spend with people inside of our church programs. I was so excited. In fact, that I ended up eventually taking a role as the minister of online engagement for United Methodist communications. Anyways, in this episode, we ran through a number of important topics. We talked about understanding the audience, adapting to new technologies, the influence of diverse communicators, the importance of visibility in ministry. And even we talked about the role of improv in ministry. This 100th episode of my comm is brought to you by rooted good, your church, your community, your future.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:41]:
The Good Futures Accelerator provides churches with the tools to create mission driven uses of church property and new revenue streams. Learn more at rootedgood.org/ good futures. All right. Our quote unquote guest for this episode doesn't need a whole lot of introduction, at least if you've been following this podcast for a bit, but a little background is helpful, right? I'm actually going to steal what Dan shared as an introduction in a training cohort that we're both participating in. He offered this about himself. He is an Enneagram 1 wing 9 and an elder in the Florida conference of the United Methodist church. Dan pastors, Lakeside United Methodist church, serving Sanford lake Mary and beyond. And when he is not pastoring or parenting, he does improv comedy and has just completed training through sec comedy labs in Orlando, where ween Brady got his start.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:42]:
And Dan is part of a new improv team called the agreeables. The rest of the story we'll get from Dan himself here on the Mycom podcast. Dan, every time you're out, we seem to pull you back in. Welcome back to episode 100 of the Mycom podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. I would love to go back to the beginning of the journey for you in podcasting. What led you from going from pastoring to podcasting or, you know, pastoring podcasting?
Dan Wunderlich [00:03:19]:
Well, first, Ryan, thank you so much for pulling me back in.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:23]:
Yeah.
Dan Wunderlich [00:03:23]:
When I was writing up my little kinda goodbye, message there for my final episode, I was doing the math and discovered I'd had a hand in 77 episodes. And I say a hand in it because this show wouldn't happen without all the support from the Communications people from from Darby to Josh to Renee, to all the folks at the team there. And another fun fact, I have never set foot inside the U M Communications building. Their willingness and ability to work with someone from a distance has been awesome, but it didn't even occur to me that number 100 was right around the corner. So it's fun to jump back on. But to your question, I mean the, the short answer is, I was wrapping up serving 2 point charge after having served in college campus ministry for a while. And, my wife had gotten her PhD at the university of Florida and then got hired to teach at the university of Georgia. And so when we were moving across conferences, there wasn't really a church appointment that made sense.
Dan Wunderlich [00:04:27]:
And so I had 2 options. I could either go on family leave, transitional leave, or I could figure out a way, to, to keep serving. And, and I wanted to be helpful to the denomination and to my peers. And, and I had a passion. I had a degree in advertising. I had a for church communications. And so I pitched to my DS who's now Bishop Sue Halpert Johnson, this idea of starting, podcast ministry and an online ministry to help preachers, teachers, and communicators get better at their skills. And so I launched the art of the sermon podcast, and that's how that got started.
Dan Wunderlich [00:05:03]:
But the, the longer answer, is that I started listening to podcasts. Like 10 years before that I was downloading, wait, wait, don't tell me in this American life to my computer, then transferring it to my Ipod so that I could then listen to it somewhere else. And then even really the genesis of that was growing up in the car, we would listen to like Adventures in Odyssey, which was this like narrative radio show for kids. And we'd listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and car talk on Saturday mornings driving to to Little League or to Florida Gator football games. And my parents have, like, cassette tapes of me hosting my own radio shows. And this is really embarrassing, but when I would do my chores around the house, I would narrate them almost like a cooking show. Like, I'm cleaning the bathroom, and here's how I'm doing it. So I have been hosting stuff for my my whole life.
Dan Wunderlich [00:05:53]:
And so when the opportunity came along to do it and actually help people and have other people listen to it, I jumped at the chance.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:00]:
You're primed to be an influencer. Come along with me while I write this Sunday service.
Dan Wunderlich [00:06:07]:
That would never, that, you know, for for all of the stuff that I do in this sphere, that's never a a title I've ever applied to myself. So thank you for for bestowing that upon me, I guess.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:19]:
Yeah. But in a way though, I, I like that you brought that up because I feel like we're in a space now where pastors are feeling a call to express part of their ministry as being influencers. Maybe we don't wanna use that term because of some of the stereotypes that come along with it, but this sense of making ourselves visible in front of people, allowing access to our lives, And, you know, the influence that comes through that can be a very powerful form of ministry. As you started your podcasting journey with the art of the sermon, did you find that some of your, not just church leaders were getting something out of the sermon, but was it having an impact on your kind of church life, congregational life as well?
Dan Wunderlich [00:07:09]:
At the time I was attending a local church in Athens. Shout out to Tuxton United Methodist Church. There's still United Methodist still going strong. So love Tuxton. And, but I, I connected with local pastors in the area. There were some young pastors in the area, and connected with them. And, and that was a lot of fun. And I just like, I really firmly believe that that communicators of all kinds can learn from communicators of all kinds.
Dan Wunderlich [00:07:35]:
And so, you know, started with the easiest invitations of pastors in the Florida conference or a bishop that I knew, but really branched out from there and tried to interview people from different careers. So I I interviewed, the guy from all sons and daughters. I interviewed Brad Montague, the guy from the kid president videos. I interviewed an editor of the Harvard Business Review. And I tried to to cast the net widely, because you know, the and I love standup comedy. I do improv comedy, and I feel like we can learn a lot from comedy, but if pastor's only trying to learn from comedy, I think you're missing out from a lot of places that we can learn from. So, I, I would say that it had to have influenced me over those years, but it was nice because in a way it was like a 3 year break from week to week preaching. And, and maybe I let a lot of stuff marinate so that when I jumped back into it, I was hopefully a step further than I was when, when I left.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:35]:
What were some of the things you learned through the experience of talking to some of those people who are outside the quote unquote church world? Like, like kid president.
Dan Wunderlich [00:08:45]:
Yeah. Well, the the funny thing is that, I started that in 2015, which is, like, kinda right after Serial. And so podcasting was now on people's radar, but not everyone and their mom had a podcast. Like, all the stats show that the vast majority of podcasts have no more than 3 episodes. Right? If you make it to a 4th episode, you're like in the top tier of podcasting. And so all of these people were saying yes. Like, Adam Hamilton said yes. Adam Weber at at, Embrace Church up in South Dakota said yes.
Dan Wunderlich [00:09:18]:
Andy Stanley said no, but I get that. That's totally fine. You know, and and so, like, these people were willing to be because they weren't getting 45, you know, requests every day.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:27]:
Right. Yeah.
Dan Wunderlich [00:09:28]:
But I just loved learning from, from all of these, these folks. And so like Brad Montague, he has his, brother-in-law was kid president, but he was the writer behind all of them. And just learning that it really, it was a passion project. He wanted to spend time with his brother-in-law. He wanted to get out of this message of positivity and creativity. And it's literally a cardboard set. Now he had, he had come through like some broadcasting training. But especially now you and I were talking right before this began, The bar for how much training and equipment you need to do anything on the Internet today is so much lower than it used to be.
Ryan Dunn [00:10:05]:
Yep.
Dan Wunderlich [00:10:05]:
And so, that kinda what you were asking about before pastors jumping into the influencer space. Like the, just the biggest question is, are you comfortable with putting yourself out there? People will always gain a bigger following than an organization. And that's hard for me because I, I have no problems speaking to a camera. I have no problem speaking to a big room, but I get really uncomfortable. Making myself the spotlight or trying to sell myself, or, or anything like that. I think a lot of people
Ryan Dunn [00:10:37]:
in ministry echo that sentiment. Yeah, for sure.
Dan Wunderlich [00:10:40]:
Yeah. We're also a family that tries to keep our kids off the Internet. You know, some of these pastors that that make a big influence are people that, like, their family becomes like a vlogging family, and that's just never gonna be us. But, but all the tools are there. All the resources are there for so less money than you probably think. If you haven't jumped into it. And so the, the question is, do you have something, and this was what got me behind the microphone. I felt like I had something that would be of service and it was not, it would, it would be, shirking my calling if I didn't use that that time to do that work.
Dan Wunderlich [00:11:16]:
So.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:19]:
Were there things that you learned in talking to those people that you've now made a regular part of your practice of ministry now that you're back in kind of the congregational work?
Dan Wunderlich [00:11:29]:
The biggest thing I think is just, understanding your audience, which of course in the church world is your congregation, or your community, or if you're trying to build an online ministry. I know we've talked to some folks on this podcast who have fully digital ministries. They still have a target audience. Right? They still have a community that they're building. You can do what the people who get to film what interests them and it takes off are the lottery winners. And that is so highly unlikely to ever be the case for us. And I never got to interview him by Adam Savage, former Mythbuster, who's now got the tested online community. He's a maker.
Dan Wunderlich [00:12:11]:
He's constantly filming, like making space suits and movie props and all this stuff. He does Q and As regularly. And someone said like, how did you get to just do what you wanna do, film it and get famous? He's like, do you think I actually want to do all the things that I do on camera? Like I'm still doing things that I know the audience wants to, but I may not be that interested in. And there are some things that I'm really interested in that I know my audience isn't. And so I don't put that on. And so, he makes it look so natural. But it is just so important to understand what your audience, your congregation, your community needs, what they're interested in, and how to reach them. You know, for some people, podcasting is the way to go.
Dan Wunderlich [00:12:50]:
For some people, TikTok videos are the way to go. For some people, It's not going to be online. It's going to be other forms of communications. It's really just understanding the people you're trying to reach.
Ryan Dunn [00:13:01]:
So if I ever score a yes from Adam Savage, I will invite you back on as cohost.
Dan Wunderlich [00:13:07]:
Awesome.
Ryan Dunn [00:13:07]:
I would love to know how the local church you're working with, how do you get a sense of what the audience is? What are they looking for?
Dan Wunderlich [00:13:18]:
Well, there's there's the mixture of following your analytics online. So what what videos, what reels, what, you know, social posts get engagement, what don't. And so that's that's a feedback loop, that we can all tap into. But then it's really just like, I I greet at the front door at my church. We're not a huge, church, but even if we were, I'm not as in this, I'm not I'm not insulting any other pastors. I could not be the sit in the green room person and wait for the stage manager to say, it's your time. In fact, we hired a new employee that had worked at another church. And the first Sunday he, he came to visit to see if it was the right fit, he was like shocked to find me greeting at the front door.
Dan Wunderlich [00:14:06]:
I see. I just that's I'm not the most extroverted person. I can speak to large rooms of people and and having been in college campus ministry, I just learned the practice of being comfortable having first time conversations with people you've never met before. But, embracing the awkwardness. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, I'm not the most extroverted person, but I know the value of being there at the front door and saying hello to people, be, you know, being in the, the north X or the lobby, after the service. And then, you know, just really kind of listening to what people are responding to or what they're sharing with you.
Dan Wunderlich [00:14:44]:
And the other thing too is just like, I so wish, and it's easy for me to say now that I'm out of the host seat of this podcast, I wish I could delete Facebook. I never want to be on Facebook again personally, but I learned 95% of the things I know about the lives of my congregation members from what they're sharing on Facebook more than what they're telling me in person. So you got to kind of do a little digital eavesdropping too.
Ryan Dunn [00:15:08]:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Trolling for Jesus. That's what I call it. In a good way. Not, not to bring up the conflict, but yeah, just to get your finger on the pulse of what people are talking about for sure.
Ryan Dunn [00:15:21]:
You did mention looking at some of the metrics and your Instagram reels and Facebook posts and the like. You have a background in marketing. So obviously you have been engaged in some of the social media work of the church. Is that something that you're still heavily doing today as a as a lead pastor at your church?
Dan Wunderlich [00:15:44]:
Yes and no. I am grateful to have a communications person. I've had a communications person the whole time that I'm there. It's turned over a couple of times, so we've had all awesome people in that role. I do have a degree in advertising, but Facebook came to campus while I was there. So like my degree was, I really what I learned was how to communicate the the practicals of we were learning pay stub, ads. We were learning yellow pages ads. We're learning newspaper classified ads.
Dan Wunderlich [00:16:13]:
Like, the actual deploying of like, the strategy was was obsolete before I even got my degree. And so really I just, I had to learn by doing. And that is something that all of us can do. I have noticed that the less I'm in a day to day, the faster it gets away from me. When this was, when I was an extension ministry, I had time to read 3 social media blogs and subscribe to 5 newsletters and keep up with it. I don't have the brain space for that now with 2 kids and a full time job and some other activities going on. And it does get away from you, if you're not on top of it. Yeah.
Ryan Dunn [00:16:57]:
What was your introduction then to the social media side of the ministry? Were you on as an organization first or personally first on Facebook?
Dan Wunderlich [00:17:11]:
Yeah. I guess I had to have been on as a person first. You had to have a dotedu email address from whatever campus just got unlocked.
Ryan Dunn [00:17:20]:
Oh, you were really early.
Dan Wunderlich [00:17:23]:
Oh, yeah. Okay. Like, really early.
Ryan Dunn [00:17:25]:
Just for students. Cool. Okay.
Dan Wunderlich [00:17:27]:
Yes. But, you know, I think we were probably one of the first ministries to, like, create a profile for a person, but that person was Gator Wesley or whatever we were calling ourselves at the time. You know? So we were trying to hack Facebook to become an outreach tool. And and, you know, I like that early. There's no news feed. There's like it's just I and and I'm I feel so old now that it's a hard it's hard to to think back to that. But you just it was just every they introduced organization pages, so we got one. We had a website, and I was like doing stuff in flash and Photoshop and cutting up, you know, images and, it it's it's crazy what you you have to learn over time.
Dan Wunderlich [00:18:07]:
But one of the things that I taught through that that extension ministry, and I'm pretty sure I've shared it on the podcast somewhere in those 77 episodes, is that there is no such thing as a social media expert. There are social experts who learn the media, because the, the, the tools and the strategy is always gonna change. There's going to be a new platform to learn or all the platforms are going to change their algorithm. If you know how to talk to people, if you know how to connect with people, if you know how to, to, to build engagement? You just have to learn whatever the new tool is.
Ryan Dunn [00:18:47]:
Thank you for saying that I'm set to take over some more social media accounts and that that moniker of social media expert always makes me bristle a little bit. Like a lot
Dan Wunderlich [00:19:01]:
of our listeners.
Ryan Dunn [00:19:02]:
I'm sure, because I feel like I'm always, always, like, 2 steps behind. Right? So,
Dan Wunderlich [00:19:08]:
Well, that puts you 4 steps ahead of most churches.
Ryan Dunn [00:19:13]:
So. Maybe so, although it doesn't feel like
Dan Wunderlich [00:19:16]:
it. Sure.
Ryan Dunn [00:19:18]:
Well, is you've worked your way back into the lead pastoral ministry. You're still carrying on this, I guess, personal tradition of being an early adopter of some of the technologies. And I still am, learning quite a few things from you. What have been some of the technologies that you've been grabbing onto recently that have been helping you in your practice and ministry?
Dan Wunderlich [00:19:45]:
Well, right now we are still in the era of short form video. It's funny. I went back to my first episode as host and it was about the Facebook algorithm had changed. And this was like February of 2018, like 6 years ago, 6 and a half years ago. And, and it was all about how Facebook was gonna become personal. And you were gonna see all the people that you know, you're not gonna see as many brands and pages. You're you're certainly not gonna see people you don't know. Now, if you remember 2018, this is Facebook responding to all the 2016 election interference and all that stuff.
Dan Wunderlich [00:20:21]:
So there's context to it. But in our opening conversation, Darby's like, yeah, Facebook, you know, we get sucked in watching these short videos just for dopamine hits and entertainment. And that's just not a good use of time and and that's not what we should be doing. And maybe that's true. Like, it's it is not healthy. It's addictive, but it's also what won out. And now we're 6 years later, short form video is what wins out. And so a couple episodes ago, before I finished up, got to talk with the team behind pulpitai and Chad Brooks, who's a UMC pastor in Louisiana.
Dan Wunderlich [00:20:56]:
And this is an AI tool that you input your sermon in, either a manuscript or an audio file or a video file. And then it uses the power of chat GPT or whatever service they access to transform your sermon. But they've also added in, the ability to highlight a part of the transcript or, and and it'll clip the video for you. And it'll create a vertical video with captions from the transcript. So you have you you don't even need a video editor anymore. You know, you subscribe to a service like this and there are others. Pulp and AI is not the only one. But you subscribe to some of these services nowadays, and they are churning out exactly what social media is looking for.
Dan Wunderlich [00:21:38]:
How long this is? What leads the way in social media? Who knows? The vertical video trend is already changing a little bit. Right at the beginning, it posts the same thing on every platform because everyone is just gone. But each each platform is now getting its own, getting kind of its own culture. You know, when you're watching videos, Facebook is different than Instagram, which is different from YouTube shorts, which is different from TikTok. And it's largely, according to Brady Shearer, who's a person I would always learn from and, and, try to toot some of his stuff through our podcast. It's really, it's, it's being broken down by generation. Different generations are using different platforms. So vertical video is the format, but it's gen X and boomers on Facebook.
Dan Wunderlich [00:22:23]:
It's millennials on Instagram. It's, you know, gen Z on TikTok and it's gen alpha on YouTube.
Ryan Dunn [00:22:33]:
So if you were posting a short form video for your church, what might be the difference in the videos that you're posting to those different platforms?
Dan Wunderlich [00:22:41]:
We, right now, only post short form videos to Instagram and Facebook. So they're they're fairly similar. But my communications person is now a gen z person. And so some of the some of the editing that they've done on our video announcements cracked me up because he has so quickly learned the, like, the Zooms and the the intercuts and and like pasting in emojis. And and so just his sensibility and and his his, his editing style for our video announcements is probably a little bit off putting to some of our older folks, but like if we were, if we were posting short form videos, you know, to YouTube and to TikTok, I'd probably encourage him to do a bit more of the quick cuts in the zooms and the text on screen or imagery, that kind of stuff.
Ryan Dunn [00:23:28]:
As you're crafting a sermon, do you have the short form video in mind? I used to think about tweets. Like, is this gonna be tweetable? Yeah. Are you doing the same thing now with short form video? Like, oh, this is gonna be the moment.
Dan Wunderlich [00:23:41]:
I am trying to resist the urge to specifically write to that moment. But at the same time, like that's the, I do think that's part of it. I think when you get to a, when you get to a segment or a part of your sermon that you think would be relevant to people outside of the walls of your church. I think it behooves you to try to fit it in 90 seconds or less, if you can, or at least fit a portion of it there. Right. You can expound on it. Because I'm a I'm a person of nuance and caveats, and I have a real real hard time just being this is how it is or this is exactly what you should do. And so my, you know, my reels at first, like, 3 and a half minutes long.
Dan Wunderlich [00:24:25]:
That's not a reel. That's just a video, you know. And so we've had to get better about it. But but there are also times where I'm preaching and I know this is the moment. So actually I'm gonna look down the barrel of the camera. Like we've got a camera in the back and I do not regulate I look in it at the beginning of the service. I look in it during the passing of the piece and talk to them about being able to give online later in the service. But I generally don't like it's as I'm scanning the congregation, the camera isn't in that scan unless I'm like, oh, this is gonna be the moment.
Dan Wunderlich [00:24:56]:
And then I try to make eye contact. Not for long. I don't want it to end up like televangelist style. But I do try to make that eye contact. Yeah.
Ryan Dunn [00:25:05]:
No. So, but as far as our manuscript preacher or more extemporaneous since you are doing the improv.
Dan Wunderlich [00:25:15]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pre pandemic, I was no notes at all. I wrote completely verbally. I would just walk in circles or take a walk around a park or take a walk on a trail and I would just do my sermon. And without fail, my first time through was 60 minutes. My second time through was 45 minutes.
Dan Wunderlich [00:25:36]:
My third time through was 30 minutes. And it was just like, and this is how, Taika Waititi does screenplays. I saw a reel with him. He he writes a screenplay. He puts it in his desk for a year, and then he pulls it out. He reads it one time, throws it away, and retypes everything he can remember and just assumes that whatever he remembers were the engaging parts of the screenplay, and then he fills it out. We don't have a year between sermons. But you know, just like every, every time through when you're not making notes, like you're just remembering what you thought was effective.
Dan Wunderlich [00:26:11]:
I was pre pandemic. I was 18 to 22 minutes. I'm now like 25 to 40 minutes. I have notes on the iPad. I read more than I'd like, but they're handwritten notes. They're halfway between an outline and a manuscript. And, yeah. Yeah.
Dan Wunderlich [00:26:27]:
A lot of pastors got shorter in the pandemic. I got longer.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:31]:
Yeah. I was asking because I was just curious if you were very intentional about trying to identify the moments where you might have your 92nd landing of impact.
Dan Wunderlich [00:26:42]:
I do I if if I notice it as I'm writing, I will try to workshop some of the language, and I will try to internalize it so I'm not just reading it. And I try to do that with the end, of every sermon. I'm not super successful, but I would love to be as as connected to the congregation and not look into my iPad as possible. But a lot of times I, for whatever reason, I just, I tend to notice it in the moment. If I notice it in the moment and and in some ways that is the kind of the urge that you're you're taught to pay attention to in improv. And so I can, even in those moments, maybe go away from my notes and say like, I know this is gonna be it. So what can I say that will be most helpful right here or how can I drive it home? So, yeah.
Ryan Dunn [00:27:22]:
We're gonna wander away from the technology and, and look at some of the other things that you've been learning. Yeah. Because I'm curious about how how improv training has impacted your practice of ministry, especially teaching. Have you seen an overlap?
Dan Wunderlich [00:27:37]:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. There's, Pastor Katie up in Virginia. I think her last name is Phillips, Pastor Katie up in Virginia. She was a, a professional improv comedian is now a United Methodist pastor is incorporating improv in her ministry. Now that I'm to a degree trained, I want to do that at my church. I think it's just, I think it's an excellent tool for all areas of life, how I have taught it to other pastors and contextualized it, is that that first rule of improv that most people know, yes, and you say yes, and. A lot of pastors get really nervous because does that mean I need to say yes to whatever the person I'm interacting with? And we've all been online.
Dan Wunderlich [00:28:21]:
We know we can't say yes to everything. But in the world of improv, yes doesn't mean I agree. Yes means you have offered something and I receive it. You have been heard and I acknowledge that we are now in conversation together and we're building something together. And that's what the and means. I am now going to add something. I'm not gonna make you carry all the weight. And once you start going into conversations with congregation members, especially, during the season of disaffiliation, when you knew you were going into the room, wanting to say no, but to just about everything you anticipated them saying, finding the times when you could say yes, and I hear you, This is a concern of mine as well.
Dan Wunderlich [00:29:02]:
And also here's another way of looking at it. So just that that most basic, you know, improv rule, is really helpful. And then all sorts of stuff around listening. One of my favorite games to play with pastors is make them have conversations. But the first word of what you say has to be the last word of what the person you're having a conversation with said. It requires you to listen all the way to the end because all of us are pre loading what we're going to say And we're in conversation and you can't, you can't do that. You can't do that. So teaching us to, to break that, that need for, for control and learning to listen.
Dan Wunderlich [00:29:38]:
Those have been very foundational for me in ministry.
Ryan Dunn [00:29:41]:
Well, in doing a little future thinking. So you're looking at ways of how you can apply improv to your practice of ministry. What are some other ways that you see the church changing in the next few years? This is your chance to kind of step out in the, into a bold space here because, you know, there's no accountability here. We'll have you back in a few years when we get out in San Juan and John and,
Dan Wunderlich [00:30:11]:
you could check the scorecard for sure. Yeah. So I'll go back to what I said where, just out of curiosity, I jumped back to what my first episode was. And it was all about Mark Zuckerberg saying Facebook is going to make your time time well spent, and it's gonna focus on personal connection. And that lasted for 18 months, right? And the Facebook algorithm has changed multiple times since then. TikTok launched. Obviously the pandemic accelerated change and perhaps we'll see less change in the next 5 years than we've seen in the last 5. I find it highly unlikely.
Dan Wunderlich [00:30:46]:
So our ability to, to to prognosticate with accuracy, is probably pretty low. But, I thank you for sending this in. What I have been thinking about is there is a generation of parents and we're part of them that wanna raise low tech kids. We want to I don't know. Protect is the right word. We would like them to enter the world of social media and online connection at a time in which their brains are more ready for it. And it is it's no fault of of my parents' generation. I'm 40 years old.
Dan Wunderlich [00:31:24]:
I didn't get my first cell phone until, till college. But, you know, we've got the last maybe 10 or 15 years of kids who were given iPads just to, to, to get them to be quiet and, you know, Minecraft and online gaming and all this stuff. And I think the word, I think the movement towards, towards low tech amongst kids is gonna grow. And if that's the case then in 5 and especially 10 years, People are going to be going into youth and young adulthood are going to have a different relationship with tech than we do now. I'm hoping it will be a more responsible, but that's putting a lot of pressure on the kids. But all that to say, I think we're going to see less people sharing so much of their life. And I think we're going to see people being more judicious about how much they communicate, how they connect. Already.
Dan Wunderlich [00:32:25]:
The younger kids, they're still in Snapchat because it's based off the DM model or, you know, kind of small groups. They're not, they're certainly not on Facebook. They're not really on Instagram. They might be on TikTok consuming content, or even publishing their own, but the way they connect with others is through DMs. And so the big challenge for the church is going to be how do we responsibly, ethically, and morally with all the right boundaries in place? And how do we, communicate if and when it becomes much more not public communication, whether that's, you know, Email listservs. I don't know. I don't know what it's going to look like, but I, I do think, I do think the big public Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I think it's. Don't think it's going to go away, but I think it's peak has happened now.
Dan Wunderlich [00:33:25]:
Bring me on in 5 years. I'm sure I'll be absolutely wrong, but that's my thought. Cause I think, I think it's going to go much more personal and much more private. And I think that is a reaction to what we are now understanding about what this stuff is doing to our brains. And, and it's gonna take a generation of parents raising their kids differently, and those kids having a different relationship to tax.
Ryan Dunn [00:33:47]:
And your synopsis of the traits of this younger generation in my practical experience as the parent of a teenager is right on because here, my son has, no presence on Facebook, not on Instagram. Has it a TikTok account, but is doing exactly what you said, posts 0 content, but consumes a lot of it there. And the DM side of things. And here he heavily gets into discord. As a, as a chat feature is integral for his relationship building with his friends, that they're in constant contact now through these DMing platforms.
Dan Wunderlich [00:34:28]:
And we're we're seeing now a little bit in this election cycle, people whose past Internet history is coming back to bite them. I think that's gonna the first time we have a presidential candidate that has to drop out because of something they posted on Facebook. Kids are just there. The young people I think are gonna change the way that they conduct themselves online. Either that, or we're just all gonna decide it doesn't matter. That'll be a different and possibly sad day too. So,
Ryan Dunn [00:34:56]:
or or, you
Dan Wunderlich [00:34:56]:
know, or just admit we're all dumb and we all did that stuff. It's just they had the bad luck of it getting captured on camera. So
Ryan Dunn [00:35:02]:
Absolutely. Yeah. Because we could probably both relate to back to some regrettable things that we said or did when we were teenagers, and it just For sure. Yeah. There wasn't a moment to capture that. The media wasn't there. Right? So Yeah.
Dan Wunderlich [00:35:14]:
Yeah. Well, and I sorry to go off on this tangent, but are you see articles about phone free schools. And I heard an interview with a superintendent. He does soup with the soup and he sits down with students and has lunch with them. And the number of students, particularly middle school girls who thank him for, loan free schools. They're like, I don't have to spend an hour doing my hair, makeup and wardrobe every morning. I just don't feel the pressure that I'm going to be on camera at any moment. And so, yeah, I think.
Dan Wunderlich [00:35:48]:
It's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna be a big change and it's gonna, it's gonna have to change the way that churches interact for sure. Because they're gonna take things more private, but that's also gonna be more healthy. And so we we just have to, we have to cheer on that change and then accept the challenge of figuring out how to connect in that kind of world.
Ryan Dunn [00:36:07]:
Good stuff. Well, Dan, before I let you go, any other bold predictions for the future of church?
Dan Wunderlich [00:36:13]:
Good gracious. Bold predictions for the future of the church. I, well, let's keep it United Methodist. I do think we are going to see a period of time of contraction. I think we're gonna see some smaller churches either close, or merge. Already in Florida, we're responding to, you know, kind of now UMC Deserts, areas of town that don't have United Methodist Ministries anymore. But I'm really, really excited, to see how conferences are going to try to step in those gaps and have the opportunity to make church planting a priority again, potentially make digital church planting a priority again. And my hope would be to not that that mega churches are the ideal, but I would love to see with contraction people not just melting away, but joining together either with a ministry that is healthy nearby, or joining together to to build something new, without, you know, all the the golden calves that come with 125 year old churches, and all that.
Dan Wunderlich [00:37:27]:
So
Ryan Dunn [00:37:28]:
Cool. Well, Dan, thank you so much for carving out the time to talk to us. Welcome back to the podcast. It's 50 Real.
Dan Wunderlich [00:37:36]:
Yeah. And for those watching on YouTube, this is what I look like. I'm I we didn't have the video component, and, and, so this is this is the this is the face to go with the voice. Probably shattered the illusion for the last Yep. Years. But but thank you, Ryan. And thank you, to Renee and the whole team there. You guys are the best.
Dan Wunderlich [00:37:55]:
It was a privilege. I'm always here to serve. Thank you, of course, to all the listeners again. Like I said before, y'all are the reason Ryan and I do this work. We would not do it if it weren't helpful to folks and you guys inspire us. I hope that you left every episode at the very least encouraged that you are not alone, that there are other people trying to figure this stuff out together.
Ryan Dunn [00:38:18]:
For sure. Dan, thanks so much.
Dan Wunderlich [00:38:21]:
Of course. Thank you.
Ryan Dunn [00:38:24]:
Alright. That is a wrap on episode number 100 of my comm. Congrats to Dan, to some of the people from the past, Darby and Josh, who helped to get the whole thing started, to Renee, who continues to oversee production. I'm Ryan Dunn, and I'm looking forward to connecting with you again through episode number 101 due out in 1 month's time. This episode has been sponsored by Rooted Good, your church, your community, your future. The good futures accelerator course provides churches with the tools to creatively use church property, to align money and mission and build financial resilience. Imagine empty rooms to shared working spaces, commercial kitchens to incubator food businesses, parking lots to weekly farmers markets. Your solution will be unique to your church and your community.
Ryan Dunn [00:39:18]:
Good Futures works. Learn more at rootedgood.org/good futures. If you need a little bit more of my com in the meantime, I would recommend our May 20 24 episode with Sabrina Joyce Stevens about digital storytelling. It compliments this episode nicely. And so does episode number 84 with Brady Shearer in which he and Dan talked about a 1 page church social media plan. Well done team. We'll have episode 101 to you on the 3rd Tuesday in November 2024. In the meantime, peace to you.