CEP SEASON THREE EP: 16 - WITH GUEST CHANDLER BOYCE

May 11

By Dave Mckeown and Nathan Benger

A Short Bio

Chandler is passionate about every relationship he makes and every audience he speaks to. He loves people and wants to help them by any means possible. As the President of Free Church Media and Owner of The Marketing Co-op, Chandler is passionate about assisting people to grow their influence to advance the Kingdom.

When he isn't working, you'll find Chandler spending time with his wife and six-year-old daughter, googling the newest trends, using all Verizon's cell phone minutes, cleaning the entire Haribo Gummy Bear factory, and trying to figure out why golf is so hard.

In this episode, we discuss the challenges churches face when it comes to getting their story known or getting themselves out there and the opportunities available for churches online.

Chandler offers advice for churches interested in getting online but doesn't have a big budget. He emphasises the importance of consistency, creating content that adds value, and utilising the message of Sunday sermons to develop different forms of content throughout the week. Chandler's insights provide great ideas and practical steps for churches looking to expand their reach and communicate the most incredible message on Earth.

We hope you are inspired!

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

CREATED BY AI - SO NOT 100% accurate.

David Mckeown 0:00

Hey welcome everyone to the church explained podcast, a conversation degree your leadership and build your Church.

Nathan Benger 0:09

I'm Dave I'm Nathan. And as usual we are your host for this episode. Today we've been joined by Chandler Boyce and he's kindly provided us with a bio here is a great bio. So get ready people Strap yourselves there. Here we go. Oh, Chandler is passionate about every relationship he makes and every audience he speaks to. He loves people and wants to help them by any means possible. As the president of Free Church media and the owner of the marketing Co Op. Chandler is passionate about helping people grow their influence to advance the kingdom. Right get yourself strapped him pee. There we go. Here we go. When he isn't working, you'll find Chandler spending time with his wife and six year old daughter googling the newest trends. using up all Verizon cell phone minutes, cleaning out the entire Haribo Gummy Bear factory and trying to figure out why golf is so hard and I'm still trying to figure that out. So why is it so hard Chandler

Chandler Boyce 1:07

Listen, as a former college baseball player, it is the most frustrating thing I have experienced in life. Like I like I would say the hardest thing in life is marriage. But golf is harder than that.

Nathan Benger 1:22

Golf golf is and but but it's the it's the good shots that keep you coming back. No matter how many bad shots you have. The one good shot will keep you coming back.

Chandler Boyce 1:32

Oh, absolutely. It just takes one it just takes one. It's it's it's like you, you know, I've never I've never been I didn't ever have a drug phase. But I imagine if I was a drug addict that that's the correlation like with golf. Is that one good shot like I'm gonna come back. I'm not gonna give it up.

David Mckeown 1:53

Hey, Chandler, it is so good to have you with us. We should welcome you're probably the golf topic, because this isn't a golfing podcast. No,

Nathan Benger 2:00

no, even though at time of recording, David is masters week.

David Mckeown 2:05

It is masters week. Okay, well, I was attracted to the gummy bears, but you went for the gold? What can we say? Hey, well, it's a great to have you here. And we just want to dig in a little bit and find out something about yourself. So Hey, John, tell us a little bit about your story. Your maybe your faith background ministry background, and that will be great. Just to hear about that.

Chandler Boyce 2:27

Yeah, faith background, so fortunate to have been raised by two wonderful parents, Christian parents who, you know, I always I grew up always wishing I had a good testimony. Like, I wish, you know, I had like, some crazy story of God meeting me when I was, you know, on the side of the road, or, you know, doing bad stuff. But my testimony is that I have was raised by two wonderful, faithful parents who showed me the way. And so grew up, grew up in Church and played sports, my whole life, never really got much trouble, you know, kind of, you know, we all have those seasons when we're working on our testimony. And, you know, it was some some thing God for God's grace, got out of college and came back home. And I was 2008 2009. So there was kind of that was a recession time. I was confident I was, you know, had a degree, no one was hiring my own dad couldn't get me a job. You know, and I was kind of had an identity crisis, like, God, you know, what, you know, what do you want me to do? Who am I? What do want me to do? Like, like, what's next? And I was I started going to a small group at my Church that actually my not you know, she wasn't didn't my wife now was she was leading that small group, and our Church had a summer camp. And so I, you know, I jumped in, we had a bunch of young adults and was just praying God, what you want to do, what do you want to do? And I felt like he, he just he gave me one word. He told me to serve. And so that summer, I, our churches, you know, had a summer camp and I just, I started serving, I literally, I served in the kitchen, I served in the concession stand, I served on the volleyball court. I mean, I was there from the minute it open to, you know, till close the whole summer. Long story short, you know, couple years later, I, you know, I'd got a job. My wife and I had dated and got married, and I was I had done was doing a sales job at a construction company, and quit that quit that job. No clue I was gonna do. And my father in law was like, Hey, why don't you come and help, you know, help build a summer camp? We're kind of we were basically in a transition season from the person who was leading it. And I was like, Sure, I'll do it for a little bit. Well, long story short, you know, a couple years later, I was. I was, you know, when I was like, I leading the summer camp and was running it and Just it's funny how God does that where I was just like, yeah, just I'll serve, I guess, like, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I'm just gonna go serve at the summer camp and then, you know, quickly, you know, 234 years later, I'm standing on the stage and praying for kids and we've got a leadership conference and, and yeah, and so did that for almost a decade. And then, you know, things things happen. And that's a whole nother story. But then God moved us to Fort Worth. And my wife is on staff, our Church, she's our she's over. She's on the preaching team executive team leads our leads a women's ministry here and, and I recently started kind of started my own business and yeah, so that's kind of kind of my Quick, quick background. But it's it's it's a story of God's faithfulness through the life's funds, highs and lows,

David Mckeown 5:50

ya know, right. Hey, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I guess we want to find out. You've mentioned golf. And now, we have a question here. What do you do for fun? You can't include golf, because you described it already. So so what what else do you do each on?

Chandler Boyce 6:05

Honestly, that is that has been my recently it was actually last year I got into it. And the reason why I actually. So it's kind of a joke, like, if you play if you play baseball, like the next thing you do, once you get done is you just go you go to golf. So the minute I got done playing college ball, I went took lessons, it was so frustrating, I took one lesson, I was like, I hate this, I'm never doing this again. And that was you know, 2009 Right. And so I last year, I was like, Man, I want to do I want to tackle something, do something that is going to humble me, that I'm gonna have to work at, it's going to be hard, it's not going to be easy. Like I'm actually going to have to apply myself fully or at some level to trying to get decent at something. And so I was like, I'm gonna do golf. And it honestly, the first few times I went to play guys, it was like walking into the lunch room as a freshman in high school, and you're you know, you feel like you don't know where to sit and who your friends are nervous and you think someone's gonna make funny it's it's it's it's a fun so got a golf is my that's kind of my one. My one fun I practice we I'll take the girls out, we'll set up a blanket do picnic, you know, hit golf balls and all that stuff. So it's that's kind of my my fun thing right now.

David Mckeown 7:33

Well, we'll give you that one. Yeah,

Nathan Benger 7:34

it's awesome. I love it. I love it too. Just just to frame our conversation, because we're going to talk about kind of, you know, social media, getting your Church now and that kind of thing. Would you just explain, you know, in your bio, you're the president of Free Church media, the owner of the marketing, Co Op, would you explain what they are? And what kind of services and what you do is, you know, part of your role now.

Chandler Boyce 8:02

Yeah, so Free Church media is a really cool story. I won't, I won't get into it. But basically, having led a summer camp and working with and being around many churches from all over the country of different sizes, I realised that most churches, especially at the kind of sub ministry levels, you youth ministry, young adults, whatever, they don't have the resources, the finances to, to have high quality graphics, sermon series, videos, bumper videos, countdown videos, whatever, whatever it is. And, and so we, you know, basically free Church media, we create, we curate good, like, high quality, free graphics and videos for churches, and, and I, again, i My heart is for the local Church, and I, we believe you, us, everyone, we believe that the gospel is the greatest message and it needs to be communicated and displayed. Excellent. And so we just want to make sure that if if churches don't have those resources, they have some they can get in see in in, you know, like us resources that are attractive, that are appealing to people. I think I think that matters. And then yeah, on the on the marketing side. I'm, you know, I started my own marketing consulting business last year, and really just want to help churches create a actual plan and strategy to communicate the greatest message in the greatest organisation, the greatest cause on Earth. And, and it's, it's, there's a gap there in the churches, not every Church but a lot churches are still catching up. And I feel like when it comes to displaying, communicating, advertising, marketing, it's churches are just there. We're a little behind on having a game plan and knowing and understanding how to what to do How to communicate how to display and how to attract people to their Church to their social media, whatever it may be.

David Mckeown 10:06

Yeah. Awesome. I love that great, great free resources there. And some paid stuff as well. So thinking of churches them? I mean, you've mentioned a little bit there, Chandler but what do you think are the biggest challenges churches face when it comes to getting their story known or getting themselves out there?

Chandler Boyce 10:26

I mean, yeah, that's a, that's a great question. I was, you know, I was thinking about this when I was going over, you know, going over the questions. And, I mean, there's, there's many, you know, there's many, many obstacles that churches have, obviously, where, you know, you've got the staff that you have to have, you know, you need, you got the lead Pastor, then you need a worship Pastor, and a kid's Pastor, and, and so it's like, getting to a place in a size in finding someone that can focus on that, and take, you know, what the Church is doing the ministry, the message, the testimonies, the, you know, the stories, and in capturing those, communicating those emails, you know, whatever, whatever forms, there are, it's a lot, it really is, it's a lot. And, and I'll say, when it comes to the digital space, it's constantly moving. You know, I think, when it comes to other ministry positions, and within the Church there, you know, things change, but it's, it's all there's just a lot of the key foundations of the Church and roles there. There's some similarities, there's some, some basic things, but when it comes to the digital online space, it's, it's a lot it's ever changing. And so having someone that, that whether they're a volunteer, or you know, it's just, it's a lot. And so it's, it's trying to find it, and that's what I'm I'm passionate about is like I want to, I want to help like, hey, whether it's me, you don't have to hire me, but here's the things that you need to do. Here's the things that are helpful. Here's the ways that you can reach your community. Because the truth is, even if someone I would, I would say that even if someone gets invited to a Church, they're gonna go online, they're gonna do the research. Like we do it with everything. Like I just recently moved, you know, I grew up my entire life in the same in the same little city, right? So I knew, I knew where I knew the best restaurants were, who the best mechanic was, I had my doctor, I moved, and I didn't know anybody. So I'd asked my friends at Church, hey, I need this, I need this. Even if one of my good friends here told me something, hey, this is the best this is, guess what I'm doing? I'm still going online. I'm still going when we look. And even if my good friend recommends something, I'm going Yeah, I don't know, man. They're there. Their websites trash, they have no reviews, it looks like a sketchy place. I'm gonna go somewhere else. And the truth is people are doing that with churches. And so I think it matters, it matters to be excellent in every area. And an excellence is doing the best with what you have, obviously, not everyone. Yeah, I get it. But we've got to do the best of what we have. So it's, we've got to utilise that space. And I think we've got to fill fill up that space, because it can be a both dark and a place where we can bring the light in and try to reach people with the greatest message on Earth.

Nathan Benger 13:32

So, so just thinking of that space, what do you think is the you know, like speaking to churches now? What's the significant opportunity for that Church or for a Church at at the moment in terms of, you know, that online space?

Chandler Boyce 13:50

Yeah, I mean, you can, the truth is, is that if churches or you know, even pastors leaders, you know, they have a message you can reach more people, like daily than you can on a Sunday, like, that's the truth online, you can compound very quickly. Not and I'm not even talking about, like, nationally, like, I'm talking about in your area, reaching people. And but it comes down to knowing how to, and also crafting a message in in speaking to where people are speaking to people's pain, their hurt, you know, and I think sometimes, you know, we churches go online, and they talk, they're talking to Christians, like, we can't, you've got to figure it we've got to figure out ways to communicate and appeal to people in in and around us and online that that they're asking these questions, they're searching for these things. And so there's a great opportunity to to actually communicate and to create messages and content that people are, you know, they want to engage in and like I said, the truth is you can reach a true Churches message their team, their Pastor, they can reach more people online than you probably ever will, on a Sunday in a, you know, in a Church building.

David Mckeown 15:13

Yeah, that's great. And that created great insights for people and for leaders just to think through, who are they reaching? And thinking beyond like, we're just putting this content out here to communicate information to the Church. I guess it's good at first to think and dig in a little bit. Like, let's say a Church is interested doing the social stuff, getting online. Thinking of marketing, you know, what, what's your advice to a Church? If they've maybe haven't got a staff member to do that? Or maybe they they got a tiny budget, like lots of churches don't necessarily have a big budget for this? What advice? What do they need to do first?

Chandler Boyce 15:53

That's a good question. I think, Well, I'll say this, the, the most, the content that is the most, you know, can be obviously depends. But the content that's the most time and energy and thought and prayer has gone into is on Sunday. So so how can you? How can you compound that content? So what can you do with a Sunday sermon? Obviously, you can, you know, take it, there's, there's, you know, there's apps out there and you can hire people to do it, or, I mean, honestly, find someone find a young person who knows how to, you know, they can get on their phone and edit a video doesn't have to be complicated. But take Sunday sermon, one cut up, you know, cut up the good pieces of that Sunday sermon, but you can also, I mean, from Sunday sermon, you can, you know, use AI or whatever, and create a blog, you can create, you know, basically sermon summaries, hey, here's, here's this Sunday sermon takeaways from this week, in craft that message and put it into different forms throughout the week. So that way, and I'm saying this is a very simple like, Okay, what's the easy way to create content? Yeah, what I'm trying to keep it like, very, very simple. But how can you create those things? And like, for instance, right now, the most, you know, especially on Instagram, the kind of what the algorithm wants is reels and carousels. Well, great, take the Sunday sermon, cut up some reels, schedule that, take the Sunday sermon, and create carousel posts on Canva. If you're at 501, C, three Canvas free Well, it used to be, I think it still is, but either way, it's not that expensive. And, and now with AI you can do I mean, you can do anything. I mean, there's so many apps, like, you know, Otter, otter is free for 501. C three is as well, you can run a youtube video through otter, it'll transcribe it. There you go, you can create a blog, you got all the content you can create, you know, I mean, like, just kind of, again, take Sunday sermon, look at that, take that content, your Pastor, or if you're a Pastor, you have poured your heart and soul into that you've spent 20 3040 hours, then we've got to, we've got to utilise that content and stretch it out. Over over, you know, the next week or two. And, and then you know, is for blogs, man, every Church needs to have a blog one because people want some people want to read some people want to listen, some people want to watch. But it's also that's good for for SEO, which is search engine optimization, that's going to help your church's website to increase their Google were able to find you. I mean, all those things. So that's what I would say kind of a simple thing is, is utilise the message on Sunday, and spread that out and create different content from the content that's already created.

David Mckeown 18:48

Creating isn't it?

Nathan Benger 18:50

Yeah, recreating what we have. And I think I think we have to do and maybe you can speak into this a little bit Chandler, but remembering the why behind we're doing it. You know, it's it's about getting that message out there. Like you said earlier. And, and so I wondered if you'd maybe speak into that a little bit for churches in the fact of, you know, a lot of people will be thinking or that that seems like a lot of work. I wonder if you just relate that to like, yeah, actually, here's, here's what that work, you know, even some of that stuff's not not that, you know, not that much work. But here's what that can bring about into a Church.

Chandler Boyce 19:31

I mean, I'll say this. And some of this is getting my opinion. So, you know, it's all up for discussion. Being consistent, online, whether it's, you know, website content, youtube, creating stuff. Again, you're gonna be able to reach and encourage you know, if you're adding value again for me when you're creating content and putting stuff out there needs to add value not Now not everything is going to add value and get it you, you've got to send some emails that are maybe a little bit more like, Hey, here's what's going on. Okay, whatever, there's ways to do both at the same time. But the truth is being consistent creating content, having a game plan, making sure your message is clear in your, you're talking to people, you're inviting them into the story, you're talking to their pain points and not just, you know, putting out announcements, you're going to be able to reach like this, the online space is going to reach and bring more people into your Church it can than any single person in your Church. So the investment at some level in someone helping someone doing someone creating content, I think it needs to be considered a little bit more, because you, even your people online creating content that they want to share and utilise, to invite or send to friends. Again, it's going to bring it's going to it's going to reach more people and more people are going to see and more people are going to come to your doors than any any single person, any any person you could pay on your staff. It's going to it's going to reach and bring more people like that's, that's my that's what I think right now. And I think I think, you know, I put a post out like this and it was kind of a satire or not satire, but, you know, with social media, you kind of have to be polarising, it's a little annoying, but it's what people did just, every time you do it, it gets more interaction. And so I'm like, Okay, I'll play the game. But I put a post out that said, if Jesus was alive today, he would have a videographer like walking around with him and basically recording like, basically, like a Gary Vee like he would be putting out content constantly. And, like, you know, I think nowadays with churches, I would consider highly consider having someone that can capture and create and post content should be at the top of the who I'm going to hire next list. Now, that's debatable, of course, but that's just that's just a thought that I think should should be considered investing in. Because I think it allows you to at some many levels to train your leaders, disciple people, walk them through, you know, courses, you know, creating that every evergreen content that you can utilise, and, you know, on you know, onboarding or you know, people that are new to your Church Hey, watch this go through this class online and in you know, find out who we are find out what, how to pray, whatever those things are. I think it's there's a lot of benefits to

Nathan Benger 22:45

it. Well, Chandler it's been so good to have you on the church explained podcast and want to thank everyone for listening to the church explained podcast don't forget to support us by subscribing share and leaving a review wherever you're consuming this content. And as Chandler said, we do have free resources and IKON dot Church forward slash open, where you can get free resources for yourself and for your Church. But we look forward to seeing everyone next time on the church explained podcast. We'll see you soon.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai