The Communication Shift Your Church Made Without Deciding To with Jerod Walker

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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jerod Walker from Intulse, a church calling and texting platform designed to help ministry teams communicate with people without relying on personal phone numbers. Jerod spent 20 years serving in local church ministry as a children’s pastor, lead pastor, and church planter before joining Intulse, where he now helps churches strengthen communication, follow-up, and accountability.

Are your staff members using personal cell numbers for ministry? Are important conversations living on individual devices where no one else can see or access them? Tune in as Jerod identifies communication blind spots that can quietly hinder church growth and explains how churches can serve people more personally while protecting staff, families, and ministry.

• Personal phones became ministry tools by accident. // Over the last 20 years, church communication shifted dramatically. Smartphones and COVID accelerated the move away from office phones and email toward personal mobile devices. But most churches never intentionally decided that staff members’ personal phones should become their primary ministry communication system. Convenience drove the change, and many churches are now discovering the unintended consequences of that decision.
• Protect your staff’s personal boundaries. // Once a staff member gives out a personal number, it can’t be taken back. Messages begin arriving at night, on weekends, during vacations, and even in important moments with family. Even if someone chooses not to respond immediately, a difficult text can still change their emotional state. Jerod encourages churches to remember that healthy communication systems should help ministry leaders remain available without making them accessible every hour of every day.
• Make sure follow-up actually happens. // As churches grow, leaders can no longer personally know whether every guest, volunteer, or attendee received the promised follow-up. Assuming someone owns the process isn’t enough. Churches need a way to verify that calls and messages actually happened. This is especially important with first-time guests, where missed communication can create gaps in assimilation and cause people to quietly disappear before they ever become connected.
• Create continuity between ministry teams. // Communication often breaks down when one staff member hands a person off to another department. A guest may express interest in kids ministry, Alpha, a small group, or another next step, but the new staff member may have no context for the previous conversation. When communication history is documented and accessible, people don’t have to repeatedly explain their story every time they interact with someone new.
• Separate ministry communication from personal communication. // Intulse allows staff members to call and text through a work-assigned number using the smartphone they already carry. Staff can control notifications, turn them off during personal time, and even allow another team member to monitor the number while they are away. This helps leaders maintain healthy boundaries while ensuring people still receive a timely response.
• Connect conversations to your church database. // Intulse integrates with church management systems including Planning Center, Rock, CCB, and Breeze. Calls and text messages can be automatically logged in a person’s record, and staff can add notes during a conversation. Instead of relying on memory or requiring another manual database step, important ministry interactions become part of the church’s shared information.
• Build a communication policy before you need one. // Jerod encourages churches to create clear guidelines for one-to-one ministry communication, not just mass emails and announcements. A shared system provides accountability and helps protect both staff members and the church. Rather than viewing these safeguards as distrust, leaders can frame them as protection: when communication is visible within the approved system, the church is better equipped to defend staff against misunderstandings or accusations.
• Keep ministry history with the church. // When conversations happen only on a staff member’s personal phone, that communication history leaves when the employee leaves. The church may lose important context, relationships, and follow-up information. Keeping ministry communication within a church-owned system allows those conversations to remain accessible and ensures another leader can continue caring for people without starting from scratch.
• Use technology to become more human. // Larger churches often struggle to maintain the personal feel people experience in smaller churches. Jerod believes technology should make genuine human connection easier, not replace it. Bulk messages can become individual two-way conversations, and staff can quickly call or text people without unnecessary friction. The goal is to use technology to reduce administrative work so ministry leaders have more time to personally care for people.

To learn more about Jerod Walker and Intulse, visit intulse.com/unseminary. There you can download the free resource, 10 Communication Blind Spots That Hinder Church Growth, and schedule a conversation with the Intulse team to explore how your church can improve communication, follow-up, accountability, and staff boundaries.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, lean in, folks. Lean in hard on today’s episode because we’re going to talk about something today that I’m pretty sure 100% of the churches that we’re listening with, or very close to 100 % of the churches we’re listening to are wrestling with.

Rich Birch — This is an issue that if you could solve this issue, it’ll be a better work-life balance stuff for your team. And at the same time, you’ll serve more people in a better way. The people you’re trying to serve in your community, which that can sometimes be in opposition to each other, but not in today’s conversation.

Rich Birch — I’m really excited. We have coerced the one and only Jerod Walker to be with us on the call today. Super excited to have him. He’s a part of the executive team at a technology firm called Intulse. They’re a church calling and texting platform that has spent the last 10 years building this incredible solution. It lets church staff call and text from their own smart smartphone or from a smartphone without using their own personal number. It’s all connected to your church management software. So stuff like Planning Center and Rock. So all of that is logged. And they work with some incredible churches across the country, help lots of great things happening. They’ve got 20 years of hands-on ministry experience. Jerod, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.

Jerod Walker — Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity, Rich. Looking forward to it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I’m pumped to to talk this through a little bit. But why don’t you start with kind of giving us a little bit of your background. Tell us the Jerod story. Tell us about Intulse and kind of the the corner of the church world that you have found yourself in and and kind of your area of expertise. Tell us, talk us through that.

Jerod Walker — Yeah, so I spent 20 years serving churches in ministry in located ministry as pastor children’s pastor, lead pastor even a church planter. And I’m not the only one on the Intulse team. We have a number of former pastors, missionaries and other church planters on our team.

Jerod Walker — In fact, the founders of Intulse had originally written church management software that maybe some of the people listening to this used. And then they sold that company and Intulse became what they did next. And originally they sold to businesses because of their arrangement when they sold the company not to not to you know those non-solicitation agreements.

Rich Birch — Yeah, non-compete or whatever.

Jerod Walker — And so I often say that we use the business world to figure out how to make it all work and then brought it to churches where our heart really is. And so our our pricing for churches is discounted by 20%. 10% of our profit goes to a missions organization in the Dominican because that’s just the heart of of who we are.

Jerod Walker — So we want to serve churches because we’ve been there and we’re active in our own churches. We want to continue to create technology tools, that benefit the ministries and churches that we love. And so we work with churches all across the country, all different sizes i could name really large churches with hundreds of staff on our system as well as the church plant with just a couple of people on the team that are using us as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I want to take advantage of the fact of kind of your vantage point because of what you just said there at the end. You you really see inside a lot of churches as an organization. You get ah an upfront view of the kinds of issues that churches are trying to solve and to fix and to use technology.

Rich Birch — I love, you know, unSeminary, we call it this you know stuff you wish they taught in seminary. And I can tell you there ain’t no seminary that’s talking about what we’re talking about today

Jerod Walker — Right.

Rich Birch — But this is classic because this is an issue that all churches wrestle with, but we just don’t talk about it. And so I want to take advantage of that. When you let’s think about a kind of a growing church. You’re thinking about maybe it’s like a church of a thousand people, just as a framework. You know what do you see in a church like that what’s their communication like? Where are maybe things working well? Maybe things they are struggling with? What are some of the pains they have? Talk us through what does what does that look like.

Jerod Walker — Well, it’s kind of interesting to talk about it because this is an area where we’ve seen a lot of transformation in the last 20 years. If I think about when I served at a church of about 1,500 as a children’s pastor, when I started there, the church had one email inbox.

Rich Birch — Ha!

Jerod Walker — And one person was monitoring that and they would print out every email that came in and put it in the staff member box…

Rich Birch — Love it. …that that message was relevant for. And then we would call them using the phone on our desk…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jerod Walker — …to follow up. And that was that was what communication looked like. I think partly because of new technology that’s come out. I mean, smartphones really transformed our ability to communicate. But then COVID as well, we we probably pre-COVID thought about communication especially one-to-one church communication happening from our office, whether that was a physical desk phone or email. But then we realized we don’t have to be tied to our office to do ministry.

Jerod Walker — And what sort of silently happened was our cell phone became our primary ministry communication tool as well. And so that happened, I think, simply because of convenience and circumstances, not because we strategically said: this is the best way, as our church is trying to grow, for us to communicate.

Jerod Walker — And over time, we’ve seen there are some pitfalls, there are some blind spots that that have developed over time because of kind of defaulting to those personal devices.

Rich Birch — Yeah, so when I first interacted with you guys, when you’ve named this I was like, oh my word they’re naming a thing that I didn’t it’s like I all I saw so clearly, but was not able to get my hands on it. And um you know this idea that like we shifted communication strategy, silently, we made a decision. We all collectively made a decision that now we’re living in and is impacting us.

Rich Birch — Why did that stay silent you know for so long? We made this change, and I think a lot of our churches, we just are kind of, we’re going along with that. And we and we and we haven’t stepped back and said, well, wait a second. Why did we do that? Was that the right call? Was that the right decision?

Jerod Walker — Yeah, I I think like any organization that grows, there is there is the the constant challenge of being reactive versus proactive, and communication problems, unless someone raises their hand and said, hey, I’m not getting communicated with well.

Jerod Walker — If a guest says—which which is very unlikely, right—hey I visited your church and I never heard anything. They’re probably not going to say that. And so it’s just an area where we have to be proactive to dive into it or it isn’t going to be brought to the surface.

Jerod Walker — And I think there’s also an element of Staff sometimes feeling some of the pain of the system, but it’s almost like well, this is the price of ministry. I want to be a good team player. I want to be available to people and we almost feel guilty calling it a problem ah in instead of recognizing that it is and that there is a better way.

Jerod Walker — And I often compare it to email. We kind of know, I have I have personal email. And I have work email. And I know when I should use the other. But I think because email is very easily cross-platform it doesn’t matter where I’m at I can probably access my work email or my personal email. And calling from my mobile phone feels like I only have one option. And it’s just the churches don’t realize there is a there is another option. There is a better way. So I think that’s why it stays invisible for so long.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s interesting. So kind of taking a step back, that’s, ah you know, you’ve really identified, you put together a resource that we want to point people to, which is this “10 communication blind spots that hinder church growth”. This is a great resource, friends. And it’s one of these, it’s a simple resource, but you’re pointing to some I think some some tender spots let’s say it when i read it i wasn’t like i was like Ouch. Oh, no. I think I see that so clearly.

Rich Birch — Why don’t we why don’t we pick one? You just pick one and let’s talk about one of those. What’s a blind spot that we have that we might not know that we have when it comes to this whole communication issue?

Jerod Walker — Yeah, I think the first one is is fairly obvious. We’ll just state it. We’ve been talking about it, but using my personal cell number for ministry.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jerod Walker — Again, it’s easy. It’s in my pocket. I carry it around. Wherever I’m at, I can use it. But what that means is I can’t take it back once I’ve used it. And so sometimes if I’m at a conference speaking or something, I’ll in fact, I was at a large conference last week. And from the stage, I just said, hey, how many of you in the room have used your personal number to call or text somebody in the church and then later regretted that they had your number because they felt like they had anytime access. And it was like like almost a standing ovation, right.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jerod Walker — Like everybody felt that pain.

Rich Birch — Ouch.

Jerod Walker — And I said, stop saying names out loud because that’s almost where it was. Right.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jerod Walker — You know, late at night, on weekends. And we want to serve people well. And and I would never fault anyone in ministry for wanting to try and be available and serve. But we often say remember your most important ministry and that’s your family.

Rich Birch — Okay, so let’s double click on that. So I get the invasion in time, like I think that’s an obvious one we can kind of see, or that makes sense. You know, we’ve all had those like texts.

Rich Birch — I will, there’s there’s a friend of mine who will. remain anonymous in today’s conversation who I know when they go on their day off, they do a copy and paste thing that that replies back as if it’s like an autoresponder to an email. Like we’re sorry, this person is not working right now. They’ll get back to you on X date. They’re still having to do that.

Jerod Walker — Yes.

Rich Birch — They’re pretending like it’s a technology solution doing that.

Jerod Walker — Yeah, and I…

Rich Birch — So yeah, I get that.

Jerod Walker — I think…

Rich Birch — But what else is, what why else is this a problem?

Jerod Walker — Yeah, I think there’s almost, I remember getting text messages that even if I didn’t respond, they changed how I felt. Like it was something negative or it was an issue somebody was having and even if i wasn’t responding to it, it impacted how I felt in the room with my family.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jerod Walker — It took me out of vacation or wherever I was into a spot where i just felt different because of whatever that communication was. And you’re exactly right you also feel this burden I’m the only one who got this message. So I’ve got to send what looks like an automated reply because otherwise they just think that I’m ignoring them.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s tough. But what about now let’s look at it from the other side, from the church side. So there’s also some deficiency on our end with this as a solution. And some of this is like stuff we don’t really want to talk about but like there is there’s, like I think, a real issue here. I think you’ve raised like a real question for us to think about.

Rich Birch — What why is this a problem from our perspective? Like I, in fact, I’ve even thought at certain moments, I’m like, well, it’s kind of cool. We’re leveraging all these other people’s technology spent. They bought the phone. I didn’t have to buy my own phone.

Jerod Walker — For sure.

Rich Birch — I never thought that, friends. If I was an executive pastor at your church, I never actually thought that. But that is a part of what is going on here. Why is that bad for us as a church?

Jerod Walker — Yeah. I think that as we grow—in fact, this this goes into a another problem that we talk about, another blind spot—we want to assume the best of our team. We want to assume if they need to follow up on something, they’re doing it. But I have a friend who says, believe the best, but also verify. So believe the best in your team, but but you also need to do your due diligence. Is that follow up happening? Is that message getting responded to?

Jerod Walker — And I think that is a big risk with everybody using their own personal devices is things falling through the cracks. Whether that’s your discipleship pathway or one of the ones that we address is guest follow-up, and I know that’s a that’s a big deal, something you all talk about a lot on unSeminary.

Jerod Walker — But just assuming, oh we we have somebody owning that. And so it’s being taken care of.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jerod Walker — I’ve served in a small church. I was ah a my first full-time ministry after I graduated from college, it was a church of like 35 people and I knew every guest who was there. And I knew whether or not they got followed up with because I did it. Well, Jerod, did you follow up with that guess? Yes, Jerod, I did. It was pretty straightforward. But as you grow, you’re trusting that’s all happening, but how do you check? How do you know that nothing’s falling through the cracks?

Rich Birch — Yeah, and that, I’d love to double click on the first time guest thing. It’s funny, I was literally with a church earlier this week where we were talking about this issue and um all I was doing was adding the word “really” at the end of the sentence to check.

Rich Birch — It was like, okay, so like we reach out to first-time guests after every week and whatever their pattern was. And I said, really, is that is that true? And what you realize pretty quickly is you peel back the layers and you start to realize, well, it doesn’t happen. I know it’s in the document, but we don’t, you know, there’s sometimes it’s blah, blah, blah.

Rich Birch — So explain this problem a little bit more. Why is this an issue? Maybe double click here on the first time guest or the kind of new prospect issue that we we wrestle with and in the church.

Jerod Walker — Yeah, I mean it’s such a critical part of our assimilation pathway right trying to get someone involved both on discipleship and involvement, and such a key touch point. So first of all making sure that it happens and knowing that it happens but even knowing that the system is bigger than one person.

Jerod Walker — So if you know one person is responsible, we’re dependent on that person and they have an emergency. And they’re not available this week. Did it happen? And how did it happen?

Jerod Walker — But then even that is an initial touch point. But hopefully there’s a handoff happening even after that. They indicated they’d like to take some kind of a next step. They want to try an Alpha course. Or they’re curious about what we have for their kids. What does that follow up look like? And if you hand off that first time guest to another department, do they have to start over completely in the conversation because they don’t have any context for what happened?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jerod Walker — What’s already been communicated? What did they say in text message, you know, as they responded to the text message? So that that gap can really be significant.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true. And you know, we’ve seen this is like a high a hobby horse of mine, like don’t get me started. Most churches have think they have a backdoor problem, but they actually have a front door problem. Statistically, it’s just true.

Jerod Walker — That’s good.

Rich Birch — And I’ll challenge any church. I’ll take your numbers and I’ll show you that you’re missing people at the front door. Like this is you know, people come, there’s way more guests arriving in in churches that and that aren’t getting connected than people that are falling out of your groups, teams, and and donor pools. It’s just true.

100% of the church is when we’ve actually dug into the numbers. you start to realize, oh my word, there’s there’s like real opportunity there, when we, you know, a solution like yours can help, you know, with that.

Rich Birch — Well, why don’t we peel back? Why don’t we pivot a little bit and talk about, so we’ve kind of described some of these major problems. There’s 10 in this resource and we’ll, we’ll link to it in the show notes and give you that link at the end. But why don’t we talk a little bit about how Intulse actually tackles these issues? What is it that you do as a technology provider? How are you helping churches actually try to, you know, like we said, make it less crazy for our team?

Jerod Walker — Yep.

Rich Birch — Make sure that we’re tracking what conversations are happening? Providing a bit of accountability around some of these conversations, being able to pass off. What what what are…that sounds like some sort of magic pill that you’ve got. What how are you doing that?

Jerod Walker — Yeah. I do think it is kind of magic. I actually often refer to it as automagical.

Rich Birch — Ooh, I like it.

Jerod Walker — So it’s a combination of a couple of things. It’s an app that you put on the cell phone that you already use, whether that’s iOS or Android. It’s an app that you use. It has its own controls for notifications. And it’s tied to a work assigned number instead of your personal number.

Jerod Walker — So first off, you make a call from that app and no one’s getting your personal cell number.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Jerod Walker — And when it’s off time, you turn off the notifications from that app so that you’re undisturbed. And even better, you can you can share access to that same number. So when you are the… the Pastor, you mentioned who’s got that copy-paste automatic response. You actually can have someone monitor your number while you’re out and actually respond for you, so you don’t even have to worry about people not getting some kind of response that you’re out of town.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jerod Walker — Someone else can be sending that response. Jerod’s out of town this week. Looks forward to following up when he’s back next week. You can truly turn it off because of that.

Jerod Walker — But then as you mentioned earlier, it’s connected to the church management software that you already use like Planning Center or Rock or CCB, breeze, a number of different solutions.

Jerod Walker — So first off, you don’t have to look up somebody’s number in your chms first. It’s available right there in the Intulse app on your device. You type their name, tap it and you can start the call or start the text message. And what I think is even more significant, we talked about follow up, following through the cracks. You know, you have the interaction with the first time guest and then the handoff, what happens to the communications already happened.

Jerod Walker — Every text message is logged on that person’s record in your database. The fact that a call took place is logged on that record in the database. You can even open a little box and take notes while you’re in that call that becomes a part of that record.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Jerod Walker — You don’t have to remember to go back later. And I think that actually makes your team more efficient, which I think is an important part of the conversation because we all know, oh, you know the the person who owns the database at our church is always saying you know if it’s not in there it didn’t happen but i’ve got to remember to go in there afterwards.

Jerod Walker — Well we—again, that auto-magic—we make as much of it happen automatically without you having to do it manually.

Rich Birch — Yeah, the one and you you kind of blew over it. But for me it’s like one of the it’s like a small feature of this thing that is is just mind-blowing to me how helpful this would be for a church of it doesn’t even need to be a giant church like a couple hundred people to have our Church’s database automatically connected to my phone and all of those contact information right in there and positioned in a way that’s like positioned for action, positioned for outreach. Like, hey, I can hit just let’s just call right now or let’s text them. Man, that that is powerful.

Rich Birch — You know how many times I have like fumbled. I’ve opened up the database and I gotta go over there and then I’m like search for them and then copy and paste and blah blah blah… Just those friction points. And I’m like, I’m not going to text him. Forget it. Like… and maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m lazy. I’m the problem. But I think the fact that you’ve integrated that.

Jerod Walker — And so what you do, Rich, is just use your personal cell number, right? Because it’s easy.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jerod Walker — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Yes, absolutely. You just use the easiest, you know, I don’t even think about it. I’m like, oh, whatever. But this actually has made it even better. I know that the information’s up to date. I know that, you know, the work we’ve put in to ensure that the database has got the right contact information is available. That’s that’s amazing.

Rich Birch — So let’s think about let’s imagine a church. They’re, well, let’s stick, we kind of quoted the Church of a thousand. You know, we’ve got a lot of executive pastors listening today. You know, they’ve got a staff of 10 and they’re an XP.

Rich Birch — They’re thinking about that kind you know this kind of stuff. If a a church is let’s say they go the full bore. They’re like, this sounds great – we’re gonna make these changes. And they want to get started. What are some kind of initial first steps when they they get rolling with Intulse that kind of separate—I’m sure you see this you’re like oh this is going to really work and help this church or like ah these people are struggling a little bit—what are the behaviors or or some initial actions that we see churches that kind of get the most out of it when they actually integrate your solution?

Jerod Walker — Yeah, I would say that churches should really start with a communication policy that’s bigger than just your mass communication. You probably have a lot of mass communication policies. Like we’re not going to send an email to everybody in the church more frequently than whatever.

Rich Birch — Yeah, right.

Jerod Walker — And we don’t send a mass email without a certain team approving it and and all of that. But you may not have a policy around individual communication. And that’s another blind spot that we address that is hard to talk about. And it’s the accountability piece and protecting the church.

Jerod Walker — There’s a former XP that I’ve listened to his story several times. I’m going to be recording an interview with him here in a couple of weeks. While he was serving in a church. there was an accusation made against the student’s pastor.

Jerod Walker — And they they had to investigate and they were going through text messages of this student’s pastor which first of all can be really hard to get, if they’re using their personal cell phone. The church doesn’t own that. So sometimes there’s court orders and subpoenas as a part of that, which is just a mess anyway.

Jerod Walker — But he shares how he was going through those text messages, and it confirmed the student’s pastor was grooming students in the ministry. And then that XP saw his 15-year-old daughter’s number and the text messages that were exchanged.

Rich Birch — Oh my word. Oh my word.

Jerod Walker — And I, you know, I’m a dad with four daughters.

Rich Birch — Gosh, yeah, that’s heartbreaking.

Jerod Walker — I can’t imagine what what that was like. And so it it starts with a policy that says, hey, this is how we communicate with people in the church for ministry use. And if you’re using something else, we have to assume you stepped outside of our policy for some reason.

Jerod Walker — So this is the policy. And that helps protect the church. It also gives me permission because, again, that guilt factor it allows me to say when someone’s messaging me on my personal cell, I respond back from the church number just saying hey our church actually has this policy. And it helps me serve you better in a lot of ways. And so that’s why I’m responding from this number.

Jerod Walker — But I would actually say that’s probably the most critical first piece is making sure that you have policy and guidelines and then the tools—something like Intulse—that allows you to fulfill that policy, to follow that policy in your communication.

Jerod Walker — So that was that was deep. That wasn’t fun.

Rich Birch — No.

Jerod Walker — But it’s it’s a reality of ministry today.

Rich Birch — Yeah, why…So I’m glad we’re talking about this. Let’s double click on this issue because I think this is ah this is a real issue, real live issue for sure. You know. And and um and we’ve actually had multiple conversations over the years about like the Billy Graham rule. And this ah you know this idea for for folks that aren’t aware that you know he had set this out where it’s like hey he would not be in the room with someone of the opposite sex, and really structured a lot in his his life and leadership around that to try to protect himself. And it was a part of, you know, he would say a healthy part of their ministry. And I think there’s a lot of super value for that.

Rich Birch — But there is a weird thing around our digital use now where we don’t have the same safeguards in place. We don’t you know we haven’t thought through okay so what does that mean? Like of course there are churches who would have policies or or even approaches you know practices that would be like that would align with that. But they would be completely silent even on, well who are you texting at night? And who are you you know…

Rich Birch — So why do you think that is?

Jerod Walker — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Why, is it just an, just an area we haven’t thought about? Or what why is that, that it’s like we, we might hold these two opposing ideas in our head and we haven’t, we haven’t kind of closed the back door on that one?

Jerod Walker — Yeah, I think partly technology moves so quickly that we’re often just slow keeping up with it and recognizing that we haven’t adapted our policies.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s probably true.

Jerod Walker — And I love that you referenced the Billy Graham rule because even with the Billy Graham rule, you recognize someone who has evil intent is going to bypass it.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Jerod Walker — And that it’s it’s not meant to prevent someone who’s proactively trying to do something wrong from doing, but but to put safeguards in place and provide accountability. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about here is trying to bring our technology into that same place. Where you’ve got safeguards. You know the the conversation that starts at 11 pm I know is being logged. And so I just think differently about where I go…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jerod Walker — …in that conversation, then that helps me.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Again, I wish we didn’t have to think about those things, friends, but I do think it’s wise…

Jerod Walker — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …for us to to consider those conversations. And to and even in the way we talk about those, you know, these issues. I do think you have to have a sober conversation with your team around, this is more about protecting you than…

Jerod Walker — For sure.

Rich Birch — …you know and and trying to create a ah place where no one can make that kind of accusation about us.

Jerod Walker — Yeah.

Rich Birch — It’s actually that’s actually more what this is about.

Jerod Walker — For sure.

Rich Birch — We actually don’t think that you’re going to go off and do some nefarious thing.

Jerod Walker — Yep.

Rich Birch — But what we don’t we don’t want someone to accuse you of that.

Jerod Walker — Yeah. I often word it this way. Using the system that is used churchwide allows me to defend you.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jerod Walker — If you’re not using that system, I just can’t defend you. I don’t have access to it to defend you. I can’t say I looked at the messages and it was all above board. I just can’t defend you.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah that’s good. That’s good. Yeah, I feel bad that you we have to think about those things, but that’s, ah you know, that’s that’s really true. So again, friends, you’re going to go to intulse.com/unseminary. You can pick up that that resource there. We’ll also link to this in the show notes.

Rich Birch — When we think about um you know so other we’ve kind of covered a couple of these, are is there maybe a third one that in the of the 10 that you find it might be kind of interesting for us to kick around. And then we want to really get people to pick up all of them we can’t cover all of this too much good stuff in here. But yeah we’ll be on another one another blind spot?

Jerod Walker — Yeah. Yeah, I think another one is just the fact that communication history resides on a single device that’s another blind spot because that creates a challenge if that staff member leaves that phone that device goes with them. And if they don’t leave well and they’ve been using their personal number for ministry, someone could text them.

Jerod Walker — Saying hey, what times the whatever this week? And then their response could could not be great in representing the church.

Jerod Walker — Like wait you still attend that place? I wouldn’t go anywhere near there. Again, something else we don’t want to think about. But that that leaves then with that personal staff that individual staff member instead of being retained by the church so they continue to be used for for ministry purposes. So I think that’s that’s another one of the blind spots that we point out. And there’s about six more in that guide as well.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fun. When I was reading that part, the thought, and I realize this is a minority of churches that are on that are listening in today, but I was just thinking about very large churches with a lot of staff and the power of having even small notes, like two sentences on all of these calls and texts, for driving like what are the conversations that our people are actually having.

Rich Birch — Like what is, you know, what is our team spending time on? And and are there things that are bubbling up…Like, I feel like one of the things that happened, I know, it’s not a feel. I know that one of the things as a church grows larger and it.

Rich Birch — It doesn’t even have to be that much larger, for a couple hundred people. And you you start to become disconnected from what’s going on. And using a technology solution to say hey let’s pull out all the conversations that people have had in the last three months and talk through, okay, what what are we actually working on and how you know are are there things we should be doing as an organization to address that?

Rich Birch — It’s like we keep seeing marriage things keep coming up in all these conversations. Man, maybe we should do something around marriages.

Jerod Walker — Yeah, that’s great.

Rich Birch — You know, or like we see people struggling with financial stuff.

Jerod Walker — Yep.

Rich Birch — Maybe we should do something about financial stuff.

Jerod Walker — Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Birch — You know, you can see how that would be super helpful. That’s that’s cool.

Jerod Walker — One of my favorite testimonials about Intulse is a large church that uses us, and we actually actually captured on video one of their team members saying, Intulse has helped us, as a large church, feel smaller.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Jerod Walker — Because of how we better communicate with people.

Rich Birch — Okay, so…

Jerod Walker — And I love that. I love that.

Rich Birch — Okay, let’s talk about that. So I’m glad you brought this up because this is a lot of the coaching I do with churches, is with larger churches, 1,000, 2,000. And one of the things I say, particularly in a church that’s going from 1,000 to 2,000, is when you were 500 you were trying to play bigger than you actually were. You had to look bigger than you were. So you would like spent money on graphics and all this stuff that was like bigger than you should have really it doesn’t you know you, which is fine, that’s normal.

Rich Birch — But then you hit about a thousand people, somewhere around there you actually have to play smaller you have to become, because your size can become an impediment actually to your growth because it’s you start to act like people are like, I can’t get into, but I can’t talk to anybody. I don’t, you know, I can’t, I don’t have you know any connection. So what what are a couple of ways that churches could use Intulse? when they’re a larger church, to actually act like a smaller church or provide the service of a smaller church.

Jerod Walker — I think one of the biggest ways is, again, a lot of larger churches are using texting for mass communicating, but it’s not two-way communication.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jerod Walker — Other than, you know, keyword. So you RSVP’d by by responding with whatever. Right.

Rich Birch — Well, it’s not even that. It says, please don’t reply.

Jerod Walker — Right. Right, exactly. Exactly.

Rich Birch — Or like, you know, it’s like, it’s like, we’re just sending you things. Don’t expect to talk to anybody, you know, which is crazy.

Jerod Walker — Yep. And the great thing about our app is it allows you to bulk text. But then you receive the responses as individual messages and then can respond and provide care…

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jerod Walker — …or follow up. Hand it off for someone else to follow up. And that that mass communication becomes individual person-to-person communication, which—and we could we could spend a lot of time in an AI age how much human interaction is more important and really distinguishes us.

Rich Birch — A hundred percent.

Jerod Walker — Totally changes people’s perception of us when we are providing personal human care, when we’re trying to get them more involved or connected in our church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, and it’s funny you’re thinking that because I was… Carey Nieuwhof’s new book, “AI and the Future Church”…

Jerod Walker — There you go.

Rich Birch — His conclusion from this book—I was thinking about this as a follow-up—is you know, it’s a bunch of pages. You should buy it and read it with your team, friends, that are listening in. It’s a great book. But his conclusion is, listen, the future is going to be more artificial, more synthetic. Therefore, the church needs to become more human. We need to we need to not hide behind this technology, but find a way to be more human.

Jerod Walker — 100%.

Rich Birch — And to me, this is a perfect solution, like being able to I would love to be able to log on to go to a church website. And I’m, I land on the whatever location. you know, campus. And there’s a nice picture of my friend Jerod is the campus pastor. And that person’s phone number and it says text or call me. That would be insane. Like, that that would be great.

Jerod Walker — Yep.

Rich Birch — We should be doing more of that and Intulse would really help you do that in a way that that doesn’t kill your team. It doesn’t like make it terrible.

Jerod Walker — 100%.

Rich Birch — So I love it.

Jerod Walker — Yeah. Yep. I think sometimes we avoid technology because we think, oh, it’s just more time spent there away from people. But if that’s what technology is doing for you, then you’re using it wrong, or you have the wrong technology.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jerod Walker — Because what technology should be doing is making the time that you’re not with people more efficient and actually less of that so that you can spend more time face to face with people, which is why you got into ministry anyway.

Rich Birch — A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so good.

Rich Birch — Well, Jerod, this has been a great conversation. Just to remind folks, as we’re coming down to land, go to intulse.com/unseminary. There you’ll see a number of things. One, you’ll you can download this resource that we’ve been talking about. You can also book a demo, like schedule a call to actually talk to one of your team.

Rich Birch — What happens on that call? The thing I love about you guys is you actually are trying to help church leaders, not sell them a thing. And so your calls are really super helpful. So talk about what that is.

Jerod Walker — Yep. So once once you go there, you just provide your contact info and then we’ll actually follow up with a link where you can book a time with somebody on our team, whether it’s a 15 minute kind of an introductory call, or a 45 minute like full demo of how it works with the church management software that you use.

Jerod Walker — And then because we want to hear what are your needs? What are you using? What problems do you need to solve? And that way we can put together a proposal that fits you. And we’ll send that to you and you can get started with us.

Rich Birch — Yeah, if you’ve been listening in today, friends, and you’ve had… stuff like, yeah, but what about this? Or yeah, but what about that? Or no, that’s not going to work in my, we’ve got this problem. Then what that’s telling you is you should go to intulse.com/unseminary and book one of those calls.

Rich Birch — And then they’ll actually answer those questions, which is insane, that they’ll sit down and talk that through. They they want to actually help you solve your problems.

Jerod Walker — For sure.

Rich Birch — They’re not trying to sell you something. They want to talk you through how they can help you you know get better at this stuff. And so again, just go to intulse.com/unseminary. Any last words as we wrap up today’s conversation?

Jerod Walker — I often say, we want you to be very connected to technology. We’re a technology company. We believe in technology as a as a great ministry tool for the church.The challenge is that we can become very connected without being protected. And so I often say that we want to both connect and protect your ministry your church

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s spoken like a true church leader. You got a rhyme there and everything. That’s good. I love it.

Jerod Walker — I remember I remember preaching class.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Well, Jerod, I appreciate you being here. It’s super kind that you would take some time out to come and help us think through these issues. Really honored you’re here today. Where do we want to send people online if they want to track with you or with Intulse? where Where’s the best place for us to send them?

Jerod Walker — Yep, so intulse.com, a great place. Again, intulse.com/unseminary. And then feel free, because I actually dohave tools that help me manage this number. I have a number that I’m willing to give that you can call or text.

Rich Birch — Yes, let’s do it!

Jerod Walker — Okay, let’s, all right, 717-455-3943

Rich Birch — Love it.

Jerod Walker — 717-455-3943. The good news is, is I’m on vacation with my family. I don’t have to respond to you but I’ve got a team member who will.

Rich Birch — That’s great. I love it. That’s so good. I appreciate you being here today, Jerod. Thanks so much for your help. And thanks for what you’re doing for the church. I really you know want to say that, man. You’re helping us get better at what we do and using your skills in a great way. So thank you so much for that.

Jerod Walker — My pleasure. And hopefully our heart is is what speaks loudest and that’s what you see the the clearest.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much.