The Bridging Ministry

Welcome to the Church Talk Podcast! Today, Pastor Priji converses with the team from Spikenard and Outcast who are into the ministry of expressing and evangelizing the word of God in a creative way.
Tune in to know how they use social media as a platform to reach out to people.

Transcript:

Pastor Priji: Welcome to the church talk podcast. This morning we have a few special guests with us – Ricky, Prithvi and Steve. They are all part of a ministry called Outcast and Spikenard. It is such a joy to have them join along in this conversation. We hope to learn a lot from them and have a conversation that will help edify our own churches and ministries. Before we go ahead, we would love to hear from you guys and know where you’re from and what you’re doing. Could you take a moment to introduce yourselves?

Steve: My name is Steve. I am currently based in Varanasi right now, studying for my Masters in conflict management and development. I was originally born in Burundi, then shifted to the States for about 16 years and now I am living in India.

Prithvi: I am Prithvi. I work for Outcast and a graphic designer. I am from Hyderabad.

Ricky: My name is Ricky Raymond George. I am from Hyderabad. I grew up all over India but settled in Hyderabad. I have a beautiful wife in Hyderabad named Beulah John. And I run Outcast.

Pastor Priji: Amazing. We have 2 ministries represented here. I would love to know what the organisations are about. What Outcast is about, what is the vision behind it? And also about Spikenard. So, Ricky can you share in brief; why Outcast, what was the heart behind starting it and what does it do? What else does it do other than what we see on social media?

Ricky: Thank you Pastor for having us here. The word Outcast came to me when I was in my 12th Grade because I always felt like an outcast growing up in church. I thought it was a bad thing but then I realized Bible says, we are called to be an outcast, and I felt related that I can be an outcast and do something for the Kingdom of God. It always stuck there. We all have dreams, we all have desires, God puts that seed in our hearts, but nothing really happens till the time is right. I have been working in advertising for almost 5-6 years. I started working when I was in college. By the time I finished college, I was an art director. I was working for films; I was working for brands; making products for them and working on their social content. And then I realised if I spend 10% of the amount of time I spend at work for the Kingdom of God, how much value I can add to it? So I started to think about what I could do for 2 years. I got the idea to serve the community; serve the church, but never did it for the next 2 years. I was just thinking about it like most of us. I wanted to go to Hillsong, so I left my job and my planning was on point, my timing was great and thought ‘if I go now, I’ll come back as an art director from Hillsong and it’ll add value to whatever I say to the church’; because before that when I spoke to people, they never took me seriously. I was just 22 years old, people want some sort of value and I thought Hillsong will give me that identity. I applied for Hillsong and made all those plans but nothing worked out. I was very disappointed and started working with advertising agencies again. After working for 1 year, I felt that God reminded me of this dream and said, “Ricky, what happened to that desire of yours?” I love watching movies, entertainment and being a part of the trend. I think entertainment influences culture and I was so inspired by the fact that entertainment is what inspires me to do so much and so what if I use it as a tool to share the gospel? So I thought let’s figure out something. My wife told me to consider something like a Netflix or an Amazon Prime for the Christian community and I laughed it off. Then my friend messaged me the same thing 2 days later saying ‘let’s do this. So seeing how 2 people came and told me the same thing, I took that as a sign from God and decided to start. I got this sign in September 2018 and for the next 6 months, I was sitting and thinking about what I should do to start. I started Outcast in July as a fun media page for Christian content. It started off because I saw a void in that space of media content creation; there was media but it was either within the confines of the church or it was worldly, there was nothing that was bridging that gap. So outcast started trying to get the world to know what church looks like and trying to find a balance between the two. It has been going for a while now and I’ll save more for the later part of this podcast.

Pastor Priji: Thank you, Ricky. Steve, I would like to know a little bit more about Spikenard; where did it begin, what does it do, and what is God doing through the ministry?

Steve: Yeah, thank you. Spikenard is a community of creatives and we are mostly working with storytellers and creative leaders who are already doing their work in different fields. We try to empower them, try to create a safe space for them to come and share their stories and hopefully empower them to be those catalysts to change culture, communities and different cities. We have been able to do that in the last year through zoom calls which have different artists, worship leaders and writers in the Christian space to come and share their stories, things in their hearts and visions that they have. Once people hear, we take time to pray for them, encourage them and ask our community to sow seed into them by either supporting one of their projects or just give a love offering. Last year, we were able to raise about 12 lakhs for different artists and different creatives in India; and this is mostly Indian people sowing into each other. I didn’t really plan this whole thing out. Last year in January, I was in Face to face foundation in Delhi and during prayer worship, I heard the Lord say, “Alabaster”, and I started researching about it in Luke 7, Matthew 26, John 12, Mark 14 and the stories of Mary of Bethany; all these things started to weave together and one of the things that sort of got highlighted to me was ‘Spikenard’. I thought everyone knows Alabaster but then it hit me; as a creative, someone who is always doing coaching and consulting, I thought that’s like us knowing that glass but not the water. We have glass for the water, it’s just a container. Most people are glorifying the container instead of knowing what is in there and it was Spikenard; I loved the name. Then I came to find out through study in different Bible dictionaries and commentaries that this Spikenard was actually shipped all the way from India, from the Himalayas and so I was shocked as I had never heard of this even though it is such a famous story. I looked up the branding, I looked up online to see if there was something about Spikenard and there was nothing. I felt like there was something about Spikenard that the Lord wanted to say about India because Jesus says. ‘Wherever the gospel goes, this story would be told’. I would say that most of my inspiration was telling that story; the same thing that Jesus says, that if I would be able to help people break the alabaster to do the same thing that Mary did, it’ll help even more people tell their stories because it’s not just about Mary’s alabaster, it’s about our alabaster breaking.

Pastor Priji: Wow. Thank you for sharing and for the heart behind this ministry. I truly believe that these are those days when we have to learn to stand with one another, we have to learn to support one another and bless each other in the vision that God has given each and every one of us. It’s not about our church or our ministry or our initiative; it’s about what we can do to come along someone else’s vision as well and to stand with them, support them; not just with words but with finances and physical support if necessary; whatever way in which we can stand with one another. That is truly a Kingdom initiative. I would love to know what you guys think about the role or goal of social media and how the church can make the most of it. How can we use it as a tool? I know that you guys have especially in this last season of lock-down made the most of social media; whether it be through zoom calls or through Instagram posts or live streams, done a great job in connecting with people and engaging with relevant issues. So I would love to know from your perspective how we can use social media to benefit the goal of the church and the direction the church is supposed to travel in.

Steve: There’s this one quote I really love, it says, “if you want to change the culture, you don’t do it by criticising it; you change culture by creating more of it”. And I think what Outcast is doing, what my friend Prithvi and Ricky are doing is amazing. Most of us on the social media platform has QA conversations where people can ask questions live. What I think we are doing is creating more content, creating culture, showing the world how honour looks like, showing the world how to do music; I think what Bridge Music, Akshay Matthews, and other ministries are doing is amazing; being innovative. I saw Cameron just came up with a hip hop kind of style of music. I think the more creative and the more we loosen those bonds, the more we can reach the world. And use social media and use culture and reach culture because everyone is on social media, everyone is now going digital. The more we can go out there and create more ways, the more we can have a voice at the table.

Pastor Priji: Wow, that’s really amazing. Just to add to it, we usually think that the only way to change things is to destroy everything and sometimes that’s not the answer; sometimes it is to add to it, to bring your own culture, to add and bring new value systems and new conversations to the table. That’s amazing. Thank you, Steven.

Ricky: It’s been our heart’s desire to talk about how we can bring social media to our advantage. They say, ‘Pressures serve to make us stronger ‘. This pandemic has served to make us stronger and understand what technology is capable of. The narrative has changed from social media being a tool to get people to church, to the church being in social media. And how you share and make a contagious difference in people’s lives in social media is the goal. When it comes to sharing the gospel, when it comes to elements like hope and love, there is no formula because you never know the love language of the person who is receiving it. So you always have to tap into different ways every day to cater to their needs; to find a way to tell them in the hard way or the direct way or the most loving way or the most humble way to reach out to them. That’s the hard thing to do. It’s our heart’s desire to encourage and equip the church to do that. There’s this simple line people say, ‘technology fails but Jesus never fails’, or people say, ‘I am not technologically sound like you; that’s not an excuse we can use today. If you are not sound enough, I think you need to study it or you need to invest in it because this is not a tool to share your message; this is where your audience is; they are the ones who are listening. If someone sends you something you don’t want to watch, for example, Instagram has something called explicit content, it will be blurred and it’ll give you an option to say see after giving you the warning; the best part of that is if you click on that, you are watching it by choice. And in social media, we are giving people the choice to see this and that’s the advantage of it. We need to tap into that way where we are giving people the choice and the fact that people are coming back to consume this, is a win because that’s where we are able to cater to them. I think the church has done a phenomenal job of trying to reach out. In rural India, there’s a story of a village where they don’t have smartphones, they don’t have church buildings, and then how are they doing church? The pastor has a smartphone. There’s an application where if he makes a phone call; if he gives the number to someone, everyone who calls that number can just listen to the message while the pastor is talking from that phone. So everybody in the village, using a small phone call that number and put it on speaker mode and 3 or 4 members of that family listen to the sermon and worship together without using a smartphone or any massive technology. That itself showed us how innovative we had to be. We serve a God who is creative; the first thing God did was create. So we have the ability to create. If you and I are in a place where we are doubting as a church thinking, ‘I don’t know if we are creative enough as a church’, I don’t think that is even a question because we have the ability to create. I think it’s the season for us to take risks, and it’s the season for us to step out in faith in social media because social media is not our enemy; it’s our friend.

Pastor Priji: Amazing. I completely agree with that Ricky. This is the time we have to invest more into social media, and more into being out there; irrespective of whether we have all the resources in the world or not. With whatever little we have, we have to learn to make the most of it. All of you guys are creatives in different ways. I have seen in my personal journey of working with creatives, that it can sometimes be a lonely place where not everybody understands your ideas, not everybody agrees with what you are saying, and in a church context it becomes very hard to function alone; you need a team to work with, you will need people who will believe in what you say and do and your way of expressing things. And I would like to know how team dynamics work. In Spikenard, you are a community of creatives and in Outcast, it is a team with almost 7 denominations; so how does it work? How does team dynamics work in a creative team, especially when each person has their own unique ways of expressing and unique ways of doing things? How do you handle conflicts and come back to the core and still be productive and put content out there?

Steve: I was just talking to my team the other day and we had one of the biggest challenges. For creatives, you’ll do something that people love, you’ll do a sermon series that touches a lot of people, you’ll do content that people love, then you try to be more creative and try to extend the boundaries or you try to go to a different city. Let’s say, a leader thinks he wants to empower a young leader, and then go to a different city to plant; then that’s when all the chaos comes. More than internal conflicts, when a change is coming, when the leader is wanting to expand their boundaries, trying to invite foreigners into it, adding more team members, it becomes challenging because people like to stay in groups with their old members. That’s been the biggest challenge for me. As leaders, we have to even do the work of accessing team members. For example, right now, there’s a young man that wants to volunteer with my organisation and I have to think about whether he would fit in, talk to my team, and find references like talking to his previous leaders. That can help with the leadership dynamics, especially with creative people, it can at least give a little perspective if not the full perspective; doing our homework, being a listening ear, being kind, being a good landing place for them to feel safe and to express themselves, is a good start in my opinion.

Prithvi: We have a team as Ricky said. It is one of the hardest things when you put your idea in a group. I see that every time Ricky comes up with an idea, there will be around 4-5 disagreements. This happens because everyone has their own mindset and they come from different churches. To deal with this, we start searching in the scriptures. It is possible to ignore the scriptures especially if you like some post. There are 2 types of posts; the ones you do in a snap and the ones which take time. One day we were waiting for Steve and waiting alone and Ricky came up with an idea to do a post saying ‘find Jesus in the picture’ without having Jesus in the picture and then saying ‘why to look for Jesus in a picture when He is living within you?’. I thought that will make a great post. We made that post in 5 minutes. He said, “I put the picture and write the description”. But I said, “Why don’t we do a carousel post; where we put that picture twice or thrice and then we’ll post the text?” It was that easy and that post went wild and people loved it. Ricky made that post and put it in our group first and asked to check if it’s Biblically correct. And we went through the Bible and in Galatians 2:20 it says that ‘Jesus lives within you. So sometimes it goes like this and sometimes it takes time.

Pastor Priji: Yeah. And that process of submitting to each other is not something young people enjoy doing because not everybody likes to get an opinion. That process of working together can be really challenging. I want to know if you had any value system that you started off with; something that you stand for, that is your vision, or that you are after. Many times, we get swept away because we don’t have a value system in place, or we don’t have an initial vision or principles set in stone. So I would like to know what values you started off with or developed over time.

Ricky: I’ll answer this question with the previous question. One of the things I learnt while working with a team is to not be emotionally attached to the idea you put in. That’s a value system in a way. Sometimes we get so emotionally involved in something that the sides get blurred; we only focus on that and don’t see the bigger picture. I’ve learnt it the hard way. At the same time, there has to be someone who is willing to take the hit and make the final call. As a leader, there is a time when you ask other people’s opinion and there is a time when you need to put your foot down and say ‘no’ and face the music for it whether it is good, bad or ugly; and sometimes that, in a team dynamic is uncomfortable. And if you are feeling uncomfortable about it, get over it because if you want to be a good leader, there are going to be uncomfortable conversations.
Our biggest core value is, anything we do, is backed by the scripture. We can have the heart to share the gospel, but if we don’t have the scripture backing it, we are exactly doing the opposite of the gospel; because it’s coming from an emotional space and not from the living Word of God. It is the living Word of God because every time you read it, you get a whole new revelation. And the other thing that we are focused on is that our reach is for Christians; we don’t want to compete with someone but to collaborate. When we first started working together, I said, “We may be doing something similar but you are not my competition, you are my worthy rival; I look at you as a worthy rival because it makes me want to get better.” That is our core value; we want to cater to the church and if somebody else is catering to the church, they are not our competition but collaborators so that we can work together. We are open to working together even if we don’t get the glory or credits that we require. So these are the two main things that we believe in; The Bible has to back everything that we do and our objective is to reach the Christian community and help them with tools that can help them make a difference in their community.

Pastor Priji: Wow, that’s really powerful and I liked what you began with; ‘don’t be emotionally attached to your ideas so much that if it doesn’t work out, you’ll be hurt or devastated. I would like to know how you would encourage young pastors to spur creativity in their own churches. Sometimes we like to stick to the old ways of doing church. So what would your advice be?

Steve: Connect and collaborate with people. One of the biggest problems we have with churches or anyone is that we are so used to competition and not collaboration but we have to change that. I would like to tell the pastors to look to collaborate with other pastors and leaders in business, in media, in family, in government, because all of them will come with different perspectives. Be open to correction because if you are so sold on your ideas, it’s really hard and people will not enjoy that process with you. I think through collaboration, you’ll find out that some of your solutions lay in other people’s hearts and they can actually help you along with that journey. That’s what I found working with Outcast, they help each other. The other thing is, for leaders especially, think of ideas, practical ideas; I’m talking about reaching people on a natural level, think about what people need that they don’t have in cultural society. I learnt from a friend, that in a family photograph, the first person that you look for is you. A lot of families don’t have nice family photos. If you are a photographer, going around the neighbourhood and saying ‘I’ll come on these days, and bring lights; wear nice clothes and I’ll take photos’. So you do it like a big deal, after the first day of doing shoots, you print them out and bring them and the whole neighbourhood is showing each other. What happens with the photos? When you bring something to the table, they invite you in because you took their photos. Creativity can open doors that you never thought would. I’m just saying photography because everyone has a smartphone and that’s an easy way to take a family photo, print it and bring it to the whole community; and people will wonder who that guy was who took the photos; this is just an idea of connecting with people.

Ricky: Usually when people ask me saying, “I am a pastor and I would like to make an impact in my community, I want to be creative”, I always give them this answer: there are two types of creatives – One is inspiration based creatives, where you make creatives that will inspire people and the second is solution-based creatives, where you make solutions for people in your community. The problem is, the moment people think of creativity, it’s always focused on inspiration. We always think creativity is ‘the last supper painting’. For a new pastor who sees the last supper painting, their lives don’t change by seeing it. All the time in churches, we are so focused on making our designs look so good, creative, colourful, and the best in the market but it’s not making a difference to anybody because it’s just good looking. This is inspiration, it can inspire them but not give any solution. In Outcast, our focus is on solution-based creatives. Let’s say there is a water problem in your community and you want to encourage your community to save water. You can make a poster saying, ‘Why use water when you have the Living Water?’ So you are using the problem in your community, trying to provide a solution, but at the end of the day, water or no water, Jesus is always the solution. So you are using this as a tool to provide the solution; not demeaning the value of water in their lives, but you know God can be our provider Who can solve the water problem in our community. A solution can go a long way. What Steve was talking about was inspiration-based content; his creativity was inspiration based but his solution post that inspiration – Because I took your photos, I’ve become familiar with you and you will allow me to come into your house. So inspiration is not a bad thing, but it is a long term thing. I believe in solution-based content. Many people are so focused on making something look good, that they miss the moment. Let’s assume we want to talk about Christmas and make a fantastic Christmas post; we try to make it look so good that Christmas and New Year come and go and we’ve not yet completed the Christmas creative because we are so busy trying to make it look so good. The objective was to communicate the Christmas message in Christmas, but we were so busy trying to make it good looking and inspirational that we forgot the solution. So I would say, don’t miss the moment. Your moment is so important. Your solution-based creativity is what we need to focus on. When you have an idea, look around you; there are two ways to look at it – the absence of something and the presence of something. In the presence of a problem, how can I provide a solution? How can I make people talk about it? We did a post on Swiggy, it was about if Jesus had Swiggy when he wanted to feed the 5000 and the disciples tried to order, the app would crash as 5000 is too much, so a technology that we have today couldn’t have helped serve 5000 at one go. So in Swiggy, there is a day to day objective; we share the story of that and at the end of the day, we ask them to go and read the story. This is again a solution based creative. I think if we approach our creatives and communications solution-based, it goes a long way and adds value.

Pastor Priji: Amen. One last question before we close, I would like to know how we can use the creative solutions that we have in the church, not just to communicate a message but sometimes to raise funds for the church, make it a means for earning and living. What tips would you give to young creatives who would like to serve God, serve the church, and at the same time use their creativity to make a living out of it?

Steve: Most people work as freelancers. In the world, that’s okay but naturally, in our community, we can take advantage of freelance people because we don’t call it to work and call them volunteers. To create a brand, even if it’s not registered, create a company of your own and make it look big. When you have a banner, not just your name, you start showing some of your work under this banner. I do consult, the first call is always free and people put pressure on me to come up with a plan. I always tell people, send me an email with all the requirements. So something that young creatives do in church is that they don’t have a plan. I’ve sat with leaders and church leaders who have a lot; a building, state of the art equipment in their building, they could be renting. There’s a street down the street from them, which is making a lot of money from having people come to practice in their building. Most churches are soundproofed, they have their equipment, they have the musical instruments; you can open it up to people in the community to come practice and you charge a fee and you have people come into the church who would never come on a Sunday morning and they know you, they meet the pastors, they meet some of your volunteers. And that’s evangelism in your own building. So I try to mostly help leaders look within before they look outside because God has already blessed us, and given us so much. When we look at ourselves sometimes and what we have and think about what our community needs that we can provide.

Ricky: This is a very difficult topic to be honest with you because it does not happen easily; it’s a lot of work and effort but I like what Steven said, “Look within before you look outside”, that is so important. I think one of the value addition is not just your gift but it’s your gifts. We should be more open to charging people for what we are gifted with. For example, if you have a church and it is good with social media, help another church with their social media and charge them for it because you have a good social media team and you have that gift within the church. It is the church helping the church and the church is only growing. We should not limit ourselves with just the gear but also with our skills and ability to serve. A lot of churches have sound equipment, you can rent them out. People always appreciate businesses that support themselves and automatically the world has a great value for that person/people saying ‘these guys are self-sufficient ‘, and we want to get there. Self-sufficiency does need effort and hard work. If you strategically look around, there are so many things you can do but you should look at your ability to market yourself. In India, I’ve seen a lot of pastors and preachers are happy to talk about things under the church banner but not under their own profile. I know some people who on their church page, go radically preaching sermons but would never put that in their personal profile. The added value is that a pastor has the ability to coach a leadership team in the corporate but if the corporate world does not see that they are not going to approach you because they don’t know that you are such a phenomenal speaker. I think the world needs to see the abilities you have. We are so shy to put it under our personal profile because we have school friends, college friends, and we worry about what they will think. Our profile should be so well versed. Instagram is your best marketing tool. What you do has to be on Instagram. Whether you are a carpenter or a chef, put that on Instagram because when people see every day that someone is a chef on Instagram and a friend calls and asks about a chef, the first person who will come to their minds will be the recent post that you posted about food and will always recommend you. But if you are a chef looking for a job and you don’t let anybody know you are a chef and you are just posting photos of yourself in the mountains or yourself driving a bike, nobody knows that you are a chef. It is important to build your social profile according to your abilities; that is the best way to make money. For the church to raise funds, social media is not the best way because people need to experience your tangibility to sow into your dreams. Social media is a great place to show what you are doing but not to ask for what you are doing because it can be used to backfire on you. So you should be very wise. And as a marketer, I don’t think social media is the best place to talk about that but just to show what you are good at. This can be done in the explicit content kind of way, once people click, you can then ask because they clicked it based on their choice; you asked in your space and not their space. For example, when I scroll through Instagram half asleep and I come across something like this, I’ll think ‘Oh these people are asking for money and just scroll away; it’s always going to be that kind of response. But if I see, love, idea, went to your bio and clicked on the link; I did 3 steps, you’ve already got my attention already, and then you ask. Take them to where you are at and then ask, don’t go to where they are and ask.

Pastor Priji: That’s amazing. Thank you so much, guys, for joining this conversation. We can follow Outcast and Spikenard on Instagram. What other ways can people get in touch with you?

Ricky: Instagram is the best way. Outcast.in and Spikenard.co. We also have our website, outcastnow.com. Please write to us if you want to ever collaborate or want to use any of our resources; we have a lot of free resources available on outcastnow.com and if there’s something you think can add value, we can talk about it and see what we can do together. We are always open to connecting with people.

Pastor Priji: Thank you so much for joining us in this conversation.