How Talk In Church Transforms Church Communication with April Buske Ep3.06

April Buske [00:00:00]:

In the church communications world, you don't always get positive feedback because if you've done your job well, nobody knows that you did your job right. But if you're doing your communications job well and you only hear the negative stuff, it's really easy to get down and out. And I just want you to know that you're still making a difference in the kingdom of God. The small steps to improve communication, setting up connect cards, texting your members to be able to respond quickly to your members voicemails, like, all of that stuff is here to help ministries be successful.

Nina Hampton [00:00:38]:

Hello and welcome to the Tech in Church podcast, where we talk to everyday church communicators who use simple tech tools to go from frazzled to focus. My name is Nina Hampton, and I'm here with my co host, Jeanette Yates. We believe that you should spend less time worrying about technology and more time doing what you love in your ministry and in your personal life.

Jeanette Yates [00:00:56]:

Yes, that is right. And I am so excited because today's episode is extra special and at least for me, a dream come true. Allow me to introduce to you my friend, fellow former church communicator and current Talk In Church member success manager April Buske. April is here to share a new tool with us.

April Buske [00:01:18]:

Spoiler alert.

Jeanette Yates [00:01:18]:

It's Talk In Church, a new tool with us that will not only help you improve your communications, but also improve your ability to set healthy boundaries in your ministry and personal life. April, welcome to the show. Welcome to the team, all the things.

April Buske [00:01:31]:

Welcome. Hey, I'm super excited to be here today.

Jeanette Yates [00:01:34]:

Okay, so, April, before we dive into all the tech talk, which you and I were talking yesterday, about how we love nerdy things like tech, we're going to bring that nerd talk right into this podcast. But before we do that, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself? I love hearing about your Texan church origin story, if you will, and so I want you to share it with everybody.

April Buske [00:01:55]:

Sure. So, goodness, talking about myself is always the most cringe thing ever, right? Like, it's like so my background, I started out of college as a marketing solutions in a marketing solutions company where we helped do rewards and loyalty marketing. And so it was really a good fit for me because I got to use my nerdy communication skills and I got to make sure that what we were doing there was measurable moments where I got to make sure that my communication was driving results. Right. Fast forward a couple of years. There's a role that opens at my church, and I feel like every single thing that I did in that marketing role with call center work and training and marketing pieces, that all made complete sense for ministry. Right. It's like God knew what he was doing and he prepared me across the board for all of those things. So I spent a decade working in my church, and I wore every hat from youth director to online campus minister to just the token person who knew what technology was. And it was during that process, right before COVID where we figured out what Text in Church was. I think I attended an engaged conference and signed up and wasn't really sure what it was until I really got to the community and started implementing some of those easy button strategies that you all had back then that really helped communications go to the next level at our church. So after a decade of working at my church, I didn't become a mom. After ten years of working at my church, I became a mom. And then I needed something with healthier boundaries, with more set work hours, and began looking. And Talk in Church was just getting ready to launch, and I threw my ring for a position and somehow landed it. They took a leap of faith on me, and that's how I got here.

Nina Hampton [00:03:44]:

And I literally could not be happier that you threw that hat, because now you're here and you're just like a part of the team. We're just having a meeting that we usually have. This is just a chill conversation. It's great. So talking about that and talking about everything, so that kind of segues us right into Talk in Church. So I think before we talk about what Talk in church is, why don't we talk about maybe some of the problems that church face that Talk addresses.

Jeanette Yates [00:04:13]:

Well, and she's already mentioned one, which is, yeah, Avril, why don't you tell us?

April Buske [00:04:23]:

So in my church experience, I found that my ministry required me to be mobile, but at the same time, I was chained to my desk to deal with getting phone calls, getting messages. If I was in the church building and somebody called for me, I'd hear my secretary running down the hall saying, april, there's a call and I'd have to run back to my office. And then she'd be like, okay, I'm transferring you now. Are you ready? It was kind of that weird place of I needed to be all around the building. I needed to be out in the community, but I was still tied to the desk. The other thing is, I was single when I started in ministry, and I got married. And when I left my church after ten years, they still hadn't figured out how to update my name in the phone system because the directory was just so hard to use.

Nina Hampton [00:05:11]:

Yikes.

Jeanette Yates [00:05:12]:

That is so relatable, by the way. I'm pretty sure my voice is still when you call the church. I still think it's my voice doing the things, but anyway, yes, that's very relatable.

April Buske [00:05:24]:

My voice is still the Christmas service times every year when those pop up, they're just going to slide that audio back in, right? Like that's the game plan. And then I think the other thing that was really hard was the amount of work that voicemails generated that I couldn't do automatically. So, like, you'd get a Post it note saying so and so wants to register their kid for the youth retreat. Can you send them how to do that? And so then it would be like going into one system, looking up their email, going into another system, sending them a note with a link from a third place. And so I feel like Talk In Church can really help across the board with making sure that you get those calls delivered wherever you're at so you're not scurrying down the hallway in a panic trying to get somebody. You don't have to go to the office to check your voicemails. You can get those wherever. And you can use Talk in Church to not only send out registration information to people, but you can also use it to respond by text or phone call right away from within the system. So it just really makes the phone more intuitive and more focused for the needs of churches. These big complex systems are designed for big complex businesses, and you need like a tech degree and an It person and thousands of dollars of equipment where Talk In Church is really designed for churches that's intuitive to use. And you can get up and running in 30 minutes or less. And I love that about Talk In Church.

Jeanette Yates [00:06:52]:

You talked about some of the ways it helps. Can you actually break down some of the actual features? So what are some of those features that help solve those problems?

April Buske [00:07:02]:

Sure. So we talked a moment about boundaries and how it's really important to have those. And I felt like my number was everywhere with Talk in Church, because you can get your phone calls delivered anywhere through cell signal. You can get a call from your church number to your phone anywhere you're at, but the power is setting up your caller profile. When you set that up, you can say, these are the times that I want times and days that I want to receive phone calls. And you can make sure that your family dinner, your kids birthday party, your soccer game that you're going to, all of those things are protected. You still know that the call is getting cared for because if it's outside of your hours, it goes straight to your voicemail.

Jeanette Yates [00:07:46]:

So your caller profile, you can set that up to receive calls when you want them, for them to go to voicemail or to a different team member. And you were talking about that so that you can enjoy your family time or have your own time, your self care time. We talked about that this morning, too, April. But I also thought about we talk a lot on this call about the multiple ministry hats that we wear as church communications people. And whether you're a pastor or church admin, administrative assistant, youth group person, you probably are wearing more than one hat, and sometimes you want to be able to focus on just the ministry that you're working on right now. I know that that happens. One of the people that works at my church, he is constantly talking to you and answering voicemails and text messages and all these things because they haven't implemented Talk In Church yet. But this idea of, like, sometimes it's about personal boundaries, but sometimes it's about those ministry boundaries, too. Like, I need to be focusing in on this pastoral counseling session or praying with this family, even though another family might need prayer, I'm with this family. So those boundaries are so important. What other features will help us with? So you talked a little bit about we could respond with a text message, like, if somebody wants to know more about, say, can you talk a little bit about the menu aspect of Talk In Church?

Nina Hampton [00:09:16]:

Yes.

April Buske [00:09:16]:

So in Talk In Church, you can set up a really customizable digital receptionist, and your digital receptionist is what can greet your incoming calls with things like, hey, thanks for calling such and such church. If you party extension, you can dial at any time, and you can program every one of those menus to sound like who your church is, to broadcast the information that's important to your church and to resource your congregation well. So our template starts off with a great showcase of the power of talk in church and the power of the digital receptionist. Two of my favorites is that you can use the digital receptionist to send a text message. And then the other thing that I've seen that I really love is that you can use the digital receptionist to capture a voicemail that then goes outside of talk in church so that you can equip your laity to be able to do the work that they need as well.

Jeanette Yates [00:10:09]:

I did not know that I learned something about Talk In Church.

April Buske [00:10:14]:

I can go on for hours. But the power of sending the text message, though, people are like, oh, well, I can tell them when my service times are. But I saw this church doing a really cool thing where every time they have a special event, they put it in their number one spot. So, like, press one, right? So when they don't have a special event, they just start with press two. They take out the sentence about press one. But that press one sentence is, like, to learn more about Vacation Bible School, press one. To learn more about our Fall fest, press one. To hear about our Easter festivities, press one. So they leave that first sentence for whatever special is going on in their church. And then when you press one, you hear the next thing, which is like, for Vacation Bible School, they did. Our Vacation Bible School is such and such days and times, it's no cost to the community. Press one. To get a link to register a student. Press two to get a link to sign up to volunteer, or press three to get a link for our Amazon wishlist showcasing the supplies we're hoping to collect. So not only did you send like, you saved your the time of writing a note, a post it note right. Running down the hall and then you having to go back, find that person's information and email them the link, right? You just added time back into your life. And Nina, your face said it all.

Nina Hampton [00:11:39]:

I think my favorite thing about having conversations with the church leaders that we've had, but even when Caleb's been on the podcast, whatever, all the Things is learning about these specific use cases because that's genius. I would have never thought to do that. That's so smart and it's so funny. I was actually talking to my sister. She actually just started working at her church that she's been serving at, like just attending with her family for the last year. And they were like, hey, we have a position that we think that you'd be perfect for. And she was like, you don't even really know me, but okay.

April Buske [00:12:09]:

And so now she works at the.

Nina Hampton [00:12:11]:

Church as the discipleship director and she's killing it, right? She's doing an amazing job. But one of the things that was really cool, she's my older sister, she's five years older than me, but we're kind of in the same season of life and so we talk every day. I talk to her every day. And one of the things that she's over, she goes to a larger church, like here in the Casey area. And being the discipleship coordinator, she's over all the life groups, meaning that she like all the changes to all the life groups and their attendance sheet and everything. That's her thing. That's what she does. And so her phone is ringing off the hook. My sister is also a homeschooling mom of four who does not work full time. And she told like whenever she was approached with working at the church, she's like, this is great, this is amazing. I would love to, but also I need some of my hours to be able to be worked from home. They finessed that. And she's now working partially from home. But it was so funny. One of the moments she was just like venting to me just like in frustration. She was like, people are calling my office phone and I'm not trying to give everybody my mobile number and people can't get a hold of me and it's driving me nuts.

Jeanette Yates [00:13:23]:

And I was like, hey, solution.

Nina Hampton [00:13:26]:

I was like, I have a little bit of a shameless plug for you right now. You should talk to the church about getting Talk In Church because it literally would solve your exact issue. You are why we created this tool. That's literally why because of what you literally just said just now. Because she's at home on her kitchen table while her kids are doing their recess time in the middle of the day after they've eaten lunch.

April Buske [00:13:47]:

And she's trying to update these attendance.

Nina Hampton [00:13:49]:

Sheets for this upcoming Sunday, and she's getting emails that, hey, this person called. And this person called. She's like, they could just call me now. I mean, my kids are in the background, but it's fine. We're all church family. Like, it's okay. And it was just such a cool opportunity, like, hey, shameless plug. This is literally why we created this, because we heard that story time and.

April Buske [00:14:07]:

Time happens when you start to give your number out, is then you feel like you have to answer it no matter what. If she was still teaching in session, would she feel the guilt of not answering that call? And I did when I was given out my phone. And I think that's part of what makes Talk In Church so powerful is you have that privacy guarantee that when somebody calls your church and it gets sent to your cell phone number, nobody's seeing that number dialed the church number. When you call out using the Text In Church app, you're seeing the church number. So that helps remove that layer of guilt, but also the freedom to work wherever you're at.

Jeanette Yates [00:14:44]:

Yeah, it all sounds really complicated to set up all those menus, but from what I understand, Talk In Church, that the team that worked on the development of this product fixed that. They solved that problem for us. Tell us how easy it is to set up your Talk and Church account.

April Buske [00:15:01]:

Well, if it tells you anything, the very first time that I set up Talk and Church for me and my demo account, I was able to get it up and running in less than 30 minutes. And so I want to give you that assurance that I'm not an It person by any means. I can nerd out on some technical gadgets that I have, but I'm not the person programming them. Right. So it's really simple to navigate. The system was designed with church leaders in mind. Y'all are brilliant church leaders, but you're brilliant in communicating the word of God, communicating with your people about doing ministry. We didn't want you to have to be brilliant in it, too. So it's very simple. The interface is really intuitive, and if you need help or you're unsure, we have an amazing support team and success team here to help you every step of the way. So you're not doing it alone either. You've got a team of people on.

Jeanette Yates [00:15:58]:

Your right, and I love the member experience team and all the different ways they step in to help. Yet, Nina, shout out to Nina and crew, and you, too, because Nina is the member.

Nina Hampton [00:16:10]:

Yeah, april is just as much in her too.

Jeanette Yates [00:16:13]:

Like Nina. Nina, you are the member success manager for Text In Church. April is the member success for Talk In Church. So they both have that kind of hat that they wear, but the teams are really great, and they can really walk you like so if you're just like, I just need to know I just have two questions. That's no problem. Or if you're like, no, seriously, even.

Nina Hampton [00:16:35]:

If you come to us and you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing, we're like, that's okay, because we do. And so we'll walk you through all the things.

April Buske [00:16:42]:

It's our entire job is helping church get up and running and be successful with talking to church. So I do zoom calls with our members all the time for strategy, but also just for little things like, how do I set this up? I'm here for you. Yes, you're not alone.

Nina Hampton [00:16:58]:

Yes, I got you. I think some of my favorite conversations are when people are like, I don't necessarily need to know how to use the system, but I need to know how to use the system. You know what I'm saying? I have an idea. I want to use this. We have a church car wash coming up as a fundraiser. Can I do it for that? And I'm like all the ideas. Let me tell you all of my ideas. Those are some of my favorite conversations.

Jeanette Yates [00:17:21]:

And then sometimes they're like, I don't even need you to tell me the ideas. I just want you to tell me this. Just show me this one little thing, and then the next time some people want to know it all ahead of time. Some people want to know it in chunks. And no matter how you prefer to learn or how you prefer to get this up and running, you can go to the Help Center. You can come to a live training where April walks you through that or meet with her one on one or any other members of the team. So we try to make it as easy as possible. So that was kind of a softball, because I know that it's like, is it really hard? No, it's not hard.

Nina Hampton [00:17:54]:

It's easy.

Jeanette Yates [00:17:55]:

But there are some other obstacles besides.

April Buske [00:17:58]:

We can get you up and running quick.

Jeanette Yates [00:18:00]:

Yeah, so there's other obstacles besides just setting things up so that talk and church really solves. And so can you hit some of those other things that churches often face? And just real quickly, how talk and church solves those other obstacles as well?

April Buske [00:18:16]:

Yeah, so I think a lot of church really face that. How do you stretch your ministry dollars? And we all want to be incredibly good stewards of the money that we're entrusted with. And I feel like when we were looking at phone systems with my church, it was either these systems that cost thousands of dollars, or you had to use something that was pre built out of the box. And I think that's the nice thing about Talk In Church is that it's very customizable, it's very low cost in the grand scheme of things, and we want to make sure that you're using the money that you're entrusted with wisely and be good stewards of. So there's you don't find tons of extra fees or add ons with Talk In Church. It's just really designed for you to maximize your ministry budget. I had a church that was telling me that they added more callers than what they were, quote, unquote, allowed for their plan. So we added those on, and it was a decent amount of callers. When we added those on. It brought her monthly bill to a couple of month with Talk In Church. Then they told me what they were paying with their previous provider to add their 30 staff members, and it was exorbitant. They were saving $1,000 a month by switching from Talk In Church. Think about what that could do for your ministry. There are ministries in my church that are funded on less than $12,000 a year, like fully funded. That's a brand new ministry that you could launch in a lot of church context, right? So we do try and keep the costs of Talk In Church really low because we know what's important to ministry and the ministry money. Another thing that we love about Talk In Church is thinking through the strategy behind it of how to set up your system to maximize it so that your staff is free to do more ministry and less phone calls. So I was talking with a church out in Branson, which I just visited Branson for the first time. Ten out of ten would go back. Don't like the windy roads, but I loved everything else.

Nina Hampton [00:20:21]:

Listen, for those of you who do not know what she's talking about, she's talking about Branson, Missouri. Okay? The hilly part of the glorious state that I've been raised in. It was a nice little place.

April Buske [00:20:30]:

Stunningly, beautiful, windy roads. I had to take some, surprisingly, right?

Nina Hampton [00:20:34]:

It's, like, really scenic. And you're like, I'm in Missouri. This doesn't make sense.

April Buske [00:20:36]:

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm from Iowa, and everybody thinks Iowa is flat, but it's so, like, it's nice to know that other states are thought of that way too. Like, oh, I thought Missouri was all flat. Surprise.

Nina Hampton [00:20:46]:

We feel your pain.

April Buske [00:20:47]:

Yes. But I was talking with this church, and they were like, we're in a tourist town. Every week we get dozens of calls asking, when are your service times? It doesn't matter that they're on the website, right? It doesn't matter. People aren't going to the website first. They're just picking up the phone and calling. And what they did was they basically said, welcome or thank you for calling this Branson church. Our service times are Saturdays at this time, sundays at this time. And then they went into their menu options. They said it freed up so much time that it was like adding an extra staff person. How cool is it that saved so much time for them that they were able to use that person that was answering that phone to do ministry instead of just answering the phone and answering that one question that they get over.

Jeanette Yates [00:21:33]:

And over and over again and sounding excited to answer. It for the.

April Buske [00:21:41]:

Right. And it's not the 15th person's fault for big.

Jeanette Yates [00:21:44]:

Right, exactly right.

April Buske [00:21:46]:

But you want a great experience and that's a way that you can deliver a great experience without getting tired of that question.

Nina Hampton [00:21:53]:

So just as we've chatted about how your whole job my whole job? Our whole job is that we get to talk with our members, you specifically would talk and just hearing these stories right, about how it's actually like no, it's really boots on the ground, making an impact. It's not just something that we say. It's not something that's cute, that's like catchy. No, I've seen it. I've heard the stories. I've, in some cases cried with the churches who are you know what I mean, being impacted by the change. So what's your favorite thing about working with churches that are trying to onboard talk in church?

April Buske [00:22:34]:

I think for me, my favorite thing is I still feel like this is ministry and that I'm still making a difference in the kingdom of like what I'm doing is going to make heaven more crowded because it's training these churches or helping them set up systems so that they have the right things in place to get people to BBS. And because those kids went to BBS, well, now heaven's more crowded. And I think as church communicators, we sometimes feel a little bit like the job's thankless like the only time we hear when we've done and this is I totally put on my church communicator hat, not my Texan church hat, because at Texan church, I always hear the good things that I'm doing. But in the church communication world, you don't always get positive feedback because if you've done your job well, nobody knows that you did your job right. People registered for the event. People knew what they needed to know. They found the bathrooms okay, all the things went well. You only hear when things don't go well. Right. But if you're doing your communication job well and you only hear the negative stuff, it's really easy to get down and out. And I just want you to know that you're still making a difference in the kingdom of God. Like you're still making disciples by getting those people to the baptism night that they wouldn't have known about if you didn't put it on your outdoor sign. Yeah, sorry, I'm going to get on a soapbox and just preach about how important is but it's so important. And making the small steps to improve communication, setting up connect cards, texting your members, using walk in church to be able to respond quickly to your members voicemails, all of that stuff is here to help ministries be successful. And I think that's what I love most about working with is seeing those wins from churches and hearing like, oh, yeah, what you did made a difference.

Jeanette Yates [00:24:19]:

Well, I think sometimes, like you said, the communications arm of the church isn't always seen as ministry. It's seen as administrative. But the more you work in it, the more you realize it is really a ministry thing. And so I know that lots of us that work on this Text In Church team, we do still feel like it's very much ministry related. And at the end of the day, sharing the gospel is communication. That's what the word share means. It means communicate. And so that's, you know, again, I'm on the soapbox with you, apparently, so we can sub off.

Nina Hampton [00:25:04]:

We're preaching to the choir staying quiet. I'm specifically staying quiet so I don't also get on. Yeah, I will.

Jeanette Yates [00:25:11]:

And heaven is crowded and so is the soapbox right now. All right, well, I'm going to ask two more questions.

April Buske [00:25:22]:

Okay?

Jeanette Yates [00:25:22]:

One, though, we've shared some great stories. You've talked about the Branson church, you've talked about that church that had the Amazon wishlist. But are there any more? After all, this is all about stories. This whole podcast, it's all about stories. And so if you have any other fun stories to share about ways that this technology has made a difference in the lives of the people working for a church and the people they serve, we would love to hear that. We'll give you the opportunity to share that.

April Buske [00:25:54]:

Now, I was talking with a church out in New England earlier this week, and their church is part of a network of churches that do these things called white flag shelters. So, like, if there's extreme heat or extreme cold, they open up a series of shelters that are ad hoc that people can come to. So one of the things that's been a huge challenge for this group of churches is they put that information out on Facebook or they put that information out on a website. But people who are experiencing the need for those shelters don't necessarily have access to those resources, but they could find a phone and call. That's a little easier than finding a computer to be able to log on to. Right? So they are putting together one Talk In Church number that they're all going to share and they're using their digital receptionist. It's going to be super duper simple. It's just going to say, these white flag shelters are open today. Here are the addresses and here are the times. And so they're going to use that. So they only have one phone number to communicate across every the entire network is going to use the same phone number and it's now going to be a Talk In Church number. And then that will be text enabled. So they'll be able to push an option to have the Google Maps link sent to them so they can tap on a cell phone and get directions. Either by car, walk or bus. And how cool is that, that they can use that to serve their community in that unique way. I love the ingenuity behind it because I'm thinking, oh, church phone systems. But this is like a community outreach system. Yeah, the other road. That's incredible. Sorry, I got excited and I cut you off.

Nina Hampton [00:27:40]:

I'm sorry, that's just so dope. I think it particularly pokes my heart because I used to work at a gospel rescue ministry and the phone rang off the hook and so I remember we would take turns. We would take turns because being the operator in that position at the ministry that I was on staff at was hard to staff. I'll just say that because it's a hard job, it's very heavy and so a lot of us other staff members would actually take rotations of working in that role. And we had connections with other rescue ministries that were in our area, other homeless shelters, but it was all manned, right? It was all manual. So we would have the conversations with these people and don't get me wrong, it was awesome opportunities for gospel presentations and it was a very unique blessing to be able to work in that. But I think having it be automated right serves. Because what if somebody has to go to the bathroom, you know what I mean? There's all kinds of stuff. Yeah, it just pokes my heart in a special way. That's awesome.

April Buske [00:29:00]:

Yeah, that was one of the ones where after I got off that zoom with that pastor, I was like whoa, making a difference in a way that I never would have thought about. We are also seeing churches use Talk In Church has a teams feature and so you can take any of your people that are your callers that can make and receive calls for your church. You can take them and put them into groups of people. So when you put them in the group of people, basically the phone system operates a little bit differently. It goes from sending the call to one person's cell phone to sending the call to everybody's cell phone at once and then whoever on that team answers the call first they get it, phone stops ringing for everybody else. And so I was working with a church local to me that they use that on their outreach days. So, like, one day of the week, they have a huge food pantry that hundreds of people come through, and so they put their team on food pantry duty, and so everybody on the team can answer the food pantry calls as they come in, because people that are calling that line have a specific need. And so all of them are ready to be able to answer those calls. So that way if the call gets delivered to the pastor and another call comes in, it can get delivered to the next staff person. So it really supercharges their phone in a way that they could pass those calls from person to person without having to manually do it. And so that church now is using that strategy across all of their outreaches. So, like, when they have a Thanksgiving turkey drive, like they're doing these free turkey baskets around Thanksgiving time, they're going to use that number and use the team's function to be able to deliver it to whichever person needs to answer the call. Not just one person, but whoever is available on the whole team. So that's a really cool way to use teams. I thought of it more from the perspective of like, okay, these are your office staff, so we can put your office staff in a team and you can run to reach the office team. Whoever's available in the office can grab that. But thinking about using that for ministry specific things, I was like blown away, like, gosh, that's brilliant. Why didn't I think of that first? No, I'm just like, hey, I'm going to steal your idea and use that to teach other churches how to do this well, right? Yeah. So I thought that white church shelter was really awesome and then also using it for the food pantry was a really good way to use the teams. Yeah, I just think Talk In Church can be it's so versatile, yet it's so simple. And I think that's the magic in it is like it's simple enough that anybody can use it straight away, 30 minutes or less. But it's so powerful that you can get people signed up for VBS or tell people about shelters. It's amazing.

Jeanette Yates [00:31:54]:

Well, and I think one thing that's really important and something that I know that I teach when I do the demos and the live trainings and I think both of you do as well, the idea that, yes, it is a very powerful technology. It has a lot of features that can help church in many different ways, but you don't have to do it alone and you don't have to do everything at once. So what advice would you give someone that's like, yeah, that all sounds great, but also my head is what what would you say to them?

April Buske [00:32:26]:

Trying anything new can be scary. Whether it's yoga or CrossFit or a new recipe, it's intimidating, right. So just the same thing with a phone solution or a texting solution, it can be intimidating. Start small and don't go it alone. Start small, master that one thing. Call in reinforcement or help when you need it. Once you get that one thing mastered, then you can add on the next thing. Just make those incremental changes that are tiny. And if you just do a little bit every day or every time you log in, before you know it, you're 100% better, right, or you're 100% down the road further than you thought you'd ever be. It's just about making those small changes, starting small, dreaming big, yeah, very well said.

Nina Hampton [00:33:12]:

One of my pastor's favorite things that he says is all it takes is one degree of change at a time. Before you know it, you turned all the way around. Just one degree. All you have to do. Yeah.

Jeanette Yates [00:33:23]:

That's good to remember in all the things. Okay, so as we wrap up today, april, is there any other encouragement you want to give our frazzled? Well, hopefully more focused church communications people, that's our goal is to Jesus name. We may start frazzled, but we end focused. Is there anything that you want to tell our listeners, our watchers? I'm still wrapping my head around the whole video thing, guys.

Nina Hampton [00:33:54]:

I'll just say our people.

Jeanette Yates [00:33:55]:

Yeah, there are people. Anything you want to tell them, any encouragement you want to give them today?

April Buske [00:34:01]:

I think the thing that I needed to hear the most when I was in the church world was that what I was doing mattered. It's making a difference and it is discipleship. So you're doing a great job. It's like the whole like, you're doing a great job, mom, you're doing a great job. Church leader you are. And just go for it. Take the leap of faith, because if you don't change anything, tomorrow is going to be exactly the same, right. If you want to make improvements in your communication, if you want the tech world to get easier, you just got to start somewhere. So take a leap of faith. What's the worst that can happen?

Jeanette Yates [00:34:34]:

That's right. You do have to put in a little bit of effort, but you're not alone. And like you said, what you're doing matters. Period, full stop. So thank you so much for that encouragement. That is a wrap on today's show. Thank you, April, for joining us today. We appreciate you. We appreciate your time. We know you have Talk In Church members that you need to get connected with. So we appreciate you hopping in here, you guys. We would love to hear from you. If you want to head to the comments of this video and share any thoughts that you have about this episode, we would love to hear that. And also in the show description today, we are going to make sure that we share the link so that you can go attend a live demo with April so she can walk you through and you can actually see the platform and see how it works. You can see the digital receptionist. You can see all of those things. How to create a team, how to just get started with like a basic and you get to talk to April voicemail. Also get to hang out with her because she's fantastic, one of my favorite people. So if you're listening, check the show notes. If you're watching, check the description. We will have the live demo link in there for you. And also if you're ready to jump on it, you can start a free.

Nina Hampton [00:35:45]:

Trial and if you want to know how tech tools like Talk In Church can help you spend less time worrying about technology and doing more of what you love in your ministry and in your personal life. Make sure you subscribe wherever you are listening to this episode so you don't.

April Buske [00:35:58]:

Miss out on future ones.