Interview with Pierre Quinn

My good friend Chip, came up with the idea of doing devotionals with a few of the pastors at the 2012 Pastoral Evangelism & Leadership Council (PELC) conference in Huntsville, Alabama. Our team was present and assisting that conference with their communication needs, using primarily the crossMRKT system. Chip was able to also record Pastor Pierre Quinn as we discussed his ministry goals and the use of technology  to achieve those goals at the churches he pastors. Here is a breakdown of the video transcript.

What are the goals for your ministry?

I have two churches I am Pastor of Cottage Chapel Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky and Immanuel Owensboro Church in Owensboro, Kentucky and my desire for the church, the mission statement of Cottage Chapel is to reach, grow and equip. We wanna reach people with the gospel, we wanna equip them to prepare to take the gospel to the rest of the world. We wanna grow them and that’s something I think a lot of pastor’s share that same desire to reach their community, grow their community and equip their community. So that’s why I have a passion for the gospel.

How do you meet these goals?

It’s funny you ask that question. When I was installed in the church, it’s the typical setup in most churches. I am the communications guy. You notice, from week to week, somebody would stand up front and read their announcement or they will put them on the bulletin. But by the time Sabbath evening or Sunday morning comes around, nobody can find the bulletin.

Nobody knows where the announcements are. So I was big on starting to use twitter, have a twitter account and facebook and using social media because most of my church members are on their phones or their internet and I said, let’s reach people where they are. Most times of the week, you are not gonna be engaged with the church bulletin but most of the time during the week, you will engage with social media. So I had a desire, a burden to reach people using technologies that they frequent every single day.

How would Jesus use technology?

I think Jesus would have used the technology in a couple of ways. One, I think because we see Jesus working primarily with his group of 12. He talk crowds, he healed and he walked through cities and really impacted a lot of people. But he concentrated, he put a lot of his leadership training in his 12. So I think Jesus would have really used technology to train his core leaders to give them the tools. I think of the story when Jesus send 70, 2 by 2. I can imagine, you know, hypothetically if I can use my imagination them being in the field and asking Jesus the question and having Jesus on Skype or on Google Hangout and he’s saying, OK this is how I would do the situation if I were you.

So I think he would primarily use it in training his core leaders but also because he was impacting so many people, he would make sure that the gospel was broadcasted as far and as wide as possible.

How was Symbiota able to help you?

Joel and Jason and the team at Symbiota, I called them. I don’t remember how I got their information, I don’t know if I was on Twitter or something and saw the things that they were doing in terms of Church Media Communications and Technology. And I called Joel and we had a conversation via Google Hangout. And I shared with him my vision for the church and some of the things that we were trying to do and he shared with me the goals of Symbiota and some of the technology and the resources that they are using so we signed up for three things with them; we signed up for a text messaging plan, we signed up for a website.

We had the traditional templated website that our denomination provides and I said, no, we are gonna totally restructure that and then we signed up for mobile website so we are using, building on all those technologies now simultaneously.

How has this helped your ministry?

Well, I was trying to sell it. You have a committee on your board and you try to sell them the idea of spending extra number of dollars on technology and a lot of people were saying, will people actually use it? And the thing that I really pushed, I was really interested in the mobile website and the new website overhaul. But I sold it to my church because I explained to them, now we have a tool that no matter where you are, as long as you have your phone, you don’t have to worry about finding your bulletin, you don’t have to worry for your church latecomers, you don’t have to worry about getting to church on time to hear the announcements. If something happens in the middle of the week, we have a changed event or we have a change in service time, we can instantly get the message out via text message and I love that.

Now I have ministry leaders in my church saying, OK Pastor, I wanna advertise this particular aspect of ministry. They have children’s choir rehearsal and we have an AY and everybody responds. We know this once we started using the crossMRKT system actually an increase in our primary attendance. Because I would send out a message on Tuesday or Wednesday morning saying prayer meeting is at this time and it would cross-post to Twitter and it cross-post to Facebook and our attendance increased because people were getting it even if you don’t unlock your phone or open your phone, the message shows up right there and you know it’s from the church and you have the gist of the message and it catches people right where they are.