In today’s podcast episode of Church Butler Lunch and Learn series, Trey Van Camp, a vlogger, will share some technical tips on vlogging in Youtube as platform. He will state that anybody can vlog. It is such a good way to reach out to people, as pastors and church leaders to vlog and show that Christians have interests too and that non believers, anyone can hang out with them. He believes that people will be more interested to be a Christian if they will see that Christianity is more than just going to church and reading Bible, and that is his goal and purpose in vlogging.
Websites mentioned: vlogyourministry.com
Contact information: +1 480 4480 823
TRANSCRIPTION
Kenny Jahng: Hey folks, welcome back to the Church Butler Lunch and Learn podcast where we interview amazing, what else can we say, leading edge, cutting edge leaders in ministry. And one might be the pinnacle of the history of this podcast. I’ve got the one and only, I think he needs to modify his driver’s license to put the word “the” in front of his name, “the one and only” Trey Van Camp. Welcome to the show.
Trey Van Camp: Thanks man. So excited to be here. I just love. I met you twice now. You’re a great guy. I’m super pumped about what you do and I’m so thankful you asked me to do this interview like you know, 20 minutes ago. So let’s, let’s get it done. You know what that’s how we do things, right? We make too many plans. Let’s just get into it. So boom, here we are.
Kenny Jahng: To be very honest though, that is, I think, the shared DNA that we have and that others who are actually killing it on YouTube and the interwebs is this bias for action, right? You don’t know how many people make excuses when they come up to me and talking about my vlogging or anything like that and I’m a newbie in the vlogging compared to you. But like, it’s just amazing. Like anyone can do this, right?
Trey Van Camp: It takes work.
Kenny Jahng: So let’s get back to basics. Tell us who you are, where in the world are you on the interwebs? Because it could be anywhere. It looks like you are in some really nice fancy hotel or something like that. Tell us where you are.
Trey Van Camp: So I’m actually in my hometown where I grew up. I live in Queen Creek, Arizona, so it ships a suburb outside of Phoenix and grew up here my whole life. Went to California for four years for college. And then, I had a big fork in the road. I had a couple of job offers in California, almost took those. One of them was actually a possible. I was going to be Rick Warren’s assistant. There’s a name drop right there already. But it was like a big. It’s a big part of my story because I could have done that, it would’ve been an incredible journey for me, but I’m like, I talked to my wife and she’s like, what do you really want to take away the fame, take away the status, take away the money. And I was like, honestly, I want to go back home and lead my friends to Christ. And she’s like, I think that’s what we should do. I agree. So in 2014 we moved back and then we planted my church in 2016 at the beginning of the new year and we’re about to celebrate our third birthday, which is insane to me and I’ve been vlogging since November of 2016, so I didn’t, I wish I vlogged before I launched, but I didn’t even know what vlogs were until October of 2016. I found out about Casey Neistat. I spent 15 days watching all of his videos and then I uploaded my first one. That’s literally what I did and I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew I wanted to do that. Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what I did.
Kenny Jahng: Casey knows that he contributed to emerging ministry in Phoenix, basically.
Trey Van Camp: Well, I’ve met Casey, so I told him he was my inspiration so he knows. I actually got to go hang out with them in New York City with like 40 of his best friends plus me. And it was a super crazy events. So, it really is an incredible guy. He’s liking,
Kenny Jahng: You went to his new place, the new digs before it was open?
Trey Van Camp: No. Okay. This was a year ago, like this last week, so three, six, eight wasn’t announced yet, but it was a Samsung event. So he actually invited Dustin. Dustin’s the one who is a quadriplegic and so he’s friends with Casey because of a shout out. Well, I’m friends with Dustin because of DMs on Instagram hustle in getting to know him, encouraging him, and he’s allowed to bring a plus one, especially because of his situation. And so he hit me up and two days later I flew to New York City because of my subscribers. Bought my ticket there and back. So it was a crazy experience. Yes I did. And I got to that. That’s how it got there. That’s how he knew about me, you know, like he started watching all my vlogs, but I had gospel conversations with people that have 4 to 5 million followers and it was, I still keep them up to this day. It was not with Casey. He was way too popular and everybody was trying to get a few minutes with him, but it was incredible. It was really cool experience.
Kenny Jahng: So you are, I guess in the Christian world, one of the real standout pioneers, which is odd to me because Youtube actually has been around for so long. And I guess pastors the allergic to the camera, but tell us a little bit about your vlog. So, first of all, where can they find your channel and, uh, what do you vlog about? How often do you vlog? Give us all the beats.
Trey Van Camp: Cool. Yes, I appreciate this. Yes. So you just look up my name Trey Van Camp while you’re camping in a van. Three words and you’ll find me on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, all that jazz. I have a website, treyvancamp.com. But also I have my vlogs are essentially how I got started there called DocumenTrey. So instead of documentaries is documenting my life. So I call it DocumenTrey and I officially came up. So I started vlogging November ’16, March of ’17 is when the light bulb turned on that I need to use my name. So DocumenTrey started really kicking for there. I have, I just uploaded my 223rd documentary, but outside of that I have, I think, I don’t know, 20 DocumenTreys and then I have like 18 leadership of videos that I’ve put out for free. And then I don’t know. So I think on my thing, I have almost 300 uploads on my channel and that’s within the last, I guess two years now. And so I’m passionate about a lot of things. So I kind of have content pillars and I know you’ve talked about this a lot and when you, I always watch your LinkedIn videos and your vlogs and I think it’s sometimes super encouraging. Like, okay, I’m doing the right thing and then you’ve also helped me kind of change and reposition what I’m doing. But my content pillars are, my passion is that I want my friends who have never stepped foot in a church to see that I’m a normal person. That I love having fun, that I love my family, that I also loved Disneyland. I’m not the one who boycotts Disneyland, you know, stuff like that. Like, you know, I want to communicate those things.
Trey Van Camp: And so honestly my biggest popular views, I have one, a Disneyland protips has almost 90,000 views now and talk to it, kind of got me what most people found out about me first. And then what’s kind of cool, there’s a lot of Christians stick around and a lot of the non Christian stick around. So I try to do a little bit of everything. And then I do make a lot of vlogs. I call them like Hybrids, where half of it is like a sermon jam with some B roll and then the other half is just me going through my day. Maybe even talking about that topic a little bit more. Uh, and then other times I just stood up, upload my full message. Other Times I upload leadership content. So I’ve made two different workshops, and leadership workshop. It’s really, it’s stuff I’m doing for my church anyways and I’m just turning on the camera and allowing other people to see it as well because I was like, of course I want to invest in leaders in my church, so I thought let’s turn on the camera and best in a lot of people.
Trey Van Camp: So there’s actually churches across the sound so drastic, it’s not a lot, but there’s like 10 different states of church people in different states and churches that are using my leadership workshop as like their small group curriculum. So that’s fun. And then I saw that I took that momentum and now I did it. I just finished a communication workshop. So I’m teaching, I’m actually getting more and more passionate of saying, okay, I’ve done this for two years, I want to teach other people how to do this. It’s like a huge passion of mine because my numbers aren’t crazy big. However, like the life impact is insane. So I got an Instagram DM. This guy got baptized at Mariners Church, which is a ginormous church. And he said, “Hey, I’ve been, I’ve found you through youtube. I’ve been listening to your podcasts and I had to take my next step of baptism because of your content.” So I was like, that’s so cool. So I also wonder like, how often does that. You never know. Like I never knew that guy. I’m just really, really encouraged by that yesterday. So stuff like that is just convinces me, especially leaders of the church, it’s no longer a question should you produce content? It’s how often and even that, like, just who can do it for you if you’re really technologically illiterate because it’s insane. I’m a small church kind of guy. We’re not huge. I like that to say yet, but I’m still able to have like literally in a sense a global impact because of Youtube. So I’m super grateful and it’s just, I would have never guessed the stuff that’s happened in the last two years.
Kenny Jahng: What’s interesting is that flipped right where you’re no longer preaching to the people in the room. You have more people outside of the room. I was just at a conference in Nashville called faithleads.tech And we were co-sponsor from American Bible Society and the .bible team and we worked with the conference organizer to light up a live stream to make it free to anybody that wants to watch, couldn’t come to Nashville. And they had about four times the number of people on the live stream than in the room. And then there’s, you know, on demand access to all the talks and stuff. So it is now, right? It is foolish if you’re not thinking about who is being reached through the interwebs with any of the continents.
Trey Van Camp: The other day someone asked me, like if somebody asked me like, who are your mentors? I only know one of them in real life. The rest of them are on the Internet. Like honestly, I’ve been so shaped and molded by videos online and it’s like I get that opportunity to be that for people, which is so good.
Kenny Jahng: So what about your local footprint? Because a lot of pastors are going to say, yes, that’s great. 10 other states and I’m here call to serve my people in this zip code, in my building, you know, can you share any stories of. Has it brought more visibility to you in your town? Has anyone walked in the door from hearing any of your vlogs or video content? Has any of your congregation actually shared end of your video content with other people to help bring them and invite them on?
Trey Van Camp: Yes. So what you’ve said and I’ve really learned from you just about how I actually need to utilize ads more. So I’ve actually, you know, the plan, your visit model that everybody’s talking about right now. We just made that video for us and so what we decided to do is on our plan your visit page, I show them. I walked through my vlogging style. I walked them through what our church looks like and then they see the location, but then they also, it also shows my blog channel like, hey, you need to get to know us more. Check this out. And I have a whole playlist of behind the scenes ministry blogs, so it’s DocumenTreys, but specific ones that are about the church. So it’s really encouraging for our leaders in our church. And people who go, they love watching, they love me talking about the men of our church.
Trey Van Camp: Like it’s the greatest way to cast vision. I get to save time on Sunday mornings to some degree because I’m casting that vision all throughout the week. But yes, we’ve had several people come through our door and they’re like, this sounds crazy, but I was searching Disneyland and you came up and I learned that were in the same city. And so I decided to come visit your church. I’m like, that’s incredible. That’s, that’s how it’s done. And so it’s been, you know, we’ve got a lot, it obviously attracts younger people because of that and they just can really relate. And what I’ve also found is that it attracts people who also want to do that. It’s attracted a lot of creative people, a lot of people who are just like entrepreneur type and that’s who I really love anyways. So I love that I’m drawing them in and so I’m speaking there, same heart language and so they automatically have respect for me even outside of the Bible world.
Trey Van Camp: They just want to be around me and learn from me because of I’m doing kind of what they want to do, but for them it’s in the business world, so it’s been really good. And I don’t know, it’s just really encouraged a lot of people. I mean it has been, it’s every week, I’m always wondering, I’m praying like, God, I pray that there’s somebody else who you randomly stumbles upon my Youtube channel and they come to our church. That’s honestly the goal for me. I’m a local church guy, so I want my church to grow. If I had to, I hate to say if I had to pick, but I still would probably pick my local church because I just think there’s so much value in face to face, but I don’t think it should be either or. I most definitely think it’s both end.
Kenny Jahng: In today’s world you’re allowed to have the end. Okay. So what’s interesting to me, because one of the things that I’ve always said that no one’s really caught on. It’s like, I feel like you might be the first ever that might agree with me, is that the church lost opportunity. They should have been yelp.com for your city. In terms of content like if you look at realtors, realtor websites now are just putting out content about anything and everything about their town and their life and they’re celebrating the high performing realtors, their websites are championing this life in their city and I feel like churches should be doing that. And vlogging is a great way to talk about the restaurants. Talk about your daily life going into some of the retailers and your neighbors and talk to the owners. And in a way you’re Disney videos kind of like that, right? It’s not church like. So here’s, I guess the question is pastors are going to, I’ve had to, I know that I remember specifically have said, I should be only talking about the Bible and my church and that’s it. I don’t want to be on the record or I don’t want to go and publish stuff about any other part of my life. And I say that’s an absolute no no. How do you respond to that?
Trey Van Camp: I hang out with nonbelievers all the time and the reason they put up with me is because I talk about other things as well. You know, like all I did, which is bringing the Bible, bring the Bible, bring up the Bible. I’m no longer invited to things. And I think it’s the same. When you’re hanging out with somebody’s family gatherings, whatever you’re doing. Are you only talking about church and the Bible? I don’t think so. I think if you. God bless your heart, man, you, you need more unique. So I think it’s a holistic. I think that’s what I love about the Gospel is it affects every part of life. Things that are intentional and unintentional and I would just want to show how. Because Jesus has better. I’m actually able to enjoy the things of this world because I don’t worship those things. So that’s what I’m trying to communicate to them. I’m not putting my openness, but guess what? Because my hopes and Christ and I’ll bring that up every once in a while. I’m able to truly loved this experience. I’m able to truly enjoy this family time, all this stuff. So it’s always my main message on my channel is Jesus is better and I am trying to communicate those truths. But I think it’s more palpable cause when I’m honest and say there’s other things that I really love and it doesn’t have to do with which translation I use on Sunday morning.
Kenny Jahng: You want to be relatable, right? You want someone who’s watching your video wants, needs to think, oh, I can hang out with that guy. I wouldn’t mind. It’s not like I need to. I would suffer going to lunch with this guy. Right? Like you want to. And I just love the fact that some of your popular content is not like exegesis of John 3;16 or slam poetry of the Gospel in 30 seconds or. Right. Like, I love it.
Trey Van Camp: I’ll explain that. That’s where I’m different. And, and a lot of people tell me I need to change because I’m not as searchable. But, like people say, “Hey, make a five minute video with this title of what is John 3:16” really mean to me or whatever, and my content is much more organic, it’s much more living my life and I’ll infuse principles that I have in my sermons, but for some reason I don’t have a lot of joy sitting down just in front of a camera for seven minutes explaining why this song Reckless Love is actually a terrible. Sorry, whatever. I love that song. But you know, people like, I don’t want to get that kind of audience, that I’m fine if all have less of a audience, if I don’t have to do that crap. Oh, should I say that word? You know what I’m saying?
Trey Van Camp: That’s where I’m at. So like who would I follow? I want to follow somebody holistically. I want to see how they lived their whole life and not just talking at the camera. So that’s what I’ve decided. And by the way, I mean, I love preaching, I love it. And I send people to my podcast. So to me, my podcast is that “hey, you want to get some Greek lessons in, you want to get deep, go to my podcast and we’ll get it in. But for my Youtube it’s a lot more for the rest of the world who doesn’t care about Greek unless it has to do with the movie 300.” That’s where I’m at.
Kenny Jahng: Here’s my other question. So I’ve been vlogging natively on LinkedIn because most of my conference about entrepreneurship, content marketing, social media for the church and I think LinkedIn is the next landscape that next frontier and I syndicate to Youtube and other places. I don’t know about you but my views are not that huge but it seems like anyone and everyone in my network has seen my videos, anyone and everyone that I meet in person eventually if not immediately brings up my vlogging and I’m only on episode. I think today our episode 73 went out today. So I’m only two months into it and I feel like the power of video and the reach in my networks and even people I’ve been introduced to, they’ve seen or heard my vlogging and I feel like the view counts are broken. Like there are under representing or do you feel like there’s this disproportionate reach that videos have that say a blog post doesn’t that videos just people see them more? I don’t know.
Trey Van Camp: That’s a really good point. So like I usually watch most of your video. There’s the occasional where I just, it just doesn’t happen.
Kenny Jahng: You’re the guy! You’re the one guy who watches my video.
Trey Van Camp: But that’s something I’ve learned actually in the Youtube, the new Beta studio, they show you your unique viewer reach per month. And I got way more encouraged because I would average like 200 views per video and I’m thinking what am I going to finally cross that next threshold? And I think man, there’s only 200 people that I’m reaching. But then on the Beta studio it says I reach on average 5.6 thousand per month different people per month. So I touched a lot of different people per month. And so there’s a lot, I’m thinking there’s a lot of people that only watch my Monday videos, but there’s a lot of other people who only watch the Friday videos and so I decided to actually having an announcement. So I’m doing Vlogmas, in December. So I’m doing every day in December right up until Christmas. But check this out.
Trey Van Camp: You might need to hold me accountable, but I think I’m going to try, I don’t know if I should say this, but I’m going to try to vlog everyday in 2019. I’m going to upload something every day in 2019 because I’ve realized that what’s been holding me back is vanity metrics and like, “Oh, if I put out more than the views or less, I’ve had enough of that.” Like who gives a snap? I want to serve people. And who knows if that guy who messaged me yesterday got baptized, what if I didn’t post that one content that got his attention because I was scared of when and get enough views. I’m confident enough and I have two years of social proof that people do enjoy my content, so why not put out more and see what happens.
Kenny Jahng: I’ve been vlogging daily and I am nobody. I think anybody can do it and this is the thing is like, I’ve been doing and I think you gotta do you gotta think of your workflow so it doesn’t kill your day. I don’t know how long it’s averaging you in terms of editing the actual video, but for me, I edit, I capture edit and publish all from my phone for the last two months. This past week for the first time I picked up the new hero seven black with hyper smooth stabilization, right? Which in the last couple of videos you can see the quality has jumped up just so much. I mean, it’s beautiful. There is a little bit of friction that does do Wifi reporting of videos. But it takes longer than the 10 to 15 minutes. I’m taking about 15 minutes total to edit my videos here on my phone and publish with this. It’s maybe another three or five minutes maybe. But I’m concerned my platform is, I want to, I feel like there’s a proper place for shame in the church, this might be one of them where I want to be able to say, “Hey, look, you have a phone, you can vlog. If I can vlog, you can vlog.” “I don’t have this fancy DSLR.”
Kenny Jahng: And I say, “look at those vloggers like Trey Van Camp, he’s got those cool like vlogging ideas rigs and everything like that. Trey’s got this beautiful lighting”, “you don’t need that.” Right? So I felt a little guilty going up to something like, even like this, which is nothing compared to what your rigs are. But I’m telling you, it’s so easy to vlog even on a daily basis without hindering your work. I mean, again, it’s taking me five minutes to capture five to six minutes of capture the video and then another 10 minutes right now to edit and publish. And so I don’t know, I encourage you to do it on a daily basis. I love it. I wonder if you would do the same type of video every single time because you must be putting in an half hour to an hour of editing, at least every episode that you’re doing. They’re great episodes.
Trey Van Camp: Yes. So actually my content model is going to be like, on Mondays I’m just going to do a sermon, a sermon splice from Sunday, so that gives me, you know, I don’t have to blog on sundance but I don’t have to. And then so and then, um, I’m going to do another day of the week where I just podcast with my wife and so, and I’m going to record it and just upload it. And so that’s no prep by just, you know, it’s just changing the camera angles, is it. So there’s a few ways to like, you know, there’s a loving way to skin a cat. I lot but we say out here and so I wanted to do that and that’ll help me on the staying consistent. But I love editing. I love storytelling. I love drone shots. I love timelapses, like it’s weird, but it keeps me emotionally healthy.
Trey Van Camp: Oh, I love it. I love it, I’m obsessed with finding the right song and putting it in and I just like during when I edit, I have tears in my eyes because I’m thinking like I get emotional over what I’m making, you know, it’s like, oh, this song is perfect, you know, and I’m going to say Jesus is better at the end. And like I’m in tears at while I’m editing. I love that. Like I just think about my view are doing that too. So I spend an hour, at least on all my vlogs, if I’m vlogging, if it’s actual so much cinematics, although some days, and it really annoys me, but sometimes I just set the camera down and I’m in my office and I talk straight to it for five minutes and I’m honest and it gets like quadrupled the views and it was no work. I just had to press start and stop.
Trey Van Camp: You can’t figure people out. But for me it’s an artistic, it’s an artistic thing for me. And I watch people when they’re more creative, unless their content is just killing it. So my goal is to be a blend and I go back and forth. I want to be at least a blend between Gary V and Casey Neistat, like I want to like resemble those are my two biggest inspirations on youtube and I think with the, with my cinematics that I enjoy plus my type of content because Casey doesn’t have an overload of content. He’s just enjoying his life. But Gary V, he’s got like boom, boom, boom, boom. But that’s what I have with my messages. So I try to blend those two together is kind of my style and I love it. I think it’s a lot of it.
Kenny Jahng: Well, I love it. I love that you’re creatively doing it. I love that you’re up and you’re getting. I can tell you I’m only 70 days into it. I’m starting to think about, and that’s why I got this. I’m starting to think of this as the hyper smooth time warp timelapse and I put that into one. I can see over time that those creative outlets of storytelling are going to start to creep into my vlogging. And this brings me to one of the things I definitely wanted to talk about today. So, people feel a little bit naked or they feel they don’t have what it takes to vlog when when we say you need to start and everyone, a lot of people get it, they feel like I get it. I need to vlog, I need to start somewhere. Two thousand 19 might be the right place to go. And I found out that you actually are doing something about it. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m so excited and I asked you to come on the show today. Tell everybody what you literally, I mean, I’m really super excited because I don’t think this is happening in many other places. What are you doing for people who are trying to get out of the gate and just get started with vlogging?
Trey Van Camp: Yes. I’m so pumped for this. So for the first year I just put my head down and I thought I have a lot to learn. I’ve spent hours upon hours upon hours, Youtube tutorials trying to figure out different styles, just like I can’t even fathom the amount of hours I’ve been researching. That’s one of my strength finders input. I love reading and researching. And so the last two years I’ve been doing that and I finally feel like I’m at a point where I got is used this ministry enough. The biggest thing I hate is when people say, “Hey, follow me and they’ve done nothing.”
Trey Van Camp: I never want to be that guy. So like I didn’t want to tell people, “hey, let me teach you” until I felt like I would have done enough to be worthy of teaching somebody. You know what I’m saying? There’s way too many experts that I haven’t done anything. And so, but actually this black, I don’t know when you’re uploading this, but Black Friday weekend I’m offering, it’s everything’s 50% off the release. I’m calling it kind of my Beta. But, six months ago I bought the domain vlog, yourministry.com. And I’ve just been letting it sit there and thinking and praying through what that looks like. And I just been so convicted, just to be honest, I would rather spend my time on non believers. I’d rather spend my time engaging the lats and, and building my church. But then I got convicted of like, “man, this thing can multiply if I can help some other church leaders just get ahead and teach them what I’ve learned” and I try to summarize everything I’ve learned and figure that out. And so I think I can just really help people skip a lot of the, the bumps in the road that I had to deal with. And so this Black Friday weekend vlogyourministry.com is minisTrey. I said minisTrey, it’s ministry. My podcast is called minisTrey.
Trey Van Camp: I know, but vlogyourministry.com. And, I don’t know. So the style is I already have a couple, I have six topics and it’s to help people like from start to finish. So what’s your audience be. Why is logging so important? But I’m tired of hearing why it’s important. I already know it’s important. So my teaching is going to be, here’s how you do it, because I’ve done these courses, and at the end of it I was like, oh, all you said was I should do this. So to me it’s like, how do I do it? And I realized, no, I mean I need to be careful with this wording here, but not many pastors have vlogs. So how could they teach other pastors how to vlog? So I realize I’m in a unique position. So, I talk about things like I’m going to give like a filmmaking tips and tricks, how to place your camera, certain places, how to edit that and post another episode’s going to be about the importance of creating consistent content walking through a pastor’s, here’s like eight different ways you can make, you can take what you’re already doing and making it into a creation pillars.
Trey Van Camp: And there’s several things. How to build a tribe, how to communicate, how to storytell. So, I’ve put a lot of time into this, and then what I’m going to do is I have some of those videos already up and then I’m going to do a Google hangout with people, go to walk them through, I’m going to answer people’s questions and then I have different, I don’t know how far, how deep I should get into this, but I have like a mentor, I call it a mentorship program where I help people. I feel like that will help people the most of like, hey man, like for me, I don’t want to be in a group because I felt like I won’t be able to get my questions in or whatever. So I thought well I’m going to offer whoever wants it and this weekend only at $200, but it’s going to be for six sessions and it’s going to be like, I think like through February I’ll like help out and then we’ll see what goes from there.
Trey Van Camp: But I’m going to give you like everything. I got an answer, any questions you have and walk help you. Here’s how you edit. Like, here’s how you do this, here’s how you do that. And I think it’d be really helpful. Then I have a cohort, so, if you’re cheap like me, maybe you just want to pay $100 and again, that’s the only the Black Friday deal, but then it’ll be the small group of people that I’m teaching at the same time. And then we’ll all kind of go back and forth. Again, this is all online and what I’m excited about is my third option. If anybody’s in Arizona, I’m actually doing it at my father’s church building right now. We’re going to do a live event. It’s going to be all day and I’m going to go to like, they’re gonna bring their computers or cameras. January 8. I’m doing it soon. I should probably think about the date, but I figured people want to get jumpstarted on 2019. So I wanted to do it sooner than later. And I realized pastors are way too busy in December, so nobody’s going to sign up for a December slot. So I’m going to do it like the first week of January. And just kind of help people get going and hopefully they start pressing upload.
Kenny Jahng: Tuesday, January 8 in Phoenix.
Trey Van Camp: Yes.
Kenny Jahng: I’m going to see if I can get out there.
Trey Van Camp: It’s actually the cheapest one too for this weekend because I don’t know, I just, I really want a lot of people to show up to that. I think there’ll be a lot of value in face to face.
Kenny Jahng: So the mentoring is one on one, six calls six weeks.
Trey Van Camp: Yes. And there’s content for them to watch before we call and then it’s a call.
Kenny Jahng: Got you. And I love on the side. I’m looking at the site right now that you have the actual schedule of the different topics, audience access, attention, creating content that’s consistent documenting toward your destination. Oh, I love this one. Using your tone so that love can be shown, right? Because I think that’s so important. You can’t just copy it. Yes, for sure. Right. Once you find your own voice and your sweet spot, then people start to follow you, I think, right?
Trey Van Camp: Preachers know that I hate my first year like you have to do. So that’s like the encouragement and here’s a bunch of different ways you can try and here’s 15 different types of voices out there that I’ve seen. Maybe you can make your own, maybe add a little bit of everything. But the voice is what gets people. Like I ask people the other day like, what do you enjoy about my channel? And they said, it’s your honesty and your passion. And that’s always been my voice. That’s how I’ve always presented myself. And that’s what keeps them around.
Kenny Jahng: So you’ve got tips and tricks of storytelling and then you’ve got tribes and tribulation.
Trey Van Camp: A lot of editing. Yes. You liked that? Tribes and tribulation. See what I did. The comment section can get mean and figuring out, man, you know, I just want to talk about how do you build your tribe? And I actually talk about the law of diffusion of innovation. You’re so smart. I know you know about that. And so talking about here’s some ways you can get your early adopters and then your early majority and then your late majority. And I’m really talking about all of that. I just had a lot of fun doing. But there’s going to be tribulation and, and I think you know this with the algorithm, there’s times where you did and that’s when you need to keep pressing forward because there’s always an upside. It really in all of ministry, right? And so I’ve seen way too many people start. And then the second the algorithm, because when you start Youtube says, oh good, we’ll let a lot of people watch you because then you’ll get excited and then they just cut you from under your feet and nobody sees your videos and you’re wondering what happened. It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with Youtube.
Kenny Jahng: That’s kind of like the first time I’ve ever heard someone say that out loud. Some of us know that kind of stuff happens and it was kind of like as a veteran, it’s like when I was a young kid, I like everyone goes through that like depression era, right? That little fat and it’s not, you know, you got to know something about it. You got to push through it.
Trey Van Camp: Maybe it is self awareness.
Kenny Jahng: So anyway. Okay. So once again, what is the website address? The URL is?
Trey Van Camp: vlogyourministry.com
Kenny Jahng: vlogyourministry.com. And if so I’ll just have a couple of questions because sometimes people are hesitant. There’s that initiative. If they had some questions beforehand, could they ping you? How do they do that? What’s the best way to get in touch with you?
Trey Van Camp: Please, actually, so two different ways. I don’t know what your style is. One is Instagram, just look up Trey Van Camp by DM. I always answer, but if you want some more personal, feel free to text me at 4804480823, so 4804480823. Feel free to text me to have any questions.
Kenny Jahng: Oh my gosh. You’re one of those millennials that puts it all out there. Kind of like cool.
Trey Van Camp: Why not? I know your followers. It’s okay.
Kenny Jahng: Have you gotten a lot of spam or other trolls or anybody texting you or anything like that when you put your number out there?
Trey Van Camp: Yes, I got one and it was honestly one of those guys. It’s like, again, if people are ministry, they get it. It’s that guy who just shows up to your church office everyday because he has nothing else better to do and he’s not mean. So you can’t kick him out, but he’s also not very useful. So you act like he’s not around. That’s kind of where it’s at. So he’s just been calling me and texting me and I just learned to be like, “Hey man, I’m busy. Sorry.” So outside of that guy though, it’s been a lot of encouraging conversations, non believers and believers alike something. So I did it.
Kenny Jahng: No, it’s one of those things, Bob Golf, right? The author, he puts his phone number in his books, asking people to text them the access and transparency. Anyway.
Trey Van Camp: Dave Adamson was the one who challenged me to do it.
Kenny Jahng: Dave Adamson. Yes. Which I think he pulled from Bob. And so, I love the fact that you’re trying to be authentic and being accessible. So anyway, I love the fact that you’re doing this for church leaders. It’s not just the pastor. I actually think that if you’re a team leader in any of the departments of your church. But I think it’s a place where you can provide leadership. If you’re not the senior pastor, you don’t need to wait to the senior pastor to do it. In fact you probably should do this as just one of those frontier things for your ministry because no one else is thinking about it. And I think the latest number I saw Rich Birch just tweet out something that the latest numbers is that the average view time on Youtube is about 40 minutes, which is up 50%.
Trey Van Camp: I saw that today. That encouraged me.
Kenny Jahng: If you don’t wake up from hearing that one step alone who has 40 minutes in their day extra and think about it, that’s what the average person on Youtube is doing. Forty minutes on Youtube. If you’re not there than you’re nowhere.
Trey Van Camp: And by the way, maybe in five years. It’s something else. So it’s always the strategy of where are the eyeballs. That’s where I’m going to be at. So it’s not, I’m careful. I’m not saying “Youtube” because maybe it won’t always be Youtube and we’ll wind up being just like the people right now say TV. No, nobody’s watching TV anymore. So it’s wherever the people are, that’s where you need to be.
Kenny Jahng: Love it. I hope some people check you out and go to vlogyourministry.com as well as checking out your Youtube channel. Thank you so much for just taking a break. Stepping out of your back to back to back to back ministry meetings all day trail. Really appreciate, you know, again.
Trey Van Camp: Seriously. Such a privilege
Kenny Jahng: And maybe we can, you know, jump on a call again and revisit either midstream in your course or even after the course is done. And to see how things are going because I’d love to see the transformation or the progress that maybe some of the people jumping on actually experienced because I think that’s the fun part. But I also think doing that, it’s the term social proof, right? We need to show social proof that it’s that easy, that accessible. You don’t need to be as handsome and good looking. Trey Van Camp to pick up a camera. Anybody can actually pick up a camera and start vlogging today for their ministry.
Trey Van Camp: Anybody? Amen, I love that.
Kenny Jahng: Well thank you again for hanging out with us today, Trey. And again, everybody vlogyourministry.com. And again, one of the things that if you’re not going to do anything, the bare minimum is follow his channel, subscribe and just start to learn the genre and observe. I actually think that this is one of the things that you are, you have a gift right in front of you. You’ve got a trailblazer or a church leader who’s really doing exactly what should be doing by the playbook in front of you and so learn by even just watching and then I think stopping a lurker comment on the videos that he has an actual arrangement. One of my pet peeves is you’ve got to stop being a lurker.
Kenny Jahng: You’ve got to stop being a lurker, only way to learn. So anyway. Thanks, Trey. I really appreciate it. Everybody here, appreciate you hanging out with us for these lunch and learns. One of the reasons we talked about videos because some of you have message me that you want to learn more from people who do video. And so please keep on reaching out, comment below and let us know what other topics or who in particular you’d love to learn from in our Lunch and Learn series. And remember, you can also get the transcripts, the show notes and all the other episodes at our blog at www.churchbutler.com.
Kenny Jahng: That’s about it for this time. I’m Kenny Jang. Thank you so much. I’m signing off. Trey, til next time. Happy vlogging.
Trey Van Camp: Thanks so much, man. You too, brother.
HIGHLIGHTS
09:45 What’s interesting is that flipped right where you’re no longer preaching to the people in the room. You have more people outside of the room. I was just at a conference in Nashville called faithleads.tech And we were co-sponsor from American Bible Society and the .bible team and we worked with the conference organizer to light up a live stream to make it free to anybody that wants to watch, couldn’t come to Nashville. And they had about four times the number of people on the live stream than in the room. And then there’s, you know, on demand access to all the talks and stuff. So it is now, right? It is foolish if you’re not thinking about who is being reached through the interwebs with any of the continents.
10:40 who are your mentors? I only know one of them in real life. The rest of them are on the Internet. Like honestly, I’ve been so shaped and molded by videos online and it’s like I get that opportunity to be that for people, which is so good.
11: 27 So what you’ve said and I’ve really learned from you just about how I actually need to utilize ads more. So I’ve actually, you know, the plan, your visit model that everybody’s talking about right now. We just made that video for us and so what we decided to do is on our plan your visit page, I show them. I walked through my blogging style. I walked them through what our church looks like and then they see the location, but then they also, it also shows my blog channel like, hey, you need to get to know us more.
13:00 They just want to be around me and learn from me because of I’m doing kind of what they want to do, but for them it’s in the business world, so it’s been really good. And I don’t know, it’s just really encouraged a lot of people. I mean it has been, it’s every week, I’m always wondering, I’m praying like, God, I pray that there’s somebody else who you randomly stumbles upon my Youtube channel and they come to our church. That’s honestly the goal for me. I’m a local church guy, so I want my church to grow. If I had to, I hate to say if I had to pick, but I still would probably pick my local church because I just think there’s so much value in face to face, but I don’t think it should be either or. I most definitely think it’s both end.
15:14 I think that’s what I love about the Gospel is it affects every part of life. Things that are intentional and unintentional and I would just want to show how. Because Jesus has better. I’m actually able to enjoy the things of this world because I don’t worship those things. So that’s what I’m trying to communicate to them. I’m not putting my openness, but guess what? Because my hopes and Christ and I’ll bring that up every once in a while. I’m able to truly loved this experience. I’m able to truly enjoy this family time, all this stuff. So it’s always my main message on my channel is Jesus is better and I am trying to communicate those truths. But I think it’s more palpable cause when I’m honest and say there’s other things that I really love and it doesn’t have to do with which translation I use on Sunday morning.
37:55 And by the way, maybe in five years. It’s something else. So it’s always the strategy of where are the eyeballs. That’s where I’m going to be at. So it’s not, I’m careful. I’m not saying “Youtube” because maybe it won’t always be Youtube and we’ll wind up being just like the people right now say TV. No, nobody’s watching TV anymore. So it’s wherever the people are, that’s where you need to be.
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