If your church is still waiting for permission to try something new online, this episode is the push you needed.
Jeff Reed sits down with Jay Kranda — Online Community Pastor at Saddleback Church — to dig into one of the most overlooked leadership skills in digital ministry: the ability to experiment without everything falling apart. Jay oversees a sprawling global network of online groups and home groups, so he’s not theorizing. He’s battle-tested.
Here’s what landed.
Why Most Churches Never Experiment
Fear. That’s the short answer.
Longer answer: churches confuse stability with faithfulness. They assume that trying something new — and potentially failing — is a sign of weak leadership. So they stick with what worked in 2009 and wonder why their online community feels hollow.
Jay flips this. He argues that experimentation isn’t recklessness. It’s responsible stewardship of an always-shifting digital landscape. If the platforms change (and they always do), your methods have to move too. The mission stays fixed. The methods stay fluid.
That tension — holding the mission tightly while holding the method loosely — is the engine of everything Saddleback’s online team does.
Building a Culture That Can Absorb Failure
You can’t just announce “we’re going to experiment now” and expect your team to believe you. Culture is built through what leadership actually does when something doesn’t work.
Jay is deliberate about this. When an experiment fails at Saddleback, the debrief isn’t a blame session — it’s a learning session. What did we learn? What does that tell us about our people? What do we try next?
This matters enormously for online community and digital discipleship specifically, because digital spaces move fast. Instagram changes its algorithm. Zoom fatigue hits. A new platform emerges and half your small group leaders don’t know what it is yet. If your team is afraid to fail, they’ll always lag behind.
Practically, this looks like:
- Short experiment windows. Try something for 30–60 days, not a full ministry year. Lower stakes mean more willingness to try.
- Clear success metrics upfront. Before you launch anything, define what “working” looks like. Engagement? Retention? Salvations? Group leaders who stay past 90 days? Pick something measurable.
- Public debriefs. Talk openly with your team about what didn’t work. Normalize the conversation so failure loses its sting.
Online Groups as the Proving Ground
Jay’s specific context — online groups at a megachurch scale — makes Saddleback something of a laboratory for the rest of us. They can try things at volume that smaller churches can’t, which means when something works, it’s proven across thousands of people.
One of Jay’s core convictions: online community isn’t a lesser version of in-person community. It’s a different expression of it. Stop apologizing for it. Start designing for it.
That means small groups built for the rhythms of digital life — asynchronous connection, global time zones, people who may never be in the same room but are genuinely doing life together. The goal is still discipleship. The container just looks different.
This is where experimentation becomes non-negotiable. Nobody handed Jay a playbook for building thriving online small groups. He had to build it by trying, failing, adjusting, and trying again.
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.” — Colossians 3:23. That verse applies to your online ministry strategy too, even the messy, unproven parts of it.
How to Get Your Leaders On Board
The hardest part isn’t the experiment. It’s convincing your senior pastor, your elders, or your volunteer team leaders that it’s worth trying.
Jay’s approach is straightforward: start small, report often, and let results do the talking.
Don’t ask for a full program overhaul. Ask for a pilot. Run it with a small group of willing leaders. Track what happens. Bring the data back. Let the wins (and even the instructive failures) make the case for the next experiment.
This is how you build credibility for digital ministry inside a traditional church structure. You don’t fight for a seat at the table — you earn it by showing what’s possible.
Concrete steps to try this week:
- Identify one thing in your online ministry you’ve wanted to try but haven’t.
- Define what success looks like in 30 days.
- Find 2–3 leaders willing to pilot it with you.
- Launch it, track it, report it.
That’s the whole loop. Run it enough times and experimentation becomes your culture, not just your strategy.
This Is the Work
Digital ministry isn’t going to get simpler. The platforms will keep shifting. Your congregation’s digital habits will keep evolving. The only way through is to become a team that learns faster than the landscape changes.
Jay Kranda has been doing this at scale for years. The lesson is clear: the churches that figure out digital discipleship won’t be the ones with the biggest budgets — they’ll be the ones willing to try, fail, learn, and go again.
Listen to the full conversation with Jay Kranda on EP275 of The Church Digital Podcast — and while you’re there, leave a review. Every review helps another church leader find these conversations.
