Encouraging Faithful Action with Tony Valdes
On our latest episode of the Ministry at Scale Podcast, we met with Tony Valdes the founder of Be Church Conference. Tony shared his tips on creating buzz around upcoming events from branding and advertising, to audience engagement and commitment.
Who is Tony Valdes?
Tony Valdes is the founder of the Be Church Conference, a conference dedicated to bringing together faith-based organizations, like churches and ministries, to encourage each other and stay “in motion.”
While pastoring at a church in Florida, Tony heard the voice of God ask him, “What do you see?” And looking out at the congregation, he heard himself respond, “I see cows that are fat.” Of course, he did not think his congregation was fat, but Tony saw that he had been feeding the sheep that God had given him, but not encouraging any action in their faith.
This sparked Tony to rethink setting his church in motion instead of just absorbing the Word on Sundays. Over time, he felt God call him to plan an event that would bring together faith-based organizations of every kind to do the same thing.
“This event is about doing something different, more powerful, more impactful, than just showing up on Sunday”
Creating Buzz
The Be Church Conference was created to be short, simple, and impactful. In 2021, the conference will be visiting three cities: Atlanta, Greensboro, and Chicago. Each city will have seven speakers, and a minimum of 20 organizations will be in attendance. The structure of the conference allows churches and ministries to interact, share ideas, and encourage the body of Christ to want more than stagnant faith.
To create buzz around the conference, Tony and his team work to get themselves on the radar of faith-based organizations. He put it simply when discussing branding, “If people don’t know about you, you don’t exist.” Right now, the Be Church team is working to share the vision and purpose of the conference with local pastors, and in turn the pastors will share the information with their connections – reaching further than Tony’s team could on their own.
On digital advertising
One digital tool that has been very helpful for the Be Church team is advertising. Tony noted that it is tempting for people to think advertising works along the lines of “if I spend a thousand, I get a thousand new leads,” which sadly is not the case. The point of advertising is to make your audience recognize you; then when you reach out again they can say, “Oh yeah I remember reading about this conference somewhere!”
Audience commitment
At Five Q, we talk about a concept called “The 5 Multipliers of Digital Impact”. The Multipliers can be thought of as the 5 foundational pillars of growth. Over our decades of working with ministries to help them drive growth and impact, we’ve seen that these areas of focus are universal in their affect. The 5 Multipliers are: Awareness, Engagement, Conversions, Average Value, and Retention.
To Tony, the most important Multiplier for him and his team is actually right between Awareness and Engagement, and he calls it, “Commitment.” He uses the analogy of a Christian fasting: we are aware of the power of fasting, but if we don’t commit, then we won’t be able to do it well. Similarly, the Church is aware that we need to do more, but we need a plan of action in order to engage and move forward.
As we wrapped up the podcast, Tony left these closing words for the listeners:
“Step up. Step out in faith. And be the Church.”
Additional Information
For more information about the Be Church Conference, visit bechurchconference.com or email [email protected].