Build the Church
Welcome to Build the Church, the podcast designed to equip pastors and ministry leaders with practical strategies, innovative ideas, and actionable insights to grow and lead thriving churches. Hosted by Josh Roberie, each episode explores church leadership, growth strategies, branding, and effective ministry, empowering you to overcome challenges and build a vibrant community of believers. Whether you're planting a new church or leading an established one, Build the Church will provide you with the tools and inspiration to lead with confidence and impact.
Build the Church
Why Your Church Should Be on TikTok with Pastor Chris Moore
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"Grandma is on TikTok." And according to Pastor Chris Moore, she might just be the cheapest person your church can reach online.
Most churches are completely ignoring TikTok, and according to Pastor Chris Moore, that's exactly why it's one of the cheapest and most fruitful places to reach new people right now.
In this episode of the Build the Church Podcast, host Josh Roberie sits down with Chris Moore, ARC church planter, lead pastor of Valley Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and founder of Good and Faithful Studio. Chris pulls back the curtain on the TikTok ad strategies he's used to help churches reach their communities for a fraction of what they're spending on Facebook and Instagram, plus a few "gatekeeping secrets" he's never shared publicly before.
If you're a pastor or ministry leader who feels behind on social media, this conversation will give you practical, doable next steps to get the word out about your church.
In this episode, you'll learn: Why the cheapest audience to reach on TikTok is actually 50+ (yes, grandma is on TikTok) How Chris's TikTok ads performed 3x better than Meta, with "plan your visit" costs as low as $7 to $11 What makes a scroll-stopping church ad (and why over-producing it can hurt you) The simple daily ad budget sweet spot for the best return on investment Whether your church needs its own TikTok account or can just run ads Why a pastor's personal account often out-performs the church's account The Facebook group strategy Chris used to build an audience of 25,000+ people in his city Chris's wild journey from youth pastor, to selling bulldogs online, to digital marketing
About our guest: Pastor Chris Moore is the lead pastor of Valley Church in Phoenix, AZ, and the founder of Good and Faithful Studio, a creative agency providing done-for-you social media, photo, and video for churches. He's also the creator of Blessed Babysitting, a new app helping churches and families book faith-aligned childcare.
Good and Faithful Studio: https://goodandfaithful.studio
Resources mentioned in this episode: This episode is brought to you by Your Team Church, an online assessment that helps you place every volunteer where they thrive. Create your own branded assessment URL in seconds and give each person a one-of-one personality portrait. Take the test for free at https://yourteam.church/disc
Prefer to watch? Catch the full video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rHwmKJevnxY
If this episode encouraged you, subscribe and share it with a pastor who needs it. Let's believe again for what God can do through your church.
Welcome to the Build the Church podcast where we help you gain momentum, grow your church, and go the distance in ministry. I'm your host, Josh Roberry. I'm very, very excited to have Pastor Chris Moore with me on the show today, talking about his journey as a pastor in Phoenix, how he is using the TikTok app to reach new people. And I'll just give you a little teaser. He's gatekeeping some really great stuff that he opens the doors to on this podcast outside of TikTok that I think is just genius for pastors to do. But before we jump in our conversation, I want to tell you about a great tool that I think is really going to help a lot of pastors out there, and that is your team.church. Your team.church is an online assessment that helps you place every volunteer where they thrive. What's so incredible about this platform is it'll help you create your own unique URL for your assessment with your church branding and logo within seconds, and you'll be off to the races where volunteers in the growth track or next step classes or even among your team can take a personality test and be matched to a team. What I love about this platform is that it also gives each person that takes the test a personal portrait that's a one-on-one insight into their personality instead of being matched to a very vague and general personality profile that may or may not match them. So I hope you check that out. If you want to take the test for free, you can do that right now at your team.church slash disc. And I'd love to hear your feedback on it. So let me know how that platform is going for you. So let's go ahead and jump into our conversation with Chris on TikTok marketing for churches. Hey Chris, thanks for joining me today on the podcast. Josh, honored to be here. Yeah, well, we're uh so excited to talk to you about a real interesting thing that you're doing, getting the word out about your church and helping other churches get the word out about theirs. And uh TikTok is uh, I know it's all the cool kids are doing it. So I'm looking forward to you helping us out in this area.
SPEAKER_00Honored to be here. TikTok is really it's the wild west of social media, but it's also play possibly the place for you to find the greatest returns today.
SPEAKER_01It's a really fun thing. If you're a pastor and you're listening to this and you've you've never been on TikTok, you know, it's not just dances, right? What what else is there on TikTok?
SPEAKER_00Well, on TikTok, there's like you just said, it's not just dances. TikTok shop is an exploding platform for people to purchase and sell their goods. A lot of small businesses build their entire businesses around TikTok shop. Everyone's on TikTok. And I think we would assume it's just 20-year-olds, but everyone is on TikTok and it's an exploding platform. And because uh a lot of people aren't investing in TikTok, it ends up being really cheap to make a difference there.
SPEAKER_01There is a great range of people on TikTok, and in fact, there's a lot of educational things happening on TikTok. There's a lot of culture sharing. You can tap into different cultures and see what other people are doing. I know I got into the algorithm of uh the farriers, you know, changing the the horseshoes and uh cleaning the cows, getting their getting their hooves cleaned up. Have you gotten trapped in any kind of weird algorithm on TikTok?
SPEAKER_00You know, I'm I kind of get in these circles of injury TikTok where people get injured and you laugh at them. And it's like you I afterwards you just kind of wonder, like as a pastor, how good that is for your soul. So yeah, I've been there.
SPEAKER_01And one of the things I like to watch on there is people doing reconstruction of of like historic homes. And so fun. Yeah, you'll get watch someone's journey go through that that whole process. But yeah, it's it's an it's an interesting thing. How are churches like taking advantage of this space?
SPEAKER_00Well, to be honest, most churches aren't. And that's why it's such a great space. What you're talking about is, you know, building in public or building out loud. I think there's multiple strategies that creators and influencers have used in this space, but churches have underutilized it. I think it's mostly because they're afraid of it, because they're because of uh what it represents to them, or just the the fact it's like out of side, out of mount, out of sight, out of mind.
SPEAKER_01So what are some of the perspectives you think pastors have of TikTok that are keeping them from utilizing it in church marketing?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think first off, they think that only 18-year-olds or 14-year-olds are on TikTok. What we found, and this is gonna be this is the grand reveal, is that uh the cheapest audience, man, I can't believe I'm even saying this to you, Josh. I gatekeep this. I do not tell people this. The cheapest audience to reach on any platform, any social media platform, after helping churches spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on TikTok. And I don't even, I don't people come to me to run their TikTok ads. And then what happened was was the cheapest people to reach on TikTok is 50 plus on TikTok. Grandma's on TikTok, Josh. Wow, and she finds your church and she says, Wow, there is God on this godless platform. They can't, they they're shocked, and they sign up to come for your church. It blows my mind every time to find that to be true.
SPEAKER_01So, how how did you stumble upon, you know, using marketing tools on TikTok?
SPEAKER_00Well, I was kind of feeling like on Meta, I was seeing a lot of the same types of ads. So on Facebook and Instagram, and sometimes you can just see a lot of saturation and you can see other churches. I don't know if you've ever been on church and you've ever seen a church posting or church ad on t on Instagram, on um on Facebook, and uh and I see them all the time. And I thought to myself, I was like, man, I wonder why no one's doing TikTok. And then I took the same talking head ad, which was my phone, me walking in like an attractive place, and then inviting people to church. And you know, I we posted it on TikTok, and then we started running it as an ad, and it was performing three times better than on Meta. What does three times better look like? So it'd be like seven to eleven dollars for a plan your visit, which you know might sound like a lot for some areas, but when you're in a major metro like Phoenix, which is where we are, which is where Valley Church is planted, shout out Arc. Thanks for the support. Loved, loved, loved launch, loved being a part of all of it. But planting a church here in a major metro on the West Coast, people aren't as church, you know, they're not looking for a church online. And so, so it it's just a different audience. When I was helping one of our friends in Houston, he was like, You're spending $11. He's like, I'm like at seven or at six. And I was like, You're in Houston. You come up on someone's phone and they hear the word church and they're like, Yeah, I'm going. You know, where I'm at, they don't people don't do that. And so meta were like $20 or more dollars of a plane year visit. And so, and that's good here. But to be on TikTok and see those types of numbers were just initially shocking to me, actually.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's really good news. So tell me a little bit about your experience with in the marketing space. Like, how did you get involved with helping churches with their branding?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it the funny story is it happened right around COVID. I was a youth pastor at a large, large church here in the West Valley called Pure Heart. I was on staff there for eight years on the executive team. I loved being there. And right before COVID happened, this is gonna, I can't believe I'm saying this story. I'm just gonna tell you.
SPEAKER_01I love this podcast. I get to hear everybody's secrets and share them with it.
SPEAKER_00I I had this crazy idea. I had an English bulldog and I was like, I need to teach my, I was like, we're gonna do a litter of dogs. Literally, little did I know how miserable of a process that was. And then I had $45,000 worth of dogs sitting on my kitchen floor, and I was like, oh gosh, what have I done? So I had to figure out how to sell $45,000 worth of dogs, and I didn't know one person who'd buy one. So I literally, for the next like six months, I was like, How do you sell dogs on the internet? And then I was like, How do you reach people on the internet? And then I started, I literally poured my whole life. It was like sales funnels, digital marketing, ad space. It was just all day, because all day I literally am looking at these dogs on my floor. And I'm like, I gotta get rid of them. And so I didn't go to a traditional college. I went to, I've got to figure out how to sell dogs on the internet. And so I figured it out. We got rid of all the dogs, we returfed our yard, glory to God. And then, and then COVID happens and everyone shut down. And everyone's like, oh, I got to do church on Zoom, I got to do church on this, and I got to do church on that. And I was like, you know what? I know exactly what to do. I know exactly how to help you. So I created a little thing called the Influencers Program, which was a program for youth pastors to utilize to reach kids online and see them come to their campus. And so that little program helped bump our community that we launched called the Youth Pastor Roundtable from 75 guys here in Arizona to over 750. And then God gave us a vision to inspire and equip 10,000 youth pastors to reach a million kids for Jesus. So over the next three years, I gave my life to helping youth pastors reach kids online, see them come to their campus. And then in 2023, we saw that fully come to pass, not as a pastor number, but over 10,000 youth pastor emails as a part of our network, being able to help them support them, reach students online. So that really was my first step into digital marketing was helping youth pastors reach kids online. And then in the middle of that, my wife and I felt a call to help churches, not just youth pastors do it through Good and Faithful. So amazing.
SPEAKER_01And then you guys launched Valley Church. Uh yeah, 2024, right?
SPEAKER_00Yep. Yep. We went to launch, we went to training in 2023. And uh yeah, I we've I picked up my head and I looked around my neighborhood after we reached a million kids for Jesus, and everyone in my neighborhood was from Washington, Oregon, or everyone's favorite state, California. And so I uh I looked around and I was like, these are the most beautiful people on the planet. Why is there not a church over here? And our area was completely different from COVID. I mean, y'all know, y'all saw what happened during COVID and home prices and everything, and we just realized that there needed to be a new church here in the area. So we sent it. And since then it's been an amazing roller coaster and a god dream.
SPEAKER_01So when you guys launched Valley Church, which is doing great, you guys uh we're very grateful for you. You're giving back to ARC with coaching and helping. And of course, I'll use this conversation to help so many pastors as well in this area. How long did it take for you to start utilizing TikTok to get the word out about your church?
SPEAKER_00You know, it probably was about six months. I started with a Facebook triage attack, and I started launching Facebook groups, which sounds so funny too, but uh, but this is another gatekeeping secret. I launched a group called Free Stuff in Phoenix, and today it has 25,000 people in it, and I can do at everyone and send them like, hey, free stuff going on for Easter. And so I started these Facebook groups. I own Phoenix moms, and it was just so funny. Like I own all these Facebook groups, but what I did was I wanted to create strategies where I could own people's, own my own audiences, and Facebook groups are probably one of the best because the ad everyone. But I just I just had this crazy idea about TikTok. I went all in on it, and it was tremendously fruitful, and it's one of the most fruitful platforms that I've seen.
SPEAKER_01Wow, okay. That's that's pretty awesome about those face Facebook groups. I'm sure the pastors listening are gonna start doing that for their uh cities right away. Yeah. Uh you're a serial entrepreneur, man. I I love hearing about all your different ideas. Uh, it's just simply amazing.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, I am a little bit chaotic, but it's kind of a gift. I think I have undiagnosed ADHD, which, you know, praise God. I just am, I just am able to like switch a lot and just keep going. But it it's his grace and it's seeing his hand on it's been really one of the greatest joys of my life. So well, tell me a little bit about your marketing group, Good and Faithful. Yeah, so Good and Faithful exists to be found good and faithful to the local church. That's really this the most simple way we can say it. We saw a lot of agencies that weren't providing excellent or on-time services to churches, and so we launched Good and Faithful. Since then, we've launched we've been able to help churches all around the nation. And uh, we've been over for just just over three years. It's been an incredible God journey to be able to help churches and uh be found good and faithful to them, providing high quality graphics. And if you've ever worked with the creative Josh, you know how awesome you love working with them and how much you hate working with them. And so instead of just throwing you to a creative or a system, every church with us has a project manager. So someone who's seeing every single project get across the finish line, seeing every single revision get across the finish line. It's not just like throw you into a pool, like a lot of our agencies have still done are doing. We wanted to have a system where churches felt like they had people in their corner and done for you. So we do done for you social media where you can get five posts a week, and you know, you got the sermon clips, you got the worship clips, you got all the above, and uh someone in your corner who's trying to bring out what's inside of you, what God's put inside of you.
SPEAKER_01Without giving away too much of what you would say in that first, you know, setup meeting, um, help pastors understand what does it mean to set up TikTok ads? Like what would they need to do?
SPEAKER_00Well, Josh, just so you know, any church that can do it themselves or wants to do it themselves, by all means. I I don't have to keep it all for free. We want to help, we want to be found good and faithful to the local church. That's our call. If you want us to do it for you, then we will do it for you. But in that, let me just tell you the first few things that are very tricky about TikTok and setting up TikTok ads is uh number one, you need to have a good script, a good talking head, and you need to be able to be okay with TikTok's platform. TikTok is what I would consider extremely not user intuitive. It actually feels like you're about to download a virus on your computer. And no, I'm serious. Like I talk with people and like and they are literally like, what am I downloading on my computer? What are you doing? And I'm like, this is how this is TikTok has a different app for their ads that they only use for their ads, but it's unconnected from their app and you have to give their app permission to their. It's just really confusing. But then I'm reminded that that TikTok isn't an American company. So they don't manage things or use apps like we do here in America. You know, now I I guess I don't know where where we landed on ownership, but I guess maybe we are kind of owned by oh, TikTok's kind of owned by America, but but regardless, the platform still is a platform for that that comes from overseas. So it's really challenging at first because you literally feel like you're downloading viruses on your computer. It's like LimeWire in 1998, and then you're doing it. And how and then walking through that process, getting to um the highest return on investment on ads. Here's the here's my here's the best advice I could give anyone if they wanted to do it themselves. I would not go over $40 a day on ads just because what they'll do is it'll it sprays it out, but it doesn't give it as much quality. So quality leaks as money gets as higher dollars get spent. Really, a sweet spot is finding a uh what you like a really good consistent daily number. And you're gonna and if you can drag it out over a longer period of time, you're gonna get a better return on your investment as opposed to doing a one chunk. So if you do one chunk, it's just gonna shotgun it to more people, as opposed to like kind of sniper it, like angle it aim it at the right people. So that would probably be my best advice if you're gonna get on to talking here and a manager yourself. Don't worry, you don't got you're not gonna get any viruses. Don't worry, like it's it is what it is, and be instead of just doing a big lump, spread it out more.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna get a better return. Amazing. Okay, so I guess there's a couple things I'm thinking of as you say that. One is the organic content that a church would have to create, do they need to have their own TikTok account where they're generating content and then they run the ads, or can they just run the ads without having to manage a TikTok account?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would encourage them not. I mean, depends. Like, let me just go backwards. It would depend if the church is naturally doing it already or not. If you're already doing natural organic content on Facebook or Instagram, I would be doing it on TikTok. TikTok has added swipe throughs. So now there are photos being posted on TikTok. It's not just Oh, really? I didn't know that. And so, yeah, so they've added swipe throughs and they actually produce really at a really high level. So if your church is doing swipe throughs and they're doing video, I would encourage you just to add them to TikTok. Um, the the next thing I would I would encourage is if you are if you have the right pastor and the right people, they can perform really well on TikTok. When it comes to TikTok, if if you're looking to manage a your account, what I would encourage you to do, post what you're posting, move it over. But uh if you have a pastor who's really, really good on camera and really good talking directly to a camera, I would encourage them to do it from his own personal. And be just because a a personal pastor's account is an unbranded version of the church online. So they would find the pastor and they can find the church. If you look at some of our most influential churches in the world right now or on TikTok, you'd find that their pastors are way more influential than the churches, and even it's more so even on Meta. Some of the best communicators, their personal platforms perform better than their church platforms.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's absolutely the case. So okay, so whenever they're creating the content for the ads, like what kind of content do they need? Like, what do they need to be thinking to put out there on the ads? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, well, you want it to be fast paced, you want it to be high quality, you want it to be right here, you want your phone. The best ads, the best ads that were done, and I'll I'll just give you an example. Just I I always would walk with my phone and talk as if they were right there. And I would strategically pick a place that had a really attractive background. So for me, it was top of a of a of a tower. So I'd be on the top of a parking garage and recording behind me, and you'd see the whole city. And I'd say, Hey Phoenix, my name's Chris Moore. I just launched a church here in Phoenix, and I loved for you to be a part of our startup party. Our startup party, you can discover your people, your place, your purpose, and find out how you can make a difference through this brand new life-giving church. All you have to do is sign up and show up. We'll send you some more information. I can't wait to see you there. That ad right there, I, you know, that was the that was the ad. And so finding the right environment, the right person with on a phone, you don't have to overproduce it. In fact, if you overproduce it, sometimes you don't stop the scroll, you don't stop what they're doing. But most people have never talked to a pastor, texted with a pastor, really met with a pastor. So you right here in their business, talking to them, inviting them to your church, that's a that's a killer, killer ad.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Well, give us a final thought on uh getting started with this. If there are pastors out there and wants to take a first step.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if you are interested in being a part of uh Good and Faithful, if you want us to help you set up your ads, would love to do a consultation. You can simply book a call on our website, goodandfaithful.studio. If you're interested in doing it yourself, please take all the free stuff I gave you today, run with it, go for it, and uh and just know we want to be found good and faithful to the local church.
SPEAKER_01Okay, awesome. And then on another note, before we hopped on, you were telling about this really cool thing that's happening uh in your church, in your city, an app that you've developed, and I think um other pastors would love to hear about it.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's so crazy the world of AI where a pastor can make just about anything that's in their head. I'm sure you're loving this right now, Josh. It's so fun. We need help in children's ministry. Everyone knows what that feels like. You're like, man, I got to call someone in. And I was like, I can call in this person who I've called in six times and tell them, please, can you serve this Sunday? Or I could try and pay someone. And then I thought to myself, I don't even know who I'd pay. I don't even know how I could do this. And so the idea came into my head there should be a platform that churches and families can book faith online childcare. And then I brought the idea to my pastor. My pastor said to me, Chris, you're gonna bless this city. You're gonna bless churches. He said, Imagine thousands of hours of children's ministry happening in homes instead of childcare. He's like, Chris, you're gonna be a blessing. And then the name came to my came to me right then and it was blessed babysitting. So since we've launched Blessed Babysitting, we launched on Sunday on Father's Day. And since then, we have just over 300 downloads. We just had our first parent booking. But as of today, we have an exclusive deal with Grand Canyon University. Our headquarters is gonna be on their campus, and uh, and so it's gonna be crazy and fun. I'm going back to school. Never thought I would do that. And then today we also have 70 letters of intents for churches for weekly children's ministry roles that we're gonna be filling. We have it in our heart to scale and grow and build uh a life-giving ministry that helps churches and families. So, Dallas, you're on our heart next. We'll we'll be there soon.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great place to go. Well, Chris, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing some of your church journey, some of your entrepreneurial spirit with us, and some great advice on how to use TikTok to market your church. Appreciate it. Love you, Josh. Love you too, man. Okay, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Chris Moore from Valley Church in Phoenix, Arizona in Good and Faithful Studio. I really, really felt energized hearing how he is just out there brainstorming and dreaming to do big things. And hopefully that was helpful for you. If you want to check out TikTok, start taking some next steps. Hopefully that gave you some help in that area. Thank you for joining us today, and I can't wait for you to be with us next time. Until then, keep believing and leading strong.
