In this episode of the Future Church Podcast, Carrie Williams (Special Projects Director for Exponential) talks with Patrick Holden of Nuvo Church.
Nuvo began as a church plant with 3 families living in different parts of the country who wanted to launch in Columbus, OH. By utilizing social media, Nuvo was able to launch during the Pandemic through digital services, digital groups, in person groups, and pop-up gatherings in different parts of the city. Their “hope is to create a scalable model of in person gatherings, partnered with a unique digital presence to reach agnostics and people de-constructing their faith”.
Listen to Episode 5 of the podcast and access the show notes below.

Future Church Insights:
1. Patrick explains the unusual start to Nuvo and how that has led to a strong launch team.  
Patrick and his team were still in different parts of the country and had yet to move to Columbus. His base church allowed him to stay on staff but also begin fundraising and building a team for the church plant in Columbus. By connecting with people around Columbus through Facebook groups, Patrick and the rest of the team cold called people to gain a better understanding of the city and its needs. From these conversations, they were able to build about half of their launch team.
2. Patrick highlights some of the ways they were able to reach people through Social Media.
Building from what his team learned from Tony Morgan, they began creating “Content Offers” on social media. For example, they posted a series of videos during the election debates about how to survive the election. This was a way to reach an audience and capture email addresses for future events.
3. Patrick is constantly learning from Social Media.
He talks about studying TikTok accounts to see how to communicate a lot of information in just a minute. Patricks says that continuing to learn and study and grow in this area has been an important part of their church plant.
Goals and Desired Outcomes of Nuvo

Create a scalable approach to live/in-person gatherings that models financial sustainability and fuels exponential versions of live expressions.
Create an online presence that encapsulates multiple avenues of content offering and communal development.
Provide helpful and thought-provoking content for the person who is currently deconstructing their faith and/or the person who would now identify as agnostic.
Build a sustainable model that fuels internal campus-ing and external church planting with like-minded leaders in similar city situations.
Develop discipleship pathways for kids/teenagers that equips them for a faith of their own after high school.

Links: 
Nuvo Church
More of a reader? Download the transcription here.
Key Quotes from the episode from Patrick Holden:
“I would just say for every communicator, the temptation is a pandemic kind of, it’s slowing in some ways, is to go back to what we’ve always done. I would say we’ve got to be great students of great communicators that do it in different ways than we do.” (21:44)
“I think the biggest challenge is learning to speak the language of a generation that’s coming behind us. I think it’s changing so fast. I think there’s a temptation to want to appear cool or whatever that is, which is all good. Again, we have moving lights, we have an … It’s not a not cool thing, but the language and the needs are continually shifting.” (22:20)
“I would encourage pastors [by saying], “God knew that you would be a pastor in 2021 and 2020.” And as difficult as it can be, I think there’s a part of going,