He’s the worship leader with all the tattoos, including the one that landed him on an episode of L.A. Ink. He’s the blogger who readily admits he’s a ragamuffin soul, who posts family pictures, intimate confessions, and blunt truths about our selfish tendencies and then invites his readers to talk it out. He’s the social media ninja with 2,500 Twitter followers and 6,500 daily visitors to his personal website. In many ways, he’s the “Big Man on Campus” of the burgeoning faith-based social media scene—the guy who smiles big and laughs easy and always seems to be posting, tweeting, or uploading something new. By now, you know I’m talking about Carlos Whittaker.
I had the opportunity to talk with him on the phone as he made his way home from Buckhead Church, where he is on staff, about his role at the church and the inspiration behind his enormously popular blog, ragamuffinsoul.com.
Whittaker on his role at Buckhead Church, part of North Point MInistries:
I’m the Service Programming Director at Buckhead Church, which is basically a really complicated way of saying I’m the Creative Arts Worship Pastor. I oversee everything from host teams and parking all the way to production, the lobby environment, video, creative video shooting, music, worship, lighting—anything that an adult experiences on a Sunday morning at Buckhead, I oversee and manage. Along with that, I get to work on a multi-campus level helping [North Point senior pastor] Andy Stanley write his sermons and serve as a creative consultant. (Editor’s Note: Carlos let us know via his blog that he doesn’t help Andy Stanley write his sermons. Carlos helps with "creative sermon planning.)
On why Buckhead Church is more than a satellite campus:
When we first came, I honestly thought that I was going to have a hard time being part of some three-headed monster, three-campus thing, but the way Andy has set this up, it’s a little bit different than a lot of the other churches that I’ve seen do multi-site campuses. Buckhead Church is called Buckhead Church for a reason, as opposed to North Point – Buckhead Campus.
I think right there is an initial shift in philosophy, saying: "Your campus isn’t just a campus. It’s its own church. We want you to be autonomous, we want you to have the freedom to do things differently and change things up.”
[At North Point] there are only three campuses, instead of 20. I think that if we went to 20 or something like that, it would start to look a little bit different. The way they do it really works well. I feel like it creates synergy, while yet leaving autonomy.
On how Ragamuffin Soul has evolved:
Initially, it was just a way that my team that I was leading at Sandals Church could get to know me and we could cheat time because we only have 24 hours in a day and so I knew I couldn’t have lunch with everybody each week. I literally made my team read my blog and they started realizing what was going on in my life. We cheated time and shrunk the gap in our need to meet face to face—although that’s really essential, I didn’t have the time to do that.
It started there and then it shifted, obviously. I realized some other people from outside of Sandals Church were reading my blog and I started getting some more worship-leading questions, and so [Ragamuffin Soul] turned into a community of worship leaders.
I went through this worship-leading phase—it was about a year and a half of worship-leading posts. Then I went on a journey [to Korea] to adopt my son and took my readers with me there, and I think at that point is when I realized, "Oh my gosh, this is a lot bigger than I had ever anticipated." And then I started seeing people—they would tell me this and I didn’t believe them until I started to see some stories– whose lives were being changed because of things I was doing in my life and then sharing. All I’m doing is sharing and they were taking that authenticity and applying it to their lives.
On how a blog can be like a church:
I honestly get about two or three emails a day from people thanking me for the community–and not for anything I’m saying anymore, because now people are just talking to each other on [my blog]. It’s like they don’t even care what I have to say, they just want to get in the comments section and find out who’s saying what so they can talk to each other. It’s almost like a church. I talked to Terry Storch (from LifeChurch.tv) last week and he told me: "Your blog is actually like an Internet campus, but it’s not like a campus of another church. It’s its own church, and there’s healing that takes place there. There’s community that takes place there.” It’s just a crazy concept to even try to wrap your head around, but it works and I love it and that’s why there’s so much passion behind it.
I try to remind people that you’re only seeing 35 seconds a day out of 24 hours of who I am. So for all the people who hate me or love me on my blog, you can’t base any emotional attachment to me because of this. But what you do know is real is what’s happening inside of you. So whether or not you agree with me, or whether or not you see the real Carlos, whatever is affecting you is real. I’m constantly trying to tell people that this stuff is real. Community is really happening and it has been cool to watch.
On how churches can make the most of social media and the Web:
I think the biggest thing people can do is to devote the resources of a full-time person for whom [online community] is their shtick—that is what they’re there to do. A lot of churches get their youth pastor to try to make a blog and I say, "No, that’s not it. You’ve got to really give this thing what it’s worth."
When I’m consulting for churches, they ask, "How do you make your community so big?" and "How do you make it successful?" I try to tell them it’s because I’m not trying. I’m not trying to do that. I’m not trying to create a community. I’m just spending time investing in relationships with the people who are on my blog.
If you leave a comment on my blog, nine times out of ten, you’ll get a response. If a church wants to do that and they’ve got thousands of people coming to their site, they need somebody that is going to invest the time. They don’t want 15 people answering them, they want to know they are talking to one person. That’s one of the biggest things that I tell churches.
On how Tony Steward at LifeChurch.tv models how to build community online:
I snuck into [Tony’s] online small group last night as he was leading, and he really is taking the online community pastor thing to a whole other level. He’s really pouring into relationships and strategically thinking about how he can lead these people in a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s beautiful to watch, to know that a church has given him the capacity and the ability to do that. That’s truly all he does. They don’t ask him to program; they don’t ask him to write code. They’re asking him to pour into the lives of the people online—and it’s working.
To follow Carlos’s daily thoughts and adventures, visit www.ragamuffinsoul.com.