Discovery / Shoreline City
Strategic Blueprint

From attention to ecosystem.

Shoreline already has the hardest part. Around 5,000 people watching online every Sunday. 65,000 on Instagram. Real audiences in India and London showing up without anyone tending them. Fruit at the top of the funnel.

The question isn't whether the attention is there. It's whether the ecosystem behind that attention is built to identify, hold, and form the people it's already reaching.

"We have this dream of 10,000 Christ-like leaders. Someone who's active in the church, engaged, growing in their walk with faith, treating their families different, reflecting what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus Christ at their jobs."
Eric, April 22

A church that has outgrown its first digital posture and needs a second one. The signal is real. The system behind it isn't built yet.

"We actually don't even use the word marketing. We use the word awareness."
Eric, April 22
5,000 watching, 50 active
Top of funnel works. Conversion does not.
India, London untouched
Geo signal exists. No strategy responds.
Brand voice, in the room
Clear in person. Less defined online.
Belong, Build, Become, Beyond
Mapped for in-person. Not yet translated for online.
No defined target persona
Between millennial and Gen Z, undefined.
Ontology layer missing
Planning Center, Subsplash, Pushpay, Instagram, YouTube, the app. Disconnected.

Ten places Shoreline already lives online.

An ontology is a connected view of the touchpoints that already exist. Right now each one runs on its own. Discovery maps how they should connect so leadership has one place to look.

Planning Center
Members, attendance, household connections, contact history.
Subsplash
App, sermon archive, push notifications, on-demand catalog.
Pushpay and PayPal
Donations, recurring giving, one-time gifts, donor history.
Instagram (@shorelinecity)
65,000 followers. The strongest social channel today.
YouTube channel
Sermons and series. The reach engine for global audience.
Online Campus
5,000 watching every Sunday. 50 active members. The conversion gap.
Podcasts
"Shoreline City" and "In The Room with Earl McClellan."
Cultivate and SCC
Conference, programs, Shoreline City College with SEU.
Seven campuses
Dallas, Frisco, San Antonio, Oak Cliff, Guatemala City, Antigua, Online.
Communications inbox
Email, broadcasts, leadership reach across channels.

Clarity before commitment.

"We have no clue what we're gonna want to say yes to, what we want to say no to. This is all a little bit uncharted territory for us on the awareness side. I don't even honestly know what to ask for."
Eric, April 22

Neww Discovery is a focused strategic engagement that hands Shoreline back two definitive artifacts. The same shape of pre-work the world's best teams give themselves before any platform decision.

This is the work that makes the build correct when you get there. It answers Eric's question directly: here is what to ask for, here is what to defer, here is what success looks like in a year.

01
Strategic Spec
Vision, audience, content architecture, ecosystem map, what to build, what to integrate, what to defer, open questions for leadership.
02
Service Blueprint
Current state vs end state across the full audience journey. Every channel and layer mapped side by side.
03
Defined target persona
The person Shoreline is actually for, online. Not millennial, not generic Gen Z. Specific.
04
Ontology architecture
A connected view of every existing tool. The data layer that makes the ecosystem legible to leadership and to Shoreline's audience.
05
Decision-ready roadmap
What to build, integrate, defer. Open questions surfaced and named, so leadership can decide instead of guess.

Four phases. Decision-ready output.

Phase 01 / Pre-work and Audit
Listen and map

Stakeholder questionnaire with lead pastors, Eric, Liv, Lucas. Current ecosystem audit across the existing stack. Audience signal pull. Vision capture in Shoreline's own language.

Phase 02 / Working Sessions
Pressure-test

Persona definition. Values rubric, what Shoreline says yes to and what it says no to, online. 12 and 24 month outcomes. The online-to-offline conversion question, addressed directly.

Phase 03 / Synthesis
Draft the artifacts

Neww drafts the Strategic Spec and Service Blueprint, refined in collaboration with Shoreline leadership.

Phase 04 / Delivery
Walk and hand off

Present both documents to Shoreline leadership. Q&A. Final handoff as decision-ready artifacts.


A pattern repeated across the church world.

At Upper Room, the discovery work mapped every entity the ministry runs: weekend services, school of ministry, donations and tithing, events and conferences, the store, the YouTube channel, the training platform. The ontology connected givers, customers, students, viewers, and members into one layer. Leadership got a single view of an ecosystem that had been running in pieces.

Other engagements have followed the same shape across United, Anotherland, Ashwood, Transformation, and others. A cross-functional bench under one roof: strategy, build, creative, content. The discipline is the work that makes the build correct when leadership gets there.


Next step.

"Someone who is in Indiana, we want to be able to help be as much a conversation like this with them as possible, even though they are joining us online. Who's caring for their soul?"
Eric, April 22

A short call with Eric, Lucas, Pastor Oneka, and JJ to align on scope, timing, and what success looks like. The work after that is whatever it takes to make sure the person in Indiana, or Guatemala, or London, gets a real answer to the question Eric named.