Ministry At Scale

Dave Raley is the founder of Imago Consulting, helping organizations innovate to grow their impact. He draws from over a decade of experience leading a digital team at a major nonprofit agency. Dave is also the author of the Weekly Wave Report on innovation trends and co-host of the Purpose and Profit podcast. In this insightful episode, Dave shares: Why an "Outside Mindset" is Critical for Innovation Dave emphasizes the importance of looking beyond your expertise to see problems differently. He shares how his narrow perspective as a fundraiser initially blinded him to insights from the subscription economy that ultimately unlocked innovative recurring giving models. How the Six "Working Genius" Types Drive Breakthrough Ideas Drawing from Patrick Lencioni's framework, Dave explains the six distinct genius types needed for innovation - from wonder and invention to galvanizing action and tenacious implementation. Understanding these types can reduce unnecessary judgment and guilt while maximizing your team's collective strengths. Why Crises Are Catalysts for Transformation Conventional wisdom says innovation happens in good times. Dave flips the script, arguing that crisis is "the mother of innovation." He challenges listeners to seize current disruptions as "Christitunities" to pioneer solutions. Leveraging Your Unique Context for Impact True innovation means operating at the powerful intersection of your God-given identity and circumstances. Dave outlines how pivotal innovators like Martin Luther capitalized on their natural resources and skills within a specific historical context. This engaging episode provides a rich framework for leading innovation grounded in clear purpose, diverse collaboration, and practical wisdom from the past and present. Don't miss Dave's inspirational charge that you were created to innovate!

Corey Alderin is the founder of Sermon Shots, a platform that helps churches transform their full sermons into popular short-form video content for Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. In this hands-on workshop, Corey shares his expertise on leveraging AI to create thumb-stopping, engaging clips that reach people where they are consuming content. Why Vertical Video Content Matters Now More Than Ever Corey highlights the seismic shift happening in social media, where follower count doesn't determine who sees your content. The AI algorithms analyze each video's content and match it with the right audience members most likely to engage. This unlocks massive reach potential even for ministries with small followings. 5 Keys to Creating Viral-Worthy Vertical Clips 1. Captions - With most viewing on mute, having captions is crucial 2. Keep It Brief - Shorter videos perform better to sustain engagement 3. Grab Attention Early - Use a provocative hook in the first 2-5 seconds 4. Leverage Music - Adding the right music can invoke desired emotions 5. Highlight Faces - Close-up shots of faces are proven attention drivers Walk-Through: Turning a Sermon into Multiple Engaging Clips In the live demo, Corey shows exactly how the Sermon Shots platform utilizes AI to streamline the clip creation process: 1. Upload your long-form video content 2. Select from pre-built appealing designs and styles 3. Let the AI suggest top moments or identify them by keyword 4. Fine-tune clips with text, branding, zooming, music and more 5. Preview clips on each platform to optimize appearance 6. Download ready-to-post video clips in a fraction of the normal time The Power of AI to Multiply Your Content's Reach What used to take hours can now be done rapidly thanks to AI capabilities like speech-to-text, facial detection, and identifying engaging moments. This allows ministries to repurpose one sermon into a stream of natively formatted videos perfectly suited for each social platform. Corey's innovative approach combines AI's efficiency with human curation to create ultra-engaging content that expands your ministry's reach and impact like never before. For a first-hand look at this game-changing process, listen to Corey's full instructive workshop now!

Arnie Cole is a social scientist and researcher at Back to the Bible, who has studied the spiritual lives of over 1.5 million people over the past 20 years. In this insightful episode, he challenges ministries to truly understand the spiritual state of the people they serve in order to help move them closer to Jesus. The Importance of Asking "How Are You Doing Spiritually?" Through examples from his own family's equestrian ministry, Arnie highlights how children are remarkably open about their spiritual struggles, but something happens as they become adults and stop sharing. He argues it is critical for ministries to directly ask people how they are doing spiritually. Introducing the Personalized Engagement Prioritization Model Arnie presents a 25-dimensional model that identifies 17 trillion potential spiritual data points for where a person could be in their walk. The methodology includes: 1. The "Death Question" to assess their salvation 2. Their level of Bible engagement, which predicts spiritual trajectory 3. Prioritizing people into 4 categories: Need for Evangelism, Discipleship, Activation, or Mature Believer Measuring Spiritual Transformation and Discipleship Impact The critical metric is whether people are engaging the Bible regularly, which research shows leads to transformed lives. Arnie also emphasizes the need to measure if people are actively discipling others. Addressing the "Hard Issues" People Face The model accounts for the real spiritual struggles people face like anger, anxiety, pornography use, gender identity issues, and more. Arnie laments that many ministries are unwilling to even ask about these "hard" areas people need help with. A Free Resource to Increase Ministry Effectiveness Arnie's team offers ministries a free scientific study and impact assessment to truly understand the spiritual state of the people they serve. The goal is to equip ministries to more effectively help people find and follow Jesus. This is a powerful framework for personalizing ministry engagement in a way that leads to real spiritual transformation. To learn more about implementing this model, be sure to listen to Arnie's full engaging and eye-opening presentation!

Andrew Rogers is the co-founder of BibleChat.ai, an innovative app that uses AI to help people engage more deeply with the Bible. With over 75,000 downloads and users in 188 countries, BibleChat has been pioneering the use of artificial intelligence for Christian ministry. In this insightful episode, Andrew shares: The Alarming Decline of Biblical Literacy Andrew highlights shocking statistics like 26 million Americans stopping Bible reading since COVID and only a third being able to name the four gospel books. This Biblical illiteracy crisis represents both a huge problem and massive opportunity. Introducing Faith Assistant - AI for Ministries To tackle this issue, Andrew introduced Faith Assistant - BibleChat's new product that brings AI capabilities to churches, ministries and Christian media. It understands each organization's unique teachings to provide personalized, spiritually enriching experiences. Surfacing Your Ministry's Content with AI By indexing sermon libraries, ebooks, articles and more, Faith Assistant surfaces the perfect content to answer user questions and needs. It remembers context, provides summaries, and can even auto-generate customized Bible studies. Real Examples from Partners Like KCBI Radio Andrew showcased powerful use cases from partners like KCBI radio, Concordia Lutheran Church, and Pastor Richard Ellis. From Finding relevant sermons to answering theological questions in a denominationally appropriate way, the applications are endless. Shaping AI to Spread the Gospel Andrew's passion shines through as he describes this innovative approach to shaping AI technology to increase biblical engagement and ultimately further the Great Commission in powerful new ways. This episode is packed with insights, real-world examples, and an inspiring vision for how AI can be leveraged for kingdom impact. To hear Andrew's full presentation and vision, be sure to listen to the entire Ministry of Scale podcast!

Jeff Kliewer is the founder of ViewSpark. He has worked in fundraising for over 30 years and brings much experience to this episode. Jeff has taken his experience with fundraising and, through ViewSpark, has put a powerful way to connect with your donors right at your fingertips. In this episode, Jeff shares a variety of topics, including: Why Customer Feedback is Critical for Innovation Jeff shares how ViewSpark customers started using the product in ways he had never imagined and how those experiences have helped shape their product development. How Real-time Information Matters It is one thing to tell your donors what their funds are doing to make the world a better place. It is an entirely different thing to show them firsthand. Jeff shares stories about rescue missions in Maui using ViewSpark to give real-time impact updates. Showing Impact Means Being Authentic Ministry work can be messy, yet we often feel like everything we produce must be polished and shiny. But donors want to see the impact they are having firsthand. Jeff shares a story of how one customer shared a video during a massive snowstorm about the need to help their homeless neighbors living in that very storm. Simple and real wins over polished messaging every time. Why Video and Text is a Winning Combination As a digital communicator, you know how hard it is to get your message seen and heard. Jeff shares tremendous response rates made possible by the video and text message combination. He also shares why these rates get amplified when you send the content your recipients have been waiting to watch. This episode is full of powerful stories and practical tips on how to better serve your donors with authentic, timely video updates from the field.

During this talk given at the Digital Ministry Conference in 2022, Aly Hammond & Chip Johnston from Virtuous provide 8 responsive mindsets that ministries and organizations can utilize to solve some of the big problems that many non profits are facing today. Personal For All How do we treat all donors the way we treat major donors? This doesn’t mean you’ll have the capacity to take all your donors to dinner, but it does mean you can send every donor a personal thank you email, call and text. If you have hundreds of thousands of people in your database of donors, you can followup with all your donors in a highly personalized way based on what they’ve done. Innovate, Experiment and Embrace Failure It’s important to try new things and get really comfortable with failing. Focus on Trust Relationships thrive on trust and accountability. Donors have rightful expectations that whoever they’re donating to will do what they say they will do. Jennifer McCrea from the Generosity Network puts it like this: “Resources will tend to flow naturally towards you when you focus on the most important aspect of the fundraising process: creating human connections”. Donors tend to continue giving when they feel connected with and have confidence in the organization they are involved with. Value Motivational Insights Over Behavior It’s incredibly important to understand somebody’s intent. What’s their connection? Why are they giving? What’s their motivation for giving? The first thing to find out is “why”. Listen so you can understand the intentions of your donors so you can serve them in the most effective way possible. Breaking Down Silos Combining your people, platforms and processes to work in harmony together will help build deep, authentic donor relationships at scale. Be Abundantly Thankful Generosity breeds generosity. Don’t lose sight of the sacrifice that your donors are making with their time and money. Rather than treating donors like an ATM, lead with gratitude and provide highly personal and meaningful experiences. Design Plans, Adapt, Stay Curious Write out your plans in pencil. Be willing to fail and learn from your failures. “Some organizations will thrive from this increased chaos, some will be unprepared and some will merely fight it and lose.” as Seth Godin put it. View Generosity Beyond the Transaction There are often so many transactions, it’s hard to see beyond it. Ask questions like: What was the mindset behind that donation? Why did it take place? Take steps to focus on personalization in order to best serve donors based on who they are as a whole. To listen to the entire talk, listen to episode #74 of the Ministry at Scale Podcast.

Anthony Elliot is a senior software developer at Five Q. On today’s episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, Anthony joins Chad to talk about conversion tracking and why it’s so important. For many people unfamiliar with conversion tracking, there’s one big question: what are conversions? As Anthony put it, it has similarities to a spiritual conversion. Much like how a spiritual conversion involves a person on a journey through life interacting with something that causes a change, a conversion on a website happens when a user comes to a site and interacts with the site in some way. This could include signing up for an email list, engaging with articles, posting on social media or even donating. Conversions are important because they provide data in order to more effectively use advertising in ways that actually work. You can start testing and optimizing based on how you know people interact with your online presence. In order to track conversions, you need to know the journey that a user takes. Asking questions such as these can help you to understand how people interact with your site: What are they doing on your site? How long are they on each page? Are they a recurring donor? The process to set up conversion tracking can be done many ways, but the way that Anthony and the 5Q team have done it successfully is to set up Google analytics to track conversions. It can be a daunting task to begin understanding this process, but Anthony gave an example about how it works. If you wanted to track donations, for example, you can create a “thank you” page that users are taken to when they donate. You can set up google analytics to track how many people visit that specific url each day, thus tracking the number of people who donated in any given day. Another way to track this is to link your Google ads account to Google analytics in order to capture which ads are most successful and which ads need adjustment. To learn more tips about conversion tracking and how to do it well, listen the the entirety of episode #74 of the Ministry at Scale Podcast.

In this session from the Digital Ministry Conference, Pete Marra, the Vice President of Innovation at the Colson Center discusses how to get started with risk mitigation for your ministry. Your Ministry is Like the Three Little Pigs In the story of the three little pigs, each pig picked different materials to build their house, one used straw, another used sticks and the last pig used bricks. When the Big Bad Wolf stopped by and began huffing and puffing the results were often disastrous for the little pigs. Your ministry is likely built on straw, sticks or bricks as well, though it is most likely a combination of materials and risk assessments will help you identify the areas your ministry is being held together by straw. Building Resilience Through and N+1 Mindset N+1 comes from network administration. It stands for Node plus 1 which means you have your main node (server, channel, means of communication etc.) plus an alternate or backup in case something happens to the main node. When thinking about this in your ministry you need to think beyond just your data, you need to think about N+1 in terms of people, processes, and technology. The 4 A’s of Risk Mitigation Assessment - What is it that you are going to measure to assess the risk score of your ministry. This will be based on probability and impact. Alignment - This is about bringing agreement across your team as to what your risk is and how you will handle it. Assignment - This is where you decide who will head up your risk mitigation plan. Action - This is where you put your plan into action and start building resilience into your ministry. Resilience Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive One simple way to ensure you don’t lose your data is to download it from the cloud and store it offline somewhere. For example you could get a backup of your email list. Bottom line Pete, wants to make sure that the biggest takeaway you have from his talk is to get started, anything you put in place is better than having nothing in place to mitigate risk. Pete shares many more practical ideas so be sure to listen to the full episode, but whatever you do, get started now.

John Cobb is the Vice President at Ligonier ministries. He started looking into Web3, Blockchain and the Metaverse simply as a way to understand what they are and how they could impact ministries going forward. What he found is that there are three main buckets he thinks ministries should be considering. The three categories are community, content and censorship. Community When he first began he discovered NFTs since he has an interest in art and photography but found that it goes beyond the art, NFTs can also be used to build community and show membership in a specific community. When building a community one thing that is important is owning the community so that it is not fully dependent on a platform that you don’t control. Many people think of this in terms of collecting email addresses or other contact information so you can still reach them if the platform goes away. Blockchain and decentralization take this one step further by allowing the platform for communication to be secure and resilient. Content When it comes to content there is the possibility of censorship and deplatforming coming in America, but there are many places around the world where censorship is already in place, and there is a real risk for those who spread the Gospel in those areas. Blockchain in particular could provide a secure way to distribute content digitally. Censorship This topic dovetails nicely with the other categories. Making the world virtual (as in Web3), decentralized and secure (via blockchain and NFTs) enables you to build security and resilience within your systems. This is also a way to future proof your digital ministry. This is a high level overview of the types of things you should be thinking about for your ministry. John takes some time to answer specific questions and dive into details, so if you have questions you’ll want to listen to the full episode.

Marketing Communications can be a critical part of your ministry. It ensures your message is presented effectively, all of your resources are consistent so you can stand out in a sea of other organizations and that your materials are engaging your audience. In this episode we speak with Cheryl Brunkow, the Marketing & Communications director at Bethany International, and she shares her five C’s for building an effective communications strategy. The five C’s for effective communications are clear, clean, concise, consistent and creative. Be sure to listen to the full episode as Cheryl gives very practical advice on why these are important and how to implement them within your organization. Clear It’s critical that people can understand your messaging if they are going to get excited about the mission of your organization. All too often in ministry we design things around our own personal experiences which require a significant amount of explaining for others to understand. When you’re creating your messaging make sure it will be meaningful to your audience. Clean Reviewing for things such as typos, or grammar and spelling errors, will go a long way in showing that you value quality, and are a professional organization. Taking the time to make sure all of your resources and materials are clean will go a long way toward building credibility with your audience. Concise It takes time to build the right messaging, but If you can not clearly communicate what you’re about in a very concise way, then your message is going to get lost, and likely misinterpreted. Consistent There are a lot of moving parts in any organization and keeping consistency in your branding and messaging throughout all departments and channels is important for building your brand identity. Your audience wants to know that your whole team is working toward the same mission and vision rather than a collection of individuals doing their own thing. Creative The world around us is filled with amazing creative and engaging things that pull our attention in a lot of different directions. As ministries we need to be on the same level as the secular world in terms of both quality and creativity. Designing creative materials and experiences will not only get people’s attention but it will also keep them engaged over the long term. This summary is just scratching the surface of what Cheryl shares in the podcast, so whether you are in the middle of rebranding, building a new communications department, or just need to breathe new energy into your communications you won’t want to miss this episode. Resources:

Shae Bynes is the Chief Fire Igniter and founder of the Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur movement. On this episode of the Ministry at Scale Podcast, Chad sits down with Shae to talk about what a kingdom culture looks like and how to focus on using a kingdom approach to business. In 2009, God told Shae to quit her corporate job at IBM. She originally started out as a software engineer and had continued to work her way up in the company, but she knew it was God telling her to move on because it wasn’t in her plans. Less than a year later, she quit her job at IBM with little guidance on what to do next but continued to trust in God’s faithfulness along the way. After some time, she got connected to a woman who would eventually become her cofounder of Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur. She knew that it was a God-given friendship and since then, she has worked to help others take a kingdom approach to business. What does a kingdom approach look like? Shae breaks it down into 5 categories. The first piece is identity, which the other 4 pieces are built upon. You need to be able to trust that you can hear God’s voice and allow him express Himself through you. It’s very much a discipleship process as you learn to build an identity based on how God sees you. The next is assignment. What’s your assignment? Does it match up with God’s assignment for you and your business? Financial ROI is important, but we also need to focus on eternal ROI. The next is assets. We have an unlimited God that we are in partnership with. What does it look like to operate out of Heaven’s economy? It’s not about operating for provision, but rather from provision. The next is culture. How does your kingdom culture affect your company, self, and your business ecosystem along with all the people that you touch with what you do in business? The final part is operations. When we take a look at marketing or any other aspect of a business, we need to be asking what we can learn from Jesus. How can we avoid the ways of the world when it comes to marketing or staffing or any other part of our business? The whole point of all these is to help people align with the King of Kings to let God influence the world around us through our work and through our businesses. To learn more from Shae Bynes about how she uses social media and how she focuses on efficiency in her work, listen to the entirety of this episode Ministry at Scale podcast. Resources: https://kingdomdrivenentrepreneur.com Grace and Grind by Shea Bynes A Catalyst for Change by John Bost

During his time at Bott Radio Network, the director of marketing Sam Rinearson came to speak at the Digital Ministry Conference in 2022. He taught how to personalize your user's experience in a way to build connection and to increase your number of divine appointments every day. Personalization is defined as “the process of tailoring a message or an experience to each individual which speaks directly to their needs, interests, and concerns.” In today’s day and age, we’ve come to expect personalization. On Netflix, we expect to be told what to watch based on our watch history. All throughout the tech industry, we expect someone else to know what we want. Sam breaks data down into two categories: readily available data and actively collected data. Readily available data collection can only tell you what has already happened such as Google analytics and Mailchimp. Actively collected data is the information you can get from your current users. Sam has had success collecting this type of actively data with surveys and questionnaires. He tends to go straight to analytics, but has learned that sometimes data collection is as simple as going straight to users to ask simple questions. Of the data that you acquire, you have to be able to sort through what’s useful to you and what’s not. It can be helpful to first ask “What do I want to know?” then go and find the data that answers your question, rather than going to the data first without having a clear idea of what you’re looking for. Data tagging is an important aspect of personalization as well. Within the audio world, audio transcription is something that Sam highly recommends people to do if they don’t already do it. It’s useful for categorizing content and for helping people find exactly what they’re looking for. According to Sam, you’re not going to be able to make good connections with users if you don’t have good tagging To learn more from Sam about the power of personalizing your user’s experiences, listen to this entire episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast. Resources: Journity Finney Media Bott Radio Network This talk on YouTube

Ken Coleman is America’s Career Coach, the #1 national bestselling author of The Proximity Principle and From Paycheck to Purpose, and host of The Ken Coleman Show. Ken helps people discover what they were born to do and provides practical steps to make their dream job a reality. During this talk given at the Digital Ministry Conference in the spring of 2022, Ken spoke about the 6 rules of employee engagement and gave lots of practical tips about how to ensure employees feel valued, cared for, and passionate about their work. The Purpose Rule: Your people should be using what they do best to do work they love to produce results that matter to them. This rule can be broken down into three parts. First, “using what they do best” talks about talent, then “work they love” deals with passion. Third, “matter to them” is about mission. According to this first rule, talent, love and mission are all an integral part of discovering purpose in the workplace. The Expectation Rule: Your people will know what to do, how to do it, and how their results will be measured. After you show people how to do it, the most important step in this rule is that people know how results will be measured. People want to know if they’re winning or losing. Stop coddling them. The Relationship Rule: Your people must feel cared for by their leader and connected to their team. There are two simple questions that can be used to build relationships in the workplace: How are you doing? How can I help you win in your role? If these questions are asked genuinely and with intentionality, it can help people to feel cared for and valued by their leader. The Recognition Rule: Your people must be recognized publicly and privately for their attitude, effort and contribution. Private recognition deals with the one-on-one part of a relationship. Public acknowledgement of people’s achievements and successes is what happens in front of the rest of the team. One way that public recognition is done at Ramsey Solutions is during leadership meetings, they will do popcorn shout-outs as a way to encourage one another and point out the areas where they see others winning. The Growth Rule: Your people must be challenged to learn new skills and step into new roles. This rule is not about promotion, it’s about giving people an opportunity to progress. If you don’t give people a ladder, they’ll leave and advance their life on their own The Crusade Rule: Your people must see how their work is part of a cause greater than themselves. This is one of the most important rules and ties closely with the first rule. When people can see the value of their work, they can understand the bigger picture. To learn more about each of these rules of employee engagement, listen to the entirety of episode #68 of the ministry at scale podcast.

Chris Martin is the content marketing editor at Moody Publishers. From his talk at the 2022 Digital Ministry Conference, Chris shares some practical tips for maximizing your reach using social media. Just a few years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to reach a high percentage of your followers on social media with just a single post. Reaching 50% of your followers was not unheard of. Today, however, the average organic Facebook post reaches about 5% of followers. The best way to use Meta is to free yourself from Meta. If we learn to use social media as a means to an end, it will have less of a hold on how we reach our audiences. One practical way to do this is to focus on driving your audience to email lists or other forms of intimate off-social media communication. If social media is the front porch of our ministry or nonprofit, we need to invite users through the front porch into the living room; a more inviting place where we can engage more effectively. When creating content for social, we also need to also consider the fact that going viral is not always as great as it seems. “Can you help us go viral?” That’s one of the most common questions that social media managers get. According to Chris, it’s not as great as it sounds. It seems like the most common way to go viral today is to do something that makes a lot of people mad. In many cases, going viral could lead to controversy in a way that you did not intent. Rather than focusing on trying to go viral, the best way to use social media to maximize your reach is to just make good content. In order to do this, Chris outlines three steps: Isolate your audience. Investigate their needs. Identify the gifts God has given you to steward for the good of his kingdom. To learn more about how to take practical steps in order to isolate, investigate and identify, listen to the entirety of episode #67 of the ministry at scale podcast. Resources: Terms of service book

Tabitha Kapic is the Director of Innovation at the Chalmers center. In this talk from the 2022 Digital Ministry Conference in Nashville, she talks about design thinking and how teams can be better at innovation. Be the solution What if teams started asking the question "What do people need?" rather than "What can I give people?" Get uncomfortable Design thinking can be uncomfortable if you’re not used to it. Tabitha uses drawing in the creative innovation process with the Chalmers center and many times, teams don’t feel comfortable drawing out their ideas but in her experience it can be a very effective tool. Be Emotional You’ve got to be emotional and relatable when using design thinking. Emotion is a shortcut to innovation. Be asset based Use what you already have. Be fast and cheap for as long as you can until you’re ready for a big investment. You don’t have to build the perfect thing before you’re ready to launch. It’s ok to learn and grow as you go. Get out there Design thinking is active. Do testing, get out there, talk to people, and be ok with getting uncomfortable. Design to the edges Who do you need to listen to? Are there people that you aren’t designing for that you should be? Be ready to design to the edges. Find extreme users at both ends of your target market and design for them and everybody else that falls in the space between. Limit yourself Gather together with your team and turn off your computer. Many times, giving yourself limitations can really stretch your design thinking and help your creativity. To learn more about using design thinking to innovate better, listen to the full episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

On this episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, we hear a talk given by Chad Williams from the 2022 Digital Ministry Conference held in Nashville. Chad is the founder and CEO of Five Q and gave this talk on the opening night of the conference based on the theme of the conference: Embrace the Race. Chad used the story of his son Josiah’s high school running career to teach about some deeper principles. Since Josiah started cross country his freshmen year, he grew to love the sport and really wanted to push himself to improve and become a better athlete. One year he ran 1,000 miles in just one year as a part of his own personal training and through determination and perseverance, Josiah completed his goal even when it meant running outside in below freezing temperatures. He put in the effort to accomplish the goal which is a large part in what it means to “embrace the race”. Another aspect of embracing the race is having a character of integrity to do the right thing even when no one is watching. In Josiah’s case, when his coach would tell the team where they would be running for that day, many of the other runners would take shortcuts so they wouldn’t have to run so far. Even though the coach would have never known, Josiah still chose to run the assigned route and even began leading others to do the same. The third part of embracing the race involves measuring success by God’s standards rather than by the world’s standards. Throughout his entire running career in high school, Josiah wanted to make it to state. He worked hard, put in the effort, did the training and pushed himself to do his best, but in the end he was seconds away from achieving a fast enough qualifying time. Although the world might view that as a failure, Josiah character and leadership abilities grew during his running career to a point where he eventually became student body president at Moody Bible Institute. He achieved success in much more important areas than a state qualification. To hear more about embracing the race, listen to the entirety of episode #65 of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

Heather Heuman got her start in the digital marketing space 22 years ago. After working as a special education teacher, she switched career paths and began work at a digital marketing firm. After beginning a business of her own, she began to grow that business using her digital marketing experience and started helping other businesses do the same. For the past 7 years she has been helping businesses grow using social media with her digital marketing firm called Sweet Tea Social Marketing. In this interview, Heather shares about how you can do social media well and how can you use it to assist your business or clients. Heather uses the acronym S.O.C.I.A.L. to help her clients grow their businesses and organizations. Strong Foundation Who are you, who do you help, and what do you do? These are the foundational questions to ask when synthesizing your organization’s core beliefs. Think about it like this: if you were brought onto your local news station representing your business, what’s the one thing that will be listed on the screen underneath your organization’s name? In five words or less, it should explain who you are and what you do. If this strong foundation is not clear, it makes everything else on social media much more difficult. Optimize Relationships Relationship building can really make businesses stand out. Reaching out and making connections, even digitally, is a great way to build relationships on social media and connect with people in your industry. Many people think of social media as a feed curated for themselves, but it can be a great way to cultivate relationships and make connections. Choose the Right Platforms Spreading out your content across many social media platforms is usually not the best strategy. While it’s important to not put all your eggs in one basket, it’s best to identify which platforms you get the most engagement on and focus your time and energy on those platforms that are working. It’s more valuable to emphasize quality content on fewer platforms, than to publish mediocre content on many platforms. Pick your top two platforms and spend 80% of your time on those platforms, spending your remaining time on the other platforms. Influential Content You need to be adding content that adds value to the conversation. It’s important to be adding your genuine thoughts on things as well. Don’t share sensationalized content for the sake of getting engagement and attention, but don’t be afraid to add your opinion and thoughts into your messaging. If you want to amplify what your organization thinks and stands for, you need to add something personal rather than simply following the crowd and sharing what everyone else is sharing. Automation and Smart Systems Rather than trying to figure out what to post day by day, scheduling out your posts can save time and energy. It’s also important to be interacting with commentors or posting extra content on top of the scheduled posts so it doesn’t seem like the business is completely hands off. Work smarter, not harder, and don’t complicate things that don’t need to be made more difficult. This may mean sitting down and scheduling out a bunch of posts for the following month or setting aside some time to film 5 pieces of content at once, and schedule them all out for the future. Just remember that organic content is equally as important as scheduled and automated content. Legacy and Kingdom Impact If you can focus on communicating in a way that will help humanity or work to make the planet a better place, it can create more passion for what you are doing among your team. If you are not a faith-based organization, are you creating a legacy? If you are a faith-based organization, is your social media presence having...

For several years, Rick Boxx worked as a bank executive. After he was called to follow the Lord, his business practices began to change for the better. One instance of this was when he bid on a foreclosed house before finding out it was going to be worth much less than he initially thought. He was given the opportunity to change the agreement that he signed but knew it would have been wrong and from that moment on, the people he worked with knew where Rick stood on moral issues. As time went on, he wanted to find a way to combine his love for business and his love for Jesus in a way that could help others do business according to biblical principles. Rick wanted to follow the will of the Lord and be obedient to His calling. One year he had two radio executives contact him separately and ask if he wanted to do a radio show on integrity in the workplace. Having no experience in radio, he began writing 90 days’ worth of content at the advice of the executives. He figured that since he was writing them, he might as well send it out in an email to a handful of people. Eventually, he was getting emails from people in Spanish and Portuguese about his writings even though he sent out his emails in English. He eventually found out that his emails were picked up by an international company, translated into 8 languages, and were sent to over 1 million different people. After completing 90 days of writing for his potential radio show, he discovered that both executives had resigned, and the radio show would not end up working out without a large fee. Eventually, someone else reached out and offered to host his show for free. Since that time, he has learned how many different forms one piece of content can take. From reading plans on the YouVersion bible app to a podcast to daily 1-minute snippets on radio stations across the country, one piece of content can be used in a variety of different ways. Rick and his team have been able to reach an international audience as well. One man in France had been reading Rick’s daily emails for 10 years and was able to take those emails to his business and share them with other leaders in order to spark a dialogue about the Bible. He has seen a lot of growth and change in his life from these daily emails and God has been faithful to change people’s lives through the daily emails because of Rick’s obedience and diligence to God’s calling. To learn more about Rick and his ministry, listen to the entirety of episode #60 of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

On this episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, we hear a talk from Josh Kashorek of 5Q. Josh gave this talk at the 2021 Digital Ministry Conference and shared about the impact that metrics can have in ministry. If we look at the story of when Jesus fed 5,000 people with only 5 loaves of bread 2 fish, we see that even with a small amount of food, Jesus clearly accomplished a miracle. If the small quantity of loaves and fish were not given, there would be a good chance we would miss the miracle that Jesus performed. Using metrics in our own ministries, how can we ensure we are not missing the miracles that God is doing? There are two questions to consider when sorting through data. What is your mission? What does it look like when that mission is accomplished? It’s easy to look at metrics as simply a list of numbers and stats such as the number of donations received in a month, or how people have visited a website. However, Josh encourages ministries to take those metrics and try to answer the question, “How can we know we’re accomplishing our mission?” For the Bowery in New York, whose goal is transforming poverty and hopelessness to hope, 429,000 meals served, and 104,000 nights of shelter is their indicator of keeping accomplishing their mission. For GotQuestions.com, whose mission is to answer questions about the Bible, 670,000 Bible questions answered is the metric that shows the accomplishment of their mission. The context of a ministry’s overall goal and mission should drive the way that it engages with its audience. To learn more about the impact of metrics in your ministry, listen to the entirety of episode #59 of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

Learn, Grow, Go. This is TJ Tison’s motto when it comes to helping faith-based organizations develop a culture of learning. Growing up, she always loved learning and has since found a way to help institute learning management systems for nonprofit organizations. To do this, TJ and her team use the E5 system: Engage, Establish, Equip, Empower, Expand At the core of almost every type of non-profit is learning and when it comes to faith-based ministries, that usually comes down to some kind of disciple making. The question is now “how do you multiply?” rather than “how do you add?” and that’s where the power of digital comes into play. TJ mentioned that she views the paradigm shift from COVID as a beautiful thing, because ministries can reach a much larger group of people. The key is to shift how we use digital tools God has given us to use them more effectively. It’s also critical that we don’t lose the community aspect that comes with in-person communication. Another way that TJ encourages learning and growth within her organization is by implementing a rule that if a few people go to a conference or seminar, they are required to teach some of what they know to the rest of the team. This way, they are sure to listen well enough that they could teach on the subject, and the rest of the team can benefit from some practical knowledge as well. TJ is also an author, and her book Killing Wonder Woman is written to combat societal expectations, and to help set weary women free through Jesus to win at work and soar in faith. To hear more about TJ Tison and her passion for learning, listen to the entirety of episode #58 of the Ministry at Scale podcast.