The importance of digital ministry was made clear during COVID when churches had to go all digital. But now that we are all back in the pews, is there still a need for digital ministry? If so, what does it look like beyond livestreaming Sunday worship? I talk with Ryan Dunn, a minister for online engagement with the United Methodist Church on how digital ministry can help churches foster strong, connected communities.
Show Notes:
Pastoring in the Digital Parish Podcast
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[0:12] Music. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in seeing where faith, politics, and culture intersect. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. So, I've been working as a kind of in religious communications now for almost 20 years, and I still love doing it. My tent-making job, that means the job I do besides being a pastor, is working as a communications manager for a Lutheran church here in the Twin Cities suburbs.
[0:12] We'll be right back.
[0:40] Thank you.
[1:19] So, that pretty much means I'm interested in digital ministry. And this episode and the next are going to be dealing with digital ministry, and I will be chatting with two digital ministers. The upcoming interview I will be having is with Jim Keat. He is a pastor at Riverside Church in New York City. But for this interview, I'm talking with Ryan Dunn. Ryan is a minister for online engagement with the United Methodist Church. Ryan is an ordained Methodist minister, and he was the host of Pastoring in the Digital Parish. That was a podcast that ran for several years, which has recently ended its run. But he is now the host of a new podcast that is called MyCom. Both of these deal with digital ministry. And so in this episode, we're going to be talking about the importance of digital ministry for local churches, especially small churches, and what all this means, especially after COVID. So without further ado, here is my interview with Ryan Dunn.
[2:32] Music.
[3:07] Ryan, thank you for taking the time to chat today. I'm looking forward to talking about digital ministry, kind of where it's been and where it's going. Yeah, well, thanks for asking me to be here, Dennis. This is kind of thrilling for me to be on this side of the microphone. So I think the first thing I probably be helpful for people to know is to know a little bit about you, your role, because I know you have a role with the United Methodist Church and a little bit about your I know you're kind of transitioning from one podcast to another one. And actually, you do more than one podcast. So yes, show a little bit about that, too. Yeah. Yeah, well, about eight years ago, I transferred out of parish ministry to work for the communications agency of the United Methodist denomination. And the role I was hired into was called minister of online engagement, which at the time, this was pre-2020, well before 2020.
[4:09] It was billed to me that it's possible that I may have been the only person in that kind of role. And certainly I don't think that was completely true, but there weren't a lot of us who were kind of focusing on digital ministry as our primary area of ministry. So that was very unique. And then 2020 happened and all of a sudden everybody who is in any kind of ministry is being called into the space of digital ministry. So I had spent the years prior to that really trying to figure out ways to cultivate relationship and community in digital spaces. And then 2020 happened, and in addition to that, I was now being requested to help the church develop resources for becoming equipped to execute ministry in digital spaces, which has not subsided at all, even though we've come back to in-person meetings. We still have a need to meet and introduce ourselves to one another through digital spaces.
[5:23] And so out of that whole shift in 2020, we started the Pastoring in the Digital Parish podcast, which was meant to be sort of a podcast. A seminary class that we didn't get in seminary. As we were now entering into this new ministry space, none of us had been trained in that kind of area. So whatever expertise that I had, even though I'd only been doing it for a few years, was vastly needed across the church. So we invested into doing that and it ran its season. And now as we sunset pastoring in the digital parish, I'm moving over to a podcast called MyCom, which still has the focus of pastoring in the digital parish, of helping us to meet new people in new spaces, especially utilizing new technologies in digital spaces, while also figuring out how we help the church communicate who we are better to the people outside of our faith communities.
[6:24] So, you know, one of the things that I've been interested in and kind of observed is, of course, as you said, with COVID, everyone kind of had to go into digital ministry, whether they liked it or not. And it seems like I've noticed in the years following the pandemic, I think people are kind of questioning now, again, do we continue digital ministry? And some have actually kind of stopped some have really tried to say that the emphasis should be on what they would say is embodied ministry so what would you say why do we still need digital ministry in in this day and age when the emergency has passed i think part of this comes down to how we define what a digital ministry is. So for some people, when they're talking about digital ministry, they're simply talking about live streaming worship events. I think that is necessary for some communities. I'm not convinced it's necessary for all communities, but I will offer this. So I am a volunteer pastor at a small church here in my hometown where I live, Nashville, Tennessee. We have about 30 people in Sunday worship attendance. We do stream all of our worship events from Sunday morning. And.
[7:52] As we're streaming those, we might just have three or four people who are participating in the live stream portion of that. One of those people who just recently passed away, unfortunately.
[8:03] Lived in Iowa, and she was sick and mostly homebound. And her friend was a member of our congregation, is a member still of our congregation, and invited her to participate in these. And so So for the last several years of her life, we became her faith community. So certainly that suggests there's extreme value there, right, for having these live streamed events. But when I tend to think about digital ministry, I'm thinking about the ways that not just how do we live stream events, but how do we totally focus or bring the focus onto who we are as a faith community or church community in digital spaces? And in some ways that conflates with marketing, which can be a little bit of a touchy point when we bring that into the church. So I like to preface all marketing talk and saying that when I'm talking about marketing, I'm not talking about dollars and cents or making money. I'm talking about trying to provide points of invitation and information for people who are outside of our communities. And I believe that digital ministry is necessary because in today's age, in the culture in which we live in, we...
[9:28] Almost default to digital touch points for finding out who people are or finding out what organizations are or what they're about or who they are or what they value. So digital ministry then becomes not just trying to take what we do in our embodied in-person gatherings and trying to transfer that into digital space. In a broader sense, digital ministry is the ways in which we provide a sense of who we are as a community through digital media or through digital means.
[10:05] And I think that's necessary because I think about something as simple as finding a new restaurant to go eat at. Our practice in our family, and I know that we are not alone in this, is that, well, we're going to look for restaurants near us online. Then we're going to use digital means to look at the menu to see what they offer. Then we're probably going to read some customer reviews. We're going to try to get a sense of like, what is appropriate apparel? What people really value about this restaurant? Are there times that we want to try to avoid going to that restaurant? And all this stuff is available to us instantaneously through searches online. And And the calling of digital ministry is to represent who we are, make ourselves easily knowable to people outside of our faith communities, and try to reverse some of that narrative that the church is a walled institution, but it's something more accepting and open and a community of people who desperately want to connect with other people.
[11:14] So it sounds, you know, I mean, I've heard this used more than once about digital ministry, that it seems to be the front door, and I even heard on your podcast, the narthex of the church, that it's a way of getting to know a certain community. Yeah. Well, I'm part of the Methodist tradition. We have this tired analogy of entering into somebody's house and that there's the front porch,
[11:43] and then there's the doorway, and then there's the living room. We compare this to all kinds of things like grace or the process of discipleship. And certainly, as we bring that into the process of discipleship, we can imagine digital ministry having a place within that. Um, most people will tend to think of it as being the front porch and in many cases it is the front porch. Uh, it can also though provide means through which we enter into the living room. So, uh, we can use digital means again for our processes of defined discipleship in terms of how we impart information with one another, how we, uh, provide examples of discipleship to one another. And this might look like shared accountability groups in digital spaces or even check groups.
[12:37] And what I mean by that are maybe on Discord. We have a server in Discord is this kind of chat app where people, whenever they have, it's almost a message board where people sign on and they can leave messages for one another. And oftentimes, these are cultivated spaces where people are asking specific questions. And this becomes one of the ways in which we engage in discipleship and accountability to one another. How are we praying for each other on this day? Have we prayed about the money that we've spent? Has the Bible lived in us today? Some of these are the questions that we can hold each other accountable to in digital space, in addition to these relationships that we carry on in other places as well. So one of the things that I've heard a lot about when it comes to digital ministry is lots of churches have things like Facebook pages.
[13:36] And at times it can become a billboard. Yes. That, no, here's what we're doing today. Here's what we're doing today. Yeah. But, you know, I think the trend, at least that I think people are wanting to see is more engagement. What can be some examples of how to repurpose or to use like something like a Facebook page or, and there are probably other things, YouTube and other social media that can be more engaging to people instead of just kind of here's the bulletin board of what we are doing this week. And, you know, the ice cream social is taking place on Sunday or something. Yeah.
[14:18] Dennis is my soapbox. It's really easy to default to that setting because once we do get into these digital spaces like Facebook and Instagram, there is this felt need to produce content and to get it out there. And the easiest way to do that is to talk about the things that we have coming up, the big events that we're looking forward to, especially in larger churches where our ministry is so program-focused. We're often just thinking about the programs that we have ahead and wanting people to show up to those. I think one of the helpful ways to think about how we might utilize these in a different way, aside from just asking people to do stuff alongside us, and there is a place for that. I think it's important to communicate to people.
[15:08] The information about the events that we do have coming up. But I like to think of it more as the ways of how we can start to communicate who we are and what we value. So in the early days of Facebook, you didn't sign into your Facebook profile, you signed into your Facebook wall. And I think that was a really well-chosen point of verbiage because it makes us think about the kinds of things that we have within our home. As I walk into your home and I look at your walls, I'm probably going to start to get a sense for the kinds of things that are important to you. So walking into my home, you might see pictures of family. So that suggests a value.
[15:50] You're going to see some pictures of events that my spouse and I have attended in the past. And so here we are, a lot of them are concert posters. So you get a sense of some of the things that we like to do you together and some of the things that I'm interested in. Walking through anybody's house, you can get the same feel. And so when we are thinking about our social media spaces, it might make sense to think about them as places where we can hang things for people to get a sense of who we are as a community, the kinds of things that we like to do together. And that can be events in some cases, but also the kinds of things that we value, the things that are important to our community. And so in some cases, that means just showcasing our people in action. I like to think of a real simple invitation to discipleship as being putting people alongside disciples and inviting them to do what disciples do. So we can showcase our people doing that which they do in community. And oftentimes that means just snapping some pictures of the event that we already had so we can show some of the participation and disciple shape making activities.
[17:05] It also means mentioning some of the things that are important to us as a community. And I find that the churches that are really engaging people well online, and by extension of that, churches that are growing in this age are able to articulate very well what their key values are. Um, and that comes, uh, as kind of, uh, a wake up call to, to those of us who sit in kind of the, the mainstream or middle spaces because we, or the purple spaces even, uh, because we do, uh, speak to people who have a range of, uh, beliefs or theologies or even political thoughts. However, those who are able to really communicate well in the digital spaces are those who are articulating their beliefs about certain topics or even offering a grace-filled response to some topics.
[18:11] And that just offers then people an opportunity to get a sense of who this community is. It establishes a sense of comfort before they enter into that. And I find more and more, that's what people are looking for as they look towards faith institutions. They want to encounter a sense of comfort and be invited within to that space.
[18:40] So this kind of leads to then the role of the pastor when it comes to digital ministry. History um as you kind of said earlier that your um original podcast was kind of the the seminary course that we didn't get in seminary um and i don't even know even today i mean maybe seminaries are starting to get into that they're starting yeah they're starting no full degree programs yet to my knowledge at least within my my connectional system yeah but you You know, it's, for me personally, it's been kind of, I can kind of get into this because I have a communications background. I have a journalism degree and all of that. So I've always been interested in this stuff, but that's not everyone. And so how does, how do pastors kind of jump into this? If there's someone that isn't as savvy on this, but they know that there's some importance to it. And of course, younger generations, this is much easier, but older generations, it can be a learning curve. Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's that felt pressure of producing content, especially. So, I think about the solo pastor who has to prepare a Sunday sermon.
[20:05] Is probably doing a midweek Bible study as well. Um, maybe trying to find ways to resource the cleaning of the facility and, uh, produce the bulletins and everything else on top of that. And now we're saying like, Hey, you should be posting pretty consistently. So, uh, I think the first thing to offer to those people is a sense of grace and that you don't need to be posting every day. Um, a lot of marketing agencies will tell you, Oh, well, you know, more is better. Feed the machine, keep, keep flooding that algorithm. And eventually you're going to get something that sticks. I think that, um, probably what is more workable and still useful for a lot of our solo pastors is just to, uh, focus on maintaining a semi-consistent presence. And that might mean having like two posts a week, uh, and also to focus on the, the media platforms where you think you can really make a connection. So some of our churches, TikTok is not going to be a space for them. And that's okay. But focus on where your people might be able to participate as brand advocates for what you're doing. And that might mean that the people within your congregation.
[21:26] One of the 30 people that you have showing up every Sunday morning is also going to be able to comment on what you're posting and might share what you're posting. So that's the first place, place to go start simply with something manageable, focus on, on maybe doing two or three posts a week. And you can build that out of whatever content it is that you're already producing. And so, uh.
[21:53] We are in the business as ministry leaders of producing content pretty, pretty regularly. Our solo pastor is going to be doing it every week, right? Every Sunday morning, there's a long form piece of content that they are producing. Well, for sure, there are some tweetable moments that you can pull out of that. There's something that you can pull out of that and, and put into a, an Instagram post, whether that just be some written text on a picture, or if you're really advanced, if If you're recording all of your Sunday sermons, you can pull a blurb out of that. And there are some really useful tools that will use an AI or robot to comb that thing for you and pull out what might be the most successful style media post for you to do. But utilize what you're already producing.
[22:43] And again, take some pictures of your past events and keep a log of those things. So oftentimes on my church's social media platforms, I'm posting pictures that might be a year or two old, but they're still accurate in communicating who we are as a community. And so that might come with an invite to say like, oh, just a reminder that, hey, we're having a Sunday worship musical celebration this coming week. Um, and it's been a little while since I've taken pictures of the band, but, you know, here they are in action. They're still there and we're still, um, looking like we are in those pictures, but here's a chance to participate in that. So use what you have that's already available to you. It's just introducing this into a new space. Then the other challenge with that is to.
[23:38] Um, then respond to people who are responding to you. So even if it's just an amen on your picture, give that a like or something, the algorithms on all these social media platforms are built to value whatever keeps people on the platform. So if they see that people are commenting on it, then, um, and you can feed into that even with just a little like a response and then it's worthwhile. So carve out a little bit of time to post in response. I often build into my schedule a daily window for what I call scheduling slash TDE. And that TDE is targeted direct engagement. So I'm looking for people who have commented on some of our posts. I'm also going across some other spaces just to see what other people are posting, the kinds of questions that people are asking.
[24:35] I'm one of the brave people who will move into the Reddit space and be a troll for Jesus there, not in the way that I'm looking for ways to come at other people, but I'm trolling more in a sense of I'm there socially listening for the kinds of questions that people are asking or some of the responses or even the outrage that they're expressing over some of the things going on in the world that might be.
[25:03] Be an opportunity for me to post something, um, that represents a little bit of grace in that situation. Um, and I, and this is off off topic, but I'll bring this up there. And then I have a value of grace and everything that we post. A lot of us are scared away from the social media spaces because of the negativity. Uh, so I always like to default into this mindset of grace. Like, Hey, hey, if I can be here to offer a sense of grace, then there's value in me being on this platform. And also, that being said, that if I'm being called to respond to something and it's not an opportunity to represent grace, or I don't feel like it, like it's just too negative, or it's hurtful, or they're demeaning of something, then that is an opportunity to delete something or to just move on from that conversation and not engage. Age well i mean i i agree with that a lot i've kind of have had a kind of on off relationship recently with twitter um and um it can get pretty heated there and um you know there are times that you'd want to respond with i think gracefully i don't try to i try really hard to not just respond off the handle.
[26:26] Because I think that that's important for a Christian witness. I think too quickly, we kind of just, you know, get involved in all the emotions and stuff and stuff. And then sometimes it's just like, if you see something that's really horrible, it's just, it's.
[26:42] Walk on by, you don't need to respond to everything. Um, and sometimes responding can just kind of be feeding the beast as well. So it's, it's, yeah, I, I totally agree with that. Yeah. And sometimes our initial responses are not the most well thought out or coming from the best place that I find that if some, if a post is making my face red, probably need to step away from that post for a while. And maybe I can think about how I might respond to that in the future, but within that moment where the ire is up, my heart rate is up, and I feel like coming after somebody, then it's probably not the best time to post.
[27:27] So you kind of mentioned that you have done a lot of volunteer, you're doing volunteer ministry at a small congregation. And one of the things that I've always noticed when kind of talking about digital ministry, talking about social media and all that, sometimes is that it feels like you're always going to hear from the church that has like 600 or 1 members or some very large congregation, but you don't hear as much about smaller congregations. So what advice would you give to a small congregation that is under 100 members? My congregation is probably around 20, so we're not a very big congregation. Yeah. The first piece is to note that there's nothing wrong with being a small congregation. I feel like sometimes we feel a pressure to apologize for being small, but there's nothing wrong with that. And in fact, the majority of the congregations are congregations of our size out there. So we are in the majority. And so don't feel like it's a negative that there aren't 200 people in the congregation. Um.
[28:40] And so with that comes an invitation then to show who you are authentically. So a lot of times I've found that the smaller congregations want to post aspirationally instead of authentically. And so they're, they're posting about who they want to be instead of giving people an accurate picture of who they are right now. And that can sometimes look like hiding behind stock photos on their website or in social media posts, meaning that, um, you know, well, here are people with their hands raised in worship and there are lights, there might even be a Mr. Fog machine. Uh, and yet when you show up, it is nothing like that. You know, there is a, there's a single piano player and, uh, there's 12 feet of space between most of the people in the congregation and that kind of thing. And, um, Um, you want to look for the moments in which you can favorably portray and also accurately portray who you are. Um, that is one thing I would know. So don't feel bad about who you are.
[29:48] People are actually looking for who you are. There are some people who do not want to, or even intimidated by the 400 or 500 person congregation. And I believe that the small church has so much to offer into the world, that there is such a feeling of community and family in those spaces that is invaluable to a lot of us. So I've served at large churches. I'm now serving at a small church, and I love it. It's wonderful.
[30:16] So yeah, be authentic to who you are. Again, don't feel like you need to compete with the larger churches, not just in terms of numbers that you show within pictures, but also in terms of the frequency with which you're posting or engaging in some. So, you know, again, they probably have somebody hired who is overseeing that stuff. And you're probably doing this at the end of the day, or even when you get home from the office in the evening and you just happen to be thinking about it. So it's okay to live into to that. I would think it would be helpful to maybe assign some kind of pseudo office hours to the social media spaces. I have to do that for myself a little bit just to keep myself accountable because as a volunteer, I'm not going to get fired if I don't post. So I need to be able to say like, okay, so Wednesdays at four o'clock, I'm going to review the social media feeds and see what we need to kind of proclaim for the week ahead. Are there events that do need to be be mentioned? Because again, there's still value in that. And what other questions or responses might we be called to revealing to people at this time to, again, help us get to know our congregations?
[31:30] What do you think is going to be the future for digital ministry moving forward? And I think I see.
[31:40] I can remember maybe about 10 or 15 years ago, you know, people were talking a lot about Facebook because that was new. And, of course, these days kind of moving into things like TikTok and Discord. And so where do you see that moving? And I mean, kind of the other question I have is people, you know, with different mediums, there are things that people latch on to more. And I think that also comes with age, um, talking to an older Gen Xer. Yeah. I get things like Facebook, TikTok, and kind of getting Discord. It's kind of like you're speaking in German. Um, so there are just certain things that are, are there that, you know, you can really latch onto, but I think it's younger generations I think can. So, so where do you see the kind of things in the future heading?
[32:36] Heading. Yeah, boy. Um, whatever I say is going to be wrong. So, cause any kind of predictions I've made in the past have not panned out. Um, I thought clubhouse was going to be just this wonderful space that, you know, we were going to build connection, have all move our meetings over to there and forget zoom. It's going to be at clubhouse and we're as clubhouse now. So, uh, A lot of what I'm doing is just reactive, in a sense. I think where we can think about the future of digital ministry is how technology is going to help us meet our deepest needs. And certainly one of those is to have community and connection to one another. So what's going to keep developing in digital ministry are the ways through which we connect to one another. And how is that going to help us form in meaningful relationships? And that's why something like Discord is useful because it is built on a platform of people talking to one another. So again, Discord, which as a Gen Xer myself, Discord is often overwhelming to me. It's a chat space. When I log into some of these servers, they have like 16 or 17 different.
[33:56] Chat rooms, all with new posts. And to me, that feels overwhelming. You know, I like the clean feed of Facebook where it's like, again, I have to trust the robot to tell me what's going to be important, but it's just one thing at a time and I can scroll through and move on. I don't feel the pressure to check out all the things before being able to, to log off of that space. So, um, but there's use for, for a platform like discord because it offers that chance to connect with one another. And I think maybe if you had asked this question a year ago, we would have been talking about VR. And in the meantime, I think what we've found is that VR is a fun space to play around with, but it hasn't yet fully lived into a platform through which people can again build that interpersonal connection. It's another space where we might run across people, but it's It's not a space that is geared towards specific one-on-one interaction or communal connection the ways that other platforms are. It's not truly a social media space. So I think that there's growth in that.
[35:10] Also realizing that all of these platforms have an agenda to keep you on their spaces. So I think what we're going to see is them leaning more and more into that. I think it's exciting in a sense for the church to figure out how we kind of co-op that need from the social media platforms to live into those spaces. It's counter in several ways to who we are as communities, because right now, There seems to be a value across social media algorithms on outrage responses.
[35:48] It's not always the best space for the Christian church to be. So figuring out how we move into creating meaningful, discoverable, noticeable content that gets noticed on those algorithms is also key. And that is a prediction of something that we need to move into. To. What I don't have is an answer on how to do that yet. So, um, I love the message of spreading, uh, God is love and, you know, there's a place for you within God's community, uh, that has not fully transferred over to success in the social media spaces by and large. But for those who do encounter it, it is a tremendously valuable space. So maybe the more we lean into that mission, or that message, that mission and message, the more the algorithm will find that people value that and it's going to get built up. We're still living into that. I think that that's a challenge because I notice even within the church, it seems like the...
[36:58] The things that get the most attention are the outrage or the ones that are kind of hitting you really hard with a message. And so trying to come in being kind of more of a, I guess for lack of a better word, a peaceful or calmer presence doesn't always seem to work. But there are some people that are looking for that. So it's not like it's a total waste of time. But it does feel sometimes frustrating because of the way that at least these days, social media is set up. Yeah, and I fall into that too. I'm an Enneagram 9, I'm a peacemaker all the way, so I'm not going to be posting the outrage content. But I find myself not being able to look away from it either. Oh, yeah. There's a curiosity there that it entices. So, I don't know, maybe our response to the outrage is to say, hey, we're responding to the outrage with a sense of calm, with a sense of compassion, hoping for a witness of mercy.
[38:04] One question I've always been interested in is how different parts of the church
[38:12] look at digital ministry. And I think that for a long time, um, evangelicals were really good at this and communication in general and all of that and more mainline churches, not so much. Do you see that changing? Is that, is there still room for improvement or how is that going these days? Yeah, there's always room for improvement. I do see it changing. I think that there is an awareness of the utility of doing ministry in digital spaces.
[38:51] The mainline denominations have been a little bit slower to respond, but that's not atypical of our general behavior overall, especially as it comes to maybe new media or new ideas. Um, and part of that is, is bred into who we are as communities that value a sense of tradition, um, that, and the benefit of that, you know, there is value to looking back to our tradition. There's certainly a lot that we carry forward into the future of value because we have these traditions to lean on in the past. And I find that when we don't have words for something, tradition is hugely valuable. Um, and so that means that we can just, though, be a little slow to respond to the coming trends. But I think that our digital usage is so pervasive, uh, that it just has started to make common sense to a lot of our institutional leaders. Um, it works.
[39:57] Even to the point of where we're starting to come up with conferences and classes. I don't know if there are full degree programs yet, but classes that begin to cover a sense of digital ministry. There was a seminary that started to roll out a doctorate in digital ministry. I don't think they had enough interest to carry the program forward. So we're still trying to feed that need and value. you. Or I guess the flip side of that is just that it becomes so implicit in our seminary training that it's part of all of our training programs, right? Part of who we are as ministers is figuring out how to relate and connect with people in digital spaces.
[40:42] One of the questions that I've, or at least one of the things I've noticed a lot lately, especially is kind of i guess the what people call the tech lash where people are kind of, whereas maybe a decade ago people were all there's nothing wrong or there's nothing that social media can't do wrong to social media is the most evil thing on the earth and we must all walk away from it yeah um but strangely we all haven't have not walked away from it um so i mean how do you kind of battle that, That feeling that people have now where they're more ambivalent towards social media, which then kind of does lead towards the question about digital ministry. How do you kind of engage that and show that there is still value in engaging people online?
[41:38] Yeah, well, there's always something that we can rail against in that regard. Dennis, when we were growing up, we probably heard it from older generations that TV was corrupting us, was making us dumb. And in the same way now, we've carried that through to social media. I think the exciting calling for the church is to entertain the idea of how we introduce redemptive aspects into that or even combat some of the negative aspects that are happening in a very real sense in social media. So there are tons of studies that show that young people who engage in Instagram have lower senses of self-security and are quite a bit more self-conscious. And how do we then move into that space? We as the church move into that space and start to combat some of those feelings or those overarching messages that some of our young people are consuming. And I think our youth ministers probably need to be aware of that, or anybody who is engaged in youth ministry needs to be aware of that and how they can be a positive connection in those spaces that could present something hostile or harmful to our young people.
[42:58] So again, I think that just undergirds your first question, and why do we need digital ministry? Well, it's because, uh, our young people are going to be on these spaces. All of us are going to be on these spaces and there's an opportunity for us to build a connection with people that is bounded in, in love and something that leads people into wholeness instead of a sense of harm or self-defeat and, um, ultimately turns our attention towards the good movements of God that are happening in the world.
[43:31] Hmm. Okay. One question I also wanted to talk about briefly is, and kind of we talked about this soon earlier, is the use of repurposing different content.
[43:48] How would you kind of define that and ways that people can do that? Especially, I think this relates back to pastors, solo parishes and all of that. What is kind of the value in repurposing content and what are some examples that you could show? Yeah, I've made it a game with myself to see how many different ways I can turn one single piece of content into multiple pieces of content. So one of my roles professionally is to cultivate or write or edit articles for the United Methodist Church's website. And every time I get an article Now I'm thinking like, okay, so are there ways that I can pull an idea out of this and put it on Instagram? And also, can I maybe take this article and add a little bit to it? Can that become a podcast episode?
[44:41] And is there enough here for me just to offer a reaction to this article and make it into like a 20 second video that I might share on the TikTok space? So it's just taking this one central point of content and figuring out all the different ways that we can disseminate it, not even in its entirety, but just bits and pieces of it to the community at large. So certainly within the local church, the Sunday sermon is the key piece. And for most of us, like it or not, it is probably the central point of our community rhythm. them. Maybe outside of communion, the thing that we remember is the Sunday sermon. So.
[45:26] It gives a, um, it gives a centerpiece to the table that is our, our weekly rhythm in the faith community. So how do we take little pieces of that Sunday sermon and have it in fleshed a little bit across our entire week where these people are hanging out in digital spaces? Well, we can take the quote and if you're brave enough to go onto extra Twitter, share a quote on there. Um, if you can take that again, that sermon clip in either in words, put it on Instagram, or if you have the means to take an audio recording or a video recording and put that small piece on Instagram and Facebook, that works wonderfully as well. A great way to repurpose a sermon portion for Facebook is to take maybe a quote from the Facebook and then ask some kind of discussion leading question in relation to that. So, um, you know, Hey, this past Sunday, pastor Dennis said, God is love.
[46:26] How does that make you feel in this moment? I mean, that's, that's fairly broad. You might want to get a little bit more definitive than that, but it gives a sense of how people might engage with that. Um, and that's incredibly valuable content, both for building your community and a sense of connection with each other through the week. But also that becomes a little bit of that billboard that those who are checking out your church might see who you are and how you interact with one another. So it's an open space that has tons and tons of, of benefit for all.
[47:01] So I would really start with just concentrating on that Sunday sermon and what you can glean from that.
[47:09] Final question before we kind of wrap things up is, um, If you're someone, what words of encouragement would you give to a pastor or a communications person that, you know, they're trying to post stuff on social media, maybe on YouTube or something?
[47:28] And let's say it's not the viral hit. Yeah. And can get very frustrating. um what words of encouragement can you give to someone who is kind of starting this out but it's not it's not what they hope it would be yeah uh social media is a sandbox in many ways so it's a way to to play around and so just um for every time that you have a social media post that doesn't And to be honest, the majority of them are not. So when people go viral, uh, they may have, um, well, for example, my, my friend Nathan Webb is, um, the founder of an all digital church expression
[48:13] called checkpoint church. And they had a video go viral, hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. And yet the very next video had like 120 views, you know, exponentially fewer views than before. And most of the videos consequently to that were the same. And then every now and then they have another one that kind of takes off. Majority of your posts are not going to go viral. So, uh, except that that is okay. And just view it as a place to play around, to see what hits every post has value.
[48:47] Uh, in that somebody, even if it's one person who sees it and derive some kind of meaning out of it, uh, is a success, but also those posts have value for maybe discerning why they didn't hit or, uh, what it was. Sometimes it's not actually the content itself. It's just the way that the algorithm interprets the content. But, um, yeah, I would say if, if you have a string of low performing social media posts, don't get too down about it. It's a sandbox space. So there's something to be learned from that. uh, continue to look for the best practices and also to realize like what is working right now is probably not going to maintain its same success rate over the course of a year. Uh, so keep playing around with it. And also what worked a few years ago is not going to work the same today. So, uh, except that this is just an experimental place that you're free to break, Break some eggs. Hopefully you have a sense of permission giving in your church leadership to kind of try some things out to see what works and what doesn't. All right. Well, people want to, um, know more about you, follow you. Where should they go?
[50:04] Yeah, that's a good question is we're in a little bit of flux right now. So, um, maybe the best way, the one thing that I know that will be maintained is I have a personal website. That's just Ryan done.rocks. And, uh, that has links then to, um, to the updated places where I'll be producing content in the future. So the MyCom podcast is for church leaders who are interested in growing in the technical space. And then I also produce the Compass podcast, which is more about kind of meeting the questions and providing points of information and invitation and information for spiritual seekers or those who feel like they're at the margins of the faith community. All right. All right. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. And this was really good and helpful. And especially as someone who has an interest in digital ministry has been helpful for me as well. Cool. You're kind to say that. And I really appreciate the opportunity to be on this side of it. All right. Right.
[51:08] Music.
[51:37] Thank you. So I'd like to know what you think, thought about the conversation. Conversation, is your church still doing digital ministry? Does it have someone that is specifically kind of, that's their job, is digital ministry? I'd love to know what your church is doing and what you even think of digital ministry. Drop me a line, and you can do that by sending me an email at churchandmaineatsubstack.com. You can also leave a note on our Facebook page. If you go to Facebook and go to Church in Maine, you'll find Church in Maine there. And there is actually a link in the show notes. And check it out. Consider joining the page. You'll pretty much see, especially when new episodes go up online, line. Um, if you are a member of the Facebook page. So, um, I hope that you would consider doing that. Um, also, uh, please consider subscribing. You can do that on your favorite podcast app. Um, and also leave a review. Um, and, When you do that, that actually helps others find the podcast.
[52:57] And if I do say so myself that this is an important podcast, I think it would be important that other people get to hear it. Leaving a ratings and review allows for other people to find out a little bit more about the podcast and hopefully subscribe. So if you can do that for me, that would be incredibly helpful. full. Also, there are ways that you can listen to past episodes, and that is simply by going to our website at churchinmainealloneword.org. And while you're there, consider donating, and you can do that. There is a donate button there. Consider doing that. That actually helps me to continue to produce good episodes and continue to have them placed up here. Also, finally, before I I leave you just two more quick things. First is something that I have. I keep meaning to share and I guess keep forgetting is that I.
[54:00] Church in Maine is actually kind of part of a network, and that is the Future Christian Network.
[54:08] Future Christian is a podcast by my colleague, Lauren Richmond Jr., who actually hosts the podcast that is called Future Christian.
[54:20] I would hope that you would consider kind of following along. If you check us out on Apple Podcasts, you can see what other podcasts are out there that are part of the network, just to let you know about that. But I just wanted to let people know that we're kind of part of a larger family, and hope that you would consider kind of finding out a little bit more about it. But besides Future Christian, there are a few other podcasts that are out there. And so please consider and hope that you will check it out. And again, you can find that by going to Apple Podcasts, look for Future Christian, and then just kind of click on Future Christian Network and you'll see all the other podcasts that are part of the network. work. Um, and then finally there are, I will put links to, uh, Ryan's, uh, show. Um, even though the, uh, pastoring and, uh, digital parish is, uh, has ended, those episodes are still available. Um, and they're, I think they're, they're worthwhile to watch, to, to, uh, to listen to. So if you have the chance and, um, I will put up also a link to, um, his new podcast. So those are all in the show notes.
[55:42] So that is it for this episode of Church in Maine again thank you so much for listening it does mean a lot feel free to pass this episode along to family and friends who might be interested, I'm Dennis Sanders your host take care everyone, Godspeed and I will see you very soon.
[56:02] Music.
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