Ministry At Scale

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 a Kingdom impact?

To hear more in-depth information from Heather about how you can use social media, check out the full interview on episode #62 of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

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.

On this episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, we hear a talk from the 2021 Digital Ministry Conference from Ben Martin of 5Q. He shares about the Google Ads grant for nonprofits and how ministries can use this to increase engagement and clicks to their website.

The Google ads grant gives the ability to run up to $10,000 in Google search ads for free. It’s part of Google For Nonprofits and it’s a great resource for driving new users to a website. Anyone who qualifies for Google for nonprofits can have access to the free ads and it allows ministries to run text ads within Google search results. 

These ads are prompted by keywords. With search ads, you input your budget, add your content, define your keywords, and then wait. It’s a unique type of advertising because it requires waiting to see if the content is relevant, if your keywords are being searched, and if your landing page is relevant to your keywords. For these reasons, it’s important to watch your impression and engagement results so you can see if any content or keywords need to be edited or changed. 

There are a lot of rules and requirements for your keywords as well. Some of these rules state that it’s necessary to have at least a 5% clickthrough rate, keywords that are relevant to your website and non-plagiarized content.

How is that going to help increase awareness?

These ads are more than likely going to be shown to people who are not already familiar with your content or ministry. The people that will find your ads are searching for a topic and want to find content that aligns with your ministry intent.  If able to fully utilize all $10,000 of free ads each month, that could mean between 50,000 and 161,000 clicks per year. For more information about the Google ads grand, listen to this full episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

Resources:

Digital Ministry Conference

Five Q's Ads Grant Guide

Video of this session

On this episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast we hear from Natchi Lazarus. Natchi is the co-founder and chief consultant of Open Minds Agency and works with churches and nonprofits, teaching them how to use social media to grow their impact.

Many years ago, Natchi had a life-changing experience walking down the street. He saw a series of three individuals, each sharing something of value, but nobody stopped to listen. Nobody acknowledged the street preacher, enjoyed the melodies of the musician or listened to the pitch of the salesman. Natchi believes that the Holy Spirit told him that the ears of this generation are already occupied. Most people had their earbuds in while walking down the street that day and Natchi realized that in order to share the gospel message more effectively, churches and ministries needed to get into the digital space.

When Natchi begins working with different churches and ministries to reach people for the gospel, he believes it needs to begin with a shift in mindset. It’s important to think about your audience as a singular person. Although you may want to reach a large group of people when individuals are on their phones they are by themselves. Once you can shift your mindset to think of your audience as a large group of individuals, Natchi believes you can minister more effectively. 

He’s also come up with the acronym S.P.I.R.I.T. to serve as a framework for ministries in the digital space. It stands for structuring, packaging, integrating, releasing, igniting, and tracking.

Structuring involves giving a foundation and shape to your digital ministry such as God did to Adam’s body as He created man.

Packaging has to do with presentation and how messaging and formatting are put together. For example, what formats do videos require, where is it shown, and how long should it be?

Integrating addresses the need for each church or ministry as a whole to work together and think about the extended audience. Integration of your brand and voice needs to be cohesive and consistent throughout each department of the church or ministry.

Releasing is all about distribution. How is your content spread? It’s important to think about how, when, and where content is released.

Igniting is a key factor in expanding your reach. It can be extremely useful to get technical and light your content on fire by using promotion to give your content an extra push.

Tracking is where you continually look at the data and measure metrics so you can learn what works and what doesn’t work. It’s not exciting, but it’s a vital part of this digital framework.

To learn more from Natchi Lazarus, check out the entirety of episode #56 of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

Resources:

https://www.natchilazarus.com/

Natchi's Instagram

The Connected Church

Many people have good intentions when it comes to downloading and consuming the content that you provide, but many times they never get around to it. In this episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast from the 2021 Digital Ministry Conference, Laura Hatcher explains how she and her team at Love Worth Finding have been able to increase their engagement up to 300%.

Love Worth Finding is a legacy ministry that uses the teachings of the late pastor Adrian Rogers. In order to increase engagement and help people find and consume content, the team at Love Worth Finding began using bite-sized email challenges to encourage people to make a difference in their own lives. The content that comes from the email challenges is provided day to day and helps to build trust with the users.

Before implementing email challenges, Love Worth Finding saw 450 PDF downloads per month. Once the email challenges began, the team saw engagement increase up to 2,200 downloads per month. Simply by changing the format of how content was shared, they were able to increase their engagement by over 300%.

If you and your team are wanting to implement email challenges, where is the best place to begin? Laura suggests starting small. Once you start to figure it out, then you can start to create larger or longer challenges. You will begin to see the number of subscribers grow and ultimately it will provide valuable content for your subscribers and will provide an easy way for them to consume it.

To hear more advice on using email challenges to increase engagement, listen to the full episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

Resources:

Love Worth Finding Ministries

In this episode, we bring to you another session from the 2021 Digital Ministry Conference. Jan-Willem Bosman explains the strategy of Jesus.net. Through the use of personalization, their goal is to lead people to the center of the Gospel and help them grow in their spiritual journey.

In the commercial world, personalization is already happening. On Netflix, for example, your suggested movies will most likely differ from your spouse’s suggested movies. The team at Jesus.net wanted to take that idea of personalization and apply it to the Gospel to help people right where they’re at.

The first step is finding a good methodology. How do you know where people are in their spiritual walk? Jan-Willem and his team created a survey to solve this problem. When people visit Jesus.net they can fill out the survey and it will put them in one of five stages of a spiritual journey. 

In the second step to personalization, you need to create a match between content and the needs of the people. To make that happen you need to create an algorithm. One main purpose of this algorithm is to guide people through the content in order to help them grow in their walk with Jesus. The ultimate goal is to bring people one step closer to Jesus every day. Finally, you need to come up with a plan to identify what the best technology is to get these things done.

Jan-Willem really believes that this is a revolution in internet evangelism and discipleship. With all the data that is collected, you can see the impact that it has had. The team at Jesus.net has been able to see many people grow in their walk with Jesus, in their spiritual activity, church involvement, and in the fruits of the spirit. As they continue to grow the platform, they hope to help people know God, grow in Jesus, and share their faith easily.

For more information from Jan-Willem, you can listen to the entirety of episode #54 of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

Resources:

Jesus.net

Session Video

In this episode, we bring to you another session from the 2021 Digital Ministry Conference. This session is from Mike Sukraw, the owner of Reliant Studios in Lincoln, Nebraska. Mike shares about the impact of video storytelling and tips for how you can find great interviewees that meet the goals of your ministry or organization. 

One question that Mike and his team like to ask their clients is “What if you could take each of your donors or potential donors to the front lines of what you do?”. What if they could spend a day with a homeless teen or with a mother in a part of the world where there’s Christian persecution? A well-told story through video is the best way to bring the front lines to your audience. Although aspects of high-quality production value are important and can certainly add meaning to a video, the story is one of the most important aspects.

To begin finding your story for the video, go to the ends of the earth that will best connect to your audience’s hearts. When crafting your video strategy, the first things to figure out are your goals and your audience. What do you want the video to accomplish and who do you want to target with it?

The next step is conducting pre-interviews. These are key in telling a successful story. The purpose of these is to use broad strokes, to look for the big stories, and look for people that would be the best fit for the goals of the organization and target audience. It also gives a chance to screen for potential stage fright in interviewees.

Some helpful questions for pre-interviews are:

What’s your story?

How does your story impact you emotionally?

What is something you want people to know about your story?

How did the organization help?

What would it have been like if the organization or ministry had not been there?

Good candidates should be relatable, willing to show emotion, and transparent. They should also have unique story details that serve the goals of the video in an authentic way

After you have outlined the story and are ready to conduct the interview, there are a few steps you can take to ensure a productive interview time. First, make sure to work on yourself. Make sure your heart is in the right place and you care about the person. You should also be aware of your nonverbal communication in order to help them feel relaxed. Engage your facial expressions and show you are listening and attentive. Additionally, don’t be afraid to ask the same question multiple times to get deeper and deeper responses each time. First, you should get the surface-level answer, then the emotional answer, then the “how did this impact you?” answer.

For more details and insight on crafting a messaging strategy, conducting preinterviews, and utilizing helpful interview techniques that serve to create connection, invite emotion, and encourage vulnerability, check out the full episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

This episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast features a talk from Bobby Lewis from Love Worth Finding Ministries. He shares about the process of shifting to a legacy ministry and how he and his team shifted the way they provide content.

In 2005, Love Worth Finding ministries became a legacy ministry. It had been a media publishing ministry from the teachings of pastor Adrian Rogers. After he went to be with the Lord, the ministry had to figure out what to do next. They didn’t know how long the ministry would last without their founder, but they did realize that people were still receiving value from the ministry. Ultimately their goal was to bring people to Christ and mature them in the faith and they could still do this through their archive of the past 50 years of digital content.

Bobby and his team recognized the need to be active rather than passive in the ministry and work to find a way to provide content to those in need of it. They understood what an incredible legacy they held and recognized they had an ability to cater content to people where they need it most.

They began creating a sequence that helps understand where people are in their spiritual walk and based on those answers can provide the most impactful content. Through a series of testing over a year and a half, Bobby and his team came up with four words to describe parts of a spiritual walk: searching, struggling, growing, and mature. They mapped each of those spiritual stages to a website location that can recommend a place for people to go to receive content based on where they say they are in their spiritual journey.

They have been energized by the ability to use past legacy content and are planning on ways to take what they’ve learned and apply it to other aspects of ministry. To hear more about creating impact in a legacy ministry, listen to episode #52 of the Ministry at Scale podcast.

Resources:

Love Worth Finding Ministries

Journity