The Pastor as Content Creator and Curator | Productive Pastor 92

The Pastor as Content Creator and Curator | Productive Pastor 92

Welcome back to Productive Pastor. In this episode, I talk with JR Forasteros about content creation and content curation. JR is no stranger to the podcast, so it’s awesome to have him back on and I talk with him about one of my favorite topics.

The Pastor as Content Creator and Curator

  • Did you ever have a time in ministry when you weren’t creating content?
  • Have you ever been scared for a church to read your content?
  • What content JR is creating
  • Pastors are consistently creating content and that makes you a better content creator.
  • Pastors are creating MASSIVE content each week, and have access to one of the best audiences in the world.
  • Content is an inevitable by-product of a sermon.
  • The skill we have not figured out how to develop is what it means for ministry leaders to be curators and truth show-ers.
  • People want someone who can give them trustworthy information.
  • Fake news.
  • What it looks like for churches to see their pastors as content creators.
  • How we talk about things that don’t lend themselves to sermons.
  • What are the ways you need to communicate things that don’t make sense in a sermon?
  • We’ve got to stretch out the energy it takes for us to write sermons.

 

Resources Mentioned
How I wrote a book with JR Forasteros | Productive Pastor 88

3 Reasons Pastors Should Be Curators of Content 

Have you checked out the Productive Pastor Community? It’s an awesome place for ministry leaders to have productivity and time management resources. It’s absolutely free and connects you on Facebook to other folks in the community.

Make sure to subscribe to the Productive Pastor Insider.

Remember to Review and Rate in iTunes. You can do it right here.

 

End of Year Review (and putting the best foot forward) | Productive Pastor 2018

End of Year Review (and putting the best foot forward) | Productive Pastor 2018

How many of you have taken part in a year-end review? I’m pretty sure many of us have been thinking about them, taking part in them, and possibly working on our own reviews. I spent the week reflecting on a few things, and I want to share them with you. I’ve also put together two worksheets for you to use for a personal review and for a team review.

This episode is sponsored by the awesome folks at TrainedUp.church. Make sure to check them out for the best mobile volunteer training system out there. If you didn’t catch it, we recorded an episode earlier this year with their founder Scott Magdalein.

The List
The Procrastination Doom Loop

Resources
Yearly Dream Sheet. Team Sheet.

Yearly Dream Sheet. Personal Edition.

Links Mentioned

Why You need to ask yourself tough questions. 

Have you checked out the Productive Pastor Community? It’s an awesome place for ministry leaders to have productivity and time management resources. It’s absolutely free and connects you on Facebook to other folks in the community.

Make sure to subscribe to the Productive Pastor Insider.

Remember to Review and Rate in iTunes. You can do it right here.

Advent 2017

Advent 2017

Over the last few years, a growing number of churches have started celebrating Advent. Historically, this is a part of Christmas you find more liturgical/sacramental traditions (Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Catholic, Orthodox, etc), but lately baptist or non-denominational churches are starting to hang out with the Advent party.

And I think that is totally awesome.

Advent is a pretty big thing to me. It was a big part of my own faith development in my 20’s, and it still plays a special part of my life today.

So what I want to do is resource you and anyone else with an Advent question in this post.

We will start with my own Advent story.

 

Podcast Episodes
Over the years, The Threshing Floor has produced a special advent episode yearly. These are some of our most popular episodes. In each one, we talk about various Advent practices and traditions and sometimes have special guests.

Advent 2014
Advent 2015 Solid Country Gold, Advent, and JD Walt
Advent 2016a Waiting, Advent, and Tetherball
Advent 2016b Anticipating, Advent, and Aleppo

Scott Magdalein, TrainedUp.church, and Hot Rodding Volunteers

Scott Magdalein, TrainedUp.church, and Hot Rodding Volunteers

This is a big day for The Productive Pastor! This episode is sponsored by the good folks at TrainedUp.church. If you are looking for a thoroughly modern way to utilize video in your church training, they’ve built a turn-key solution for you. Make sure to check them out! In today’s episode, we’ve got Scott Magdalein, Founder of TrainedUp on the podcast to talk about his life, why he created TrainedUp and how it can help hot rod your church and ministry.

Front Matter

You Have to Show Up. Every. Day by Zak Slayback 

Why Successful People Spend 10 Hours a Week on “Compound Time.”  by Michael Simmons

My Conversation with Scott Magdalein

    • Scott’s background
    • What local church situation made Scott create TrainedUp
    • The power of consistency in solving small issues.
    • What is TrainedUp
    • What successful churches are doing to be successful in TrainedUp.
    • It’s all about being consistent. Yet again.
    • How Scott stays productive.
    • How self-awareness has changed things.

Make sure to follow Scott on twitter (@scottmagdalein) and on Youtube (I love Boat Fam!)

Back Matter

Are you listening to my daily podcasts on Anchor? It’s a fantastic new medium.

Have you checked out the Productive Pastor Community? It’s an awesome place for ministry leaders to have productivity and time management resources. It’s absolutely free and connects you on Facebook to other folks in the community.

Make sure to subscribe to the Productive Pastor Insider.

Remember to Review and Rate in iTunes. You can do it right here.

Keeping Up With Content Creation | Anchor Episode

Keeping Up With Content Creation | Anchor Episode

I’ve been absolutely FALLING IN LOVE with Anchor.fm these past two weeks. Today, I decided to create a more Productive Pastor style episode for them and to share it here with you. Also, this is a heavy shownotes anchor, so it makes perfect sense to drop it right here.

My Anchor Channel

Pastors are in the content creation business. Think of what we write or create each week. We typically have at least one sermon (if not more) and it might be delivered in several different places. We are also writing letters, articles, blog posts, creating written systems and many other forms of communication. AND, we find ourselves podcasting and being intentionally social online as well. I’d say we have a pretty heavy load of content creation to keep up with.

Keeping Up with Content Creation

Here is how I have learned and shared with others about not just keeping up with content creation, but completely owning it.

Content creation isn’t just a “shoot from the hip” activity. You’ve got to realize there is an executable process to lead to success.

To completely own content creation, you are going to need a few super powers.

  1. Brain Power.
    This is all about recurring action. What can you do to consistently be coming up with new ideas? I’ve found reading to be tremendously helpful. I also swear by my time in the shower, by myself in my pool and taking walks without headphones. Those are the absolute best for me. You’ve got to be a learner above all.
  2. Remembering Power.
    Thinking about new things and connecting dots will be worthless if you don’t have a way to get everything all down. You’ve got to have a way to notate and remember. I rely on two things. My notebook and Evernote. They have both saved me so many times I cannot even count. Write down everything. Come up with a system that helps you with recall. As digital as I am, I have found that my notebook is significantly more helpful and creative. Once I have a project going, I will give it a few pages of space and just come back time and time again to it.
  3. Editing Power.
    Rome wasn’t built in a day and whatever you are working on won’t be great in one pass. Remember, good stuff doesn’t happen in one shot. You need to be consistently sculpting and growing and pruning whatever it is you are working on. It might just mean a couple of passes or it might take a month of work. Typically, the more important, the longer the time.
  4. Community Power.
    Remember, all communication is designed for outward action. It isn’t supposed to stay with you. The medium of delivery and your own interaction with whatever community it is matters tremendously. It has to be designed for them and you need to be interacting.
  5. Curating Power.
    You’ve got to resource people and also realize all of your hard work doesn’t just live once. You need a plan of curation, of learning when and how and why to interact and reseed your old content. We live in the age of content, so people take in old information much easier if it contributes to the larger story of the community.

 

Resources

Anne Samoilov – My Simple Content Creation Method    
I stumbled across the article years ago. It started me thinking very differently about communication and how I utilize it. Plus, it helps you keep up with tons of content creation.

Why You Need a Production Calendar | PP17

Why You Should Keep a Notebook | PP44

Churchless | Carey Niewhof episode 24
Check out the entire episode and the shownotes for so much great content around the idea of engagement.

If you came from Anchor and like this content, I’d love for you to check out Productive Pastor. This is typical of the work I do and I’ve got plenty of listeners who aren’t in ministry that find it helpful.

Do you want to create valuable change? Use better assumptions.

Do you want to create valuable change? Use better assumptions.

People don’t like assumptions. We’ve all heard the joke. It goes something like this.

“You know what happens when you assume…you make and ass out of you and me.”

I have to admit, I probably laughed the first time I heard this.

But I assume things. We all assume things. We walk into situations with our own experience, knowledge and beliefs.

The Power of Assumptions

I want to share with you two assumptions I carry with me everywhere. Whenever I step into any leadership position, whether it is permanent or just a conversation with someone, I assume two things. I call them my “guiding principles”.

1. The best indicator of a future reality is past and current behavior.
2. You or your organization is designed to get exactly the results you are getting.

Before you begin thinking Chad has descended into corporate leadership mumbo jumbo, let me tell you why these two statements are so important to me.

I am a Wesleyan, and more specifically a United Methodist pastor. I come from a faith tradition that lives in the tension of the dramatic power and influence of grace over each persons life and a sense of personal responsibility once grace is encountered. Organizationally, it could be said John Wesley’s (the founder of the Methodist movement) entire revival hinged upon careful examination and a theological commitment to organizational clarity and purpose. It even applied down to individual persons, with the Wesleyan discipleship system (arguably the most influential by-product of the movement) focusing almost entirely upon person examination and purpose.

If you are a person that believes life is divinely called and directed by God, and I am, we need to always be focusing on how clear we are following God’s vision and purpose is our areas of influence.

So let me unpack why these two statements matter to me.

1. The best indicator of a future reality is past and current behavior.
Have you ever stepped into a situation where you know things need to change? It might have been personally or as part of a church or other organization. You need new outcomes in life. This change can be many different things, from personal development or shifting the entire culture of a group of people.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard stories of folks realizing things aren’t the best, and are hoping for a different future, but are unwilling to deal with the present and the past. If situations haven’t been perfect…the chance is they won’t be that much different in the future.

The only way to dramatically change the future is to dramatically change the present.

2. You or your organization is designed to get exactly the results you are getting.
This is the second questions. It usually makes the most sense when people are debating the merits of their current practices. It is never hard to get folks to realize there are problems…what is hard is getting them to own up to how they are responsible for the problems.

Call it blame shifting, lack of awareness or education if you want.

We simply have to take personal responsibility for whatever our current outcomes are. If things are flourishing…something is going on right. If we feel we are our of the rhythm of ministry (or just life personally), out of the presence and power of God…we need to change things.

Sadly, I have talked with to many church leaders who acquiesce to the problems and simply think greater faith and prayer is going to flip around the ministries they are part of. Yes-faith and prayer should be the cornerstone towards what Jesus calls us to do, but we have to join that with responsibility and vision. We have to be willing to own exactly what is going on and to never stop.

One of the the marks of the presence of God is forward motion. Jesus moving us closer towards making each place we live in a better example of what life looks like with Him in control. Closer towards justice and peace. Closer towards people making Jesus decisions and not self decisions.

So think about those two assumptions. I have found a discussion centered around the two statements is an amazing jumpstart towards following the mission of Jesus closer and aligning our own personal and church decisions with what Jesus is calling each of us to do.