Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 In today's episode, we discuss seven reasons to start a church blog in 2021 while most church leaders would like to start a blog. Very few actually do it. That's a shame because when done right blogging is one of the easiest ways to reach people with the gospel. Join us. As we talk through the benefits of consistently creating content for a church blog, we hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow.
Speaker 1 00:00:38 You're listening to the retried podcast. The show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help you your church see more visitors and grow
Speaker 0 00:01:06 To the reach, right podcast episode number 28. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost. He and Hyatt. Hey, what's up? Hey, not too much. And how you doing man? Doing well yourself? Not doing good here. Doing good. Looking forward to our topic here today. We're talking about seven reasons to start a church blog in 2021. Um, I think this is something that is really important. Uh, it is one of the biggest untapped resources and untapped opportunities. I think that churches have, uh, that I think very few of them actually take advantage of. I dunno, what's your experience? Do most churches probably don't blog right now. Do they know? And they don't not enough. Do they all say they want to, but they don't. Yeah, I don't. I've never seen a stat on this specifically, but, uh, anecdotally I would say it's less than 10% of churches blog.
Speaker 0 00:01:59 I think that you put it well, that the number of people that say they want to blog is very different from the number of people that actually blog. Those are two very different things, because I think we all know in theory, that blogging is a good idea and I don't even think it's, it's partly the how to like the, the technical part of it is a little bit of a challenge. Uh, but I think the biggest challenge obviously with blogging is that it takes time and people, we always encourage people. It takes work exactly. We encourage people to, to count the cost before they do it. And that's not what this episode is about. Our hope today is to convince someone out there, uh, uh, or maybe many people out there in our audience that, uh, maybe they need to take this seriously because I think it is one of the biggest opportunities I know for, uh, the journey church that I pastored most recently. Uh, this was one of our secret sauces that we really need. Uh, it led to a ton of growth at our church. Um, and it was something that we did that, uh, built a lot of traffic, uh, and we'll kind of get into some of the reasons why and why it was so important, but, um, you know, we went from a very small church to a medium sized church, uh, and saw tons of visitors and we can track a lot of that back to our blogging, our blogging strategy there.
Speaker 2 00:03:15 Yeah, no, you guys did a good job of it. I remember following that blog a bit, so yeah,
Speaker 0 00:03:20 Yeah, no, it was good stuff. So anyway, well, let's kick it off here. I'll start off with number one. Uh, the first reason why I think churches need to start a blog in 2021, is it helps you to flesh out ideas. Um, I know for me as a pastor, that there are there's there's ideas that like sometimes we tend to get a little bit stagnant and I think I get us, you get into the word. Everybody has had dry times in the word, and sometimes it gets hard to, to come up with something new and fresh things. And I think, um, it's not just blogging per se, but just writing in general. I think it really is a healthy habit. You ask anybody who's a journaler, uh, you know, someone who regularly writes in a journal that it helps them to kind of flesh out those ideas and helps them to grow.
Speaker 0 00:04:02 And I think blogging really helped. It forces you to regularly put out something that is publishing worthy, you know, something that's worthy of being out there that you're okay with everybody reading and really to do that. It makes you really think about stuff and flush out ideas that you, maybe your mind would naturally do that just when you're sitting there and not writing. So I have found for me, and I think most pastors will find this as that regularly and having a commitment to blogging. What it did is it made me come up with new ideas, new thoughts, and kind of flesh those out a little bit and think through them more and spend time with it. Um, there's something about when you're writing or typing or writing with a pen, whatever it would be when you're putting it on to paper, that it just makes you process it differently and makes you remember it more than just thinking about it.
Speaker 2 00:04:50 Yeah. Yeah. That's the same reason you said earlier that, uh, that, you know, we often in ministry recommend, or pastors recommended you journal during your devotional time when you, when you write it down, it solidifies it and it helps you remember it more. And let me ask you this, when you were doing it, did it help your sermons as a pastor? Do you think it helped you like yeah. Add in new maybe things that you didn't think of when you were just writing your, your sermon out?
Speaker 0 00:05:16 Yeah, I think it's, it's another chance for me to flesh that stuff out. So I think it expanded me mentally. Like it helped me to, to be a better thinker when I thought through different processes and I thought through different spiritual topics, writing them ahead of time, it helps me, it helped me be more efficient at sermon writing. I would say is that my, my, I think it's one of those things that the more you do it, the more quickly those ideas kind of come to you and illustrations come to you, it's just kind of like any other habit, you know, you're a big camp, gladiator guy. I know you work out all the time. And, uh, if I were to do the workouts, I remember you sent me some workouts to do. And I just kind of laughed when I read the different workouts that you said, like, when I saw how much running and weightlifting was involved, it was, it was humorous to me because the idea of doing that right now is like, it's, it's so far out there, but for you, it's become almost commonplace because you have that routine and you're regularly doing those workouts and now I'll work out as, I mean, that would be like the feet of a year for me to complete one of those workouts where you do it four times a week.
Speaker 0 00:06:18 So same thing with blocking though, is that it, it takes those, it takes weekly sermons that, that using that muscle, the more I exercise it, the same muscle that I use to write sermons, uh, it helps me to flesh out those ideas. And yeah, I think using that muscle makes, makes you, um, helps you to flush that kind of stuff out, which I think actually leads us pretty well to number two, if you want to go ahead and tackle that it's right in that same vein number two,
Speaker 2 00:06:41 Who is that? It makes you a better communicator, you know? And I think every pastor is interested in that. And I think any, any person, even if you're not a pastor, but if you're just in ministry ministry in general or whatever, everyone wants to be able to communicate better. And at first notion you might think, well, why because you're writing and everything, how does that have to do with communicating? But I think kind of to, to the point of, uh, the first item, it makes you think creatively, it makes you, it makes you resear. I know. So I'll say this when we started blogging it retried, I begrudgingly, I started it, right. Guy, hadn't done it before you had more experience with it. And I was kind of like, Oh gosh, how's this going to help me Thomas and all of that. And I started doing it, but you know, it, it makes you actually, it increases your vocabulary.
Speaker 2 00:07:24 Uh, you know, you're, you're researching specific key words and those things, we'll talk a little bit more about that as keywords help with a blog and SEO and all that. But basically, uh, yeah, it did make me a better communicator. I was, I was, uh, when you're writing, when it, because often I think that we used to write a lot more back in the day, right. People don't write as much now they're typing on keyboards most clear or their phones. But, uh, I think when you're writing those things out and everything, it's, it's, it helps you think in a certain way that when you start speaking it, uh, it actually helps you communicate. So I agree. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:07:59 So you said something interesting there, you said that like, um, like it was, seemed like it was almost eyeopening to think of it for you that this is a form of communication. Of course, like writing is like the, it's a very early form of communication. That's been around for thousands of years that I think people, a lot of times we discredit it. We feel like, um, that a sermon that we actually speak and is delivered, uh, that way is, is more, is more valuable than, than written the written word. But I don't know, like, I don't even think you could make that case from the Bible. Like if you, I, I know it talks a lot about, about sermons and things that Jesus said, and that's, that's great. I think that, um, obviously the things Jesus said are very important and foundational to us, but you have to remember that all of this was the whole new Testament after the gospels. It's, it's all letters there.
Speaker 2 00:08:49 I was going to say, think of the apostle Paul. Yeah. That's
Speaker 0 00:08:53 And that's what is given to us here now. So that is Paul was blogging to the entire world basically. And he was getting these messages out there and praise God that they were, they were preserved for thousands of years and we still have them. But absolutely I think the written communication, um, I think I could even make a case that it is more important than verbal communication when it comes to communicating the gospel and the message of Jesus Christ. I think in scripture, you could make a case that that was not to take away from the importance of delivering actual sermons out of your mouth. But I think written communication is just as important to that. So, yeah, I think that though, I think that they do work hand in hand that that is a form of communication. Um, what you do on Sundays in service as a form of communication.
Speaker 0 00:09:41 And I think both of them make you better at the other one. And they really work together, hand in hand, again, back to that, working the muscle analogy. I think that's a perfect fit that the more you do it, the better you are at speaking, these kinds of things, that's it. That's good. Why don't you tackle three? Yep. We'll do number three because it gives people a place to use their gifts. Uh, and this is one that's missed a lot. Um, so when we started our blog at the journey, um, what we did was we, we built a team around it. Um, so at first it was our masters. Uh, but then I feel like within churches, we, we give a lot of, um, a lot the encouragement and a lot of places to serve that those that can communicate, uh, orally. They can, they can give a sermon, they can get up there on a stage and preach, and we really hold that in high regard.
Speaker 0 00:10:28 But within most churches, you probably have people that just as many, if not more people that are fantastic written communicators that are great at that kind of a skill set. And I have found that there is a giant vacuum that we almost just miss people that have that kind of a skillset. And if we really think that written communication is just as important as verbal communication, when it comes to sharing the gospel, we're missing at least half of that opportunity when we don't give people the ability to get in there and write. So what we did at the journey is we built a team around this. There are all kinds of people that told me, Hey, I can't do this, but I can write. And if you ever have a need for writing, then I'd love to help with that. And so we built a team around it and if they took a lot of Shepard and just like you would give someone good feedback, if someone preached a sermon for you, from someone from your church on a Sunday, well, the same thing is needed for written communication, but we built a team around this and it gave these people a great place to jump in, to use their gifts.
Speaker 0 00:11:28 And what was really neat is that it gave them a place to like people that I couldn't have reached. We're very interested in hearing what members of our church who were writing on the blog team, that they had family members that maybe didn't even know Jesus, that would read that that would never have listened to one of my sermons, right. That they'd be, they'd be willing to read someone's posts, but coming to church on a Sunday and listening to me speak that a totally different thing there. So, but gospel got the gospel to people that I couldn't have reached otherwise because it helped us to build a team around that and use people's gifts. So,
Speaker 2 00:12:06 Yeah, I think we got to remember that it's a profession now, there's, you know, there's people that did their careers blogging. Uh, so matter of fact, I know and play tennis with a guy in my neighborhood who he blogs for the NFL, that's his job. Really. He got laid off from a big, big company anyway, tech company. And, uh, but he would already was had experience with blogging and everything and, and, uh, and lo and behold, he's hired by the NFL, uh, to, uh, to blog for them. And he loves it. Uh, so that's his job. So to, you know, talking about using their gifts, people have this gift now and even do do it as a profession.
Speaker 0 00:12:43 Imagine going back to thinking of yourself as a kid and saying, Hey, I have a job offer for you. You can sit on your computer, wearing whatever you want and write about football. Like what a, what a dream job that would be for a lot of people. But, you know, I think the same thing goes for, uh, for within churches. Like what a, what a dream job. There's lots of people I think out there within your church, that that would be a dream place of ministry for them. They don't feel like they fit in to the worship team. They probably aren't ready to get on stage and do something, uh, to, to preach. Maybe they're not the right people to run your soundboard or do other things, but they can write. And it's a great way for people to use their gifts. And it is, I, I think we do ourselves a disservice and, um, miss the value of this gift and we need to enable people to do it. So we'll leave it at that for number three.
Speaker 2 00:13:31 Yeah. I'll go with a four here. And that's what I briefly mentioned when we were going over a 0.2 there, but that it increases your SEO performance, uh, for people that are not familiar with what that term is, is search engine optimization basically means how you rank with Google and the search engines and primarily Google. So we need to be concerned about now. Um, but, uh, uh, who almost have the monopoly on it, but, uh, but yeah, uh, so, uh, it really does help. Google loves and the search engines love when they see a blog, uh, that is attached to a website and are active blog that has good continents being updated regularly with good key words. And I'll let you expand upon that a little bit more, as I know, you're very knowledgeable in that and we've, we've done a lot of this for reach, right. Uh, as well. Um, but, uh, but yeah, who doesn't want to become more visible when people are looking for churches in your area, a blog will help that.
Speaker 0 00:14:26 Yeah, absolutely. No, you're, you're definitely right. Um, I think that so many people miss, like the crux of what search engine optimization is about, um, there is a small part of it, maybe 5% of search engine performance is you getting the technical part, right. And you can't miss that. Like, so you have to make sure you're, you're doing all the technical things, right? Your load times are really on the side and that you don't have errors that are in the site. There that's all very important. I don't want to dismiss that, but 95% of the work with search engine is creating good content. Yeah. Primary way that we create good content for search engines has to be written content. Uh, so there's plenty of value in video content. There's some value in audio content of your sermons, but when it comes to content that ranks well on search engines, uh, written content is King and having good long form content tent is something that is really important.
Speaker 0 00:15:28 Um, so, um, um, so just to give you some example on what this looked like for us at the journey, we started a blog, we were invisible. Um, we basically started a new website when I took this church here. Uh, we had no presence in the city, um, and we were not able very large church. We had 150 200 people showing up on a Sunday. By the time I left left, we ranked number one in most categories in our store, the city of Madison, Wisconsin, when you looked for churches in that city at the time that I left there. And a lot of that, I trace back to what we did by creating lots of, lots of condoms. Uh, so, um, this is something that you was when I talked about the secret sauce, what would happen. And I think what a lot of people miss is they think that search engine optimization is about getting people on the homepage of my website.
Speaker 0 00:16:16 And that's great, but I think that as many people are searching for churches near me, there are infinitely more topics that people are searching for around things that you could be blogging on. So I think churches should be blogging about what's happening in their city. They should be blogging about spiritual topics. They could possibly, um, maybe there's a case to be made for blogging about some political topics. Um, not, not getting too deep into, I don't think that there's a place. I think churches need to be cautious with that, but there are certain things that are right and wrong that need to be talked about out there politically. Um, you know, you want to not alienate people with your content, but just producing content that is civic minded or theologically minded. There is no shorter. Sometimes people will think, Oh, I don't even know what, how, how can you keep writing about things every single week?
Speaker 0 00:17:04 Yeah. The more you do it, the more you realize that there are infinite topics that you can talk about just like on this podcast is that we don't have a hard time coming up with things that we're going to talk about for episodes here. You know, we spend some time fleshing out what the conversation will be around, but the topics just come to their cells because the more you do it, the more we'll have, um, you just have that kind of content out there. So, um, it, it plays a huge part in SEO. And I think search engine optimization is another overlooked outreach channel that churches miss a lot of times, but so many visitors come to almost every visitor is searching for churches. If it's not a personal invite, they're searching online for churches and where you rank, it plays a huge part of that. Our tiny little church would see 15, 20 visitors in a weekend and had a ton of momentum that this blogging, it just kind of snowballs, and it really helps you with your search engine performance. So I think that's a huge part of it.
Speaker 2 00:17:59 Yeah. Last thing I'll add to that point, uh, well said with all of that, but is that, you know, we talked about, you know, did it takes work to blog, but I think most pastors after knowing that it'll make you more visible when people are doing searches, that makes it worth the work, uh, as well. And I'll tell you why, because, you know, as you know, I communicate with pastors day in and day out and more of them now compared to ever understand the importance of being visible, online and ranking. Well, whereas you and I both know about, you know, uh, four years ago, maybe even three to four years ago, you know, that, that wasn't really on top of mind. Uh, and now most pastors understand that that's really vital, uh, to be competitive there. If that's the, I know we don't like to use that word, but you do, you do want to be visible, uh, and, and come up, uh, before other churches, even sometimes.
Speaker 0 00:18:49 Yeah. I think that's a tricky one, right? Because search engine search engine optimization is by nature competitive, right? Because someone goes down for you to go up. Uh, so it's something, but I think this is another thing is that when you blog, it makes the focus of your competition. You're not competing against other churches when you're just trying to get your homepage to rank before first Baptist or first presbyter or whatever it is, what you're competing with is you're competing with ideas, right? So if you are blogging on marriage health, uh, and keys to a, to a better marriage in 2021, let's say that your that's your topic. Well, then you're probably not competing with churches on that. You're competing with, uh, self-help books. Uh, you're competing with, uh, people that, um, maybe divorce attorneys that are writing that kind of content to try and drum up business for themselves.
Speaker 0 00:19:41 You're competing with people that have an alternative worldview. In most cases, if you get outside of just the churches near me competition, you're really going for other topics, which I think there will be infinite number of topics that you can cover. And there are people that are writing about those topics from an outside of the Christian worldview there. So that's who we're really competing with when we're, when we're blogging. I would say that's it well said. Cool. Yeah, that's good. A number five, let me hit that. Um, one of the great things about blogging is number five, it gives your members content to share, uh, so it gives them something that they can put out there. And I think this is really important because, um, everything that I'm seeing seems to show that the people's courage to give a, a personal invite to church is going down all the time, right?
Speaker 0 00:20:26 Like, so it's, I found in my ministry that it's something that has become harder and harder for people to do. Um, I think that that has to do with the, the change in our culture that, you know, picking up a phone and calling someone on the phone is harder for young people to do than it was going to say something, just speaking, something that might make someone else. Yeah. It's become, it's become harder and harder in our culture. And there's all kinds of reasons for that. We don't need to dissect that. But what I think blogging does is it gives members something that they probably would be willing to share, maybe not give a personal invite to somebody, but it gives them something that they'd be willing to put out there on social media channels. Uh, and it gives people basically a, a look back into the church that they're a part of and what's happening in their lives at that church there. So, yeah, I think that that giving people, uh, some content for them to share, it really is an important part of the blogging strategy. What do you have to add to that?
Speaker 2 00:21:24 No, I think, you know, we're always trying to equip our members to be able to of course, share the gospel and, uh, you know, verbally through acts of love, kindness, service, all of that good stuff. But, uh, I think you, one of the things you hit on the head is that it makes it a little easier for someone to maybe evangelize, you know, or to, to invite, or just to, just to make that personal touch to say, Hey, Hey, I thought this topic might resonate with you here. Here's my church has a blog and it's a little easier to do that and to sometimes say, Hey, let's, uh, I want to have coffee to tell you why you need Jesus. Um, so, uh, so yeah, might be a good kind of entry way into getting to know someone or getting them closer to, to, uh, you know, maybe show up at your church on a Sunday.
Speaker 0 00:22:09 Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a great foot in the door for lots of people, which actually brings us to number six. I think I'll let you go ahead and tackle that one.
Speaker 2 00:22:16 Yeah. And that's that it gives you another Avenue to preach the gospel. Um, so, and, and, and like we just said, a member can share, obviously, if, if you're, let's just say, as a pastor, you're blogging, a member can share that, like we just said, there may be a little less apprehensive to share that than to just, you know, verbally kind of go preach part of your sermon to someone that doesn't follow God in their lives. But, uh, so that, but I think as a pastor, a ministry leader, um, you know, it is another Avenue to, to get the gospel out there. We're looking for, I mean, there's so many different avenues to do that, right. We know now it's not just about, you know, I don't talk to too many churches that go door to door anymore, uh, to, uh, to knock on the door and nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2 00:23:03 If you do, uh, you, you got some major guts these days, especially with everything going on, but, uh, but you know, that used to be the main method, right. You know, church would go door to door or something like that, or they'd go caroling around Christmas time or something. And now, now there's so many there's social media, there's this, but blog is one extra way to do it. And it's kind of a, it's a way where you have a little bit more control over it, too. Right. So if you preach, if you're sharing the gospel and, you know, cause people can comment on blogs, um, but you can control what actually shows up on your blog, the common I'm like, you know, on social media, you have a little less control over that and people can share some things you maybe wish they didn't and it gets out there. And whereas a blog can be moderated. So it's kind of like a controlled, safe way to share the gospel. Maybe you put it that way. I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:23:52 Yeah. So that's a good point. Um, and encouraged with everybody is we do really encourage content moderation. Uh, so do not make sure your bowl, your comments are, are you have control over that because you will get junk on there and you'll get people linking to try to put port and site links and all that kind of stuff happens. We delete dozens of those every day here in our reach, right. Blogs. So I know that, you know, that stuff just happens. That's part of it. But yeah, I think that it, I think the main thing is that there's people that you could never reach in the, in the walls of your building that will read a blog post because they'll see it cause a friend shared it because it'll show up on their social media feed because they'll type a search on some kind of a question that relates to it and your content will pop up.
Speaker 0 00:24:39 Um, I think the, the, your ability to reach people with the gospel, uh, your ability to preach to an unchurched audience is highest on a blog platform, much, much higher than what happens on a Sunday morning, because on any given Sunday, there might be a two, 3% of your church that hasn't had a, hasn't heard the gospel before, or hasn't made a decision to follow Jesus. Whereas with blog posts, I would guess that it's much, much higher, uh, because these topics can, especially if you have a broad range of topics, especially like civic minded and community minded topics about your city. I think that's really kind of the, one of the gold standards there. I think that you have a great chance to reach people that have never heard the gospel before, or don't have a relationship with Jesus that you wouldn't on a Sunday morning.
Speaker 0 00:25:24 They're so very valuable in that way. Tackle the last point. Yeah, this one's big for me. Um, so, uh, the reason why you need a blog in 2021 is because it lets you communicate 24, seven for years to come. Um, so this is going to sound kind of strange, but I I've preached to good size audiences before, you know, maybe a thousand, 2000 people. I've never pastored a mega church or anything like that, but I've talked to groups that size before. Uh, but the message that I have created that has reached the most people, uh, is one called four reasons. You should never share that post that says, share this. If you love Jesus, I wrote this post. Uh, you got, you all see those kinds of posts before, right? Like everybody has seen that where it's, you know, if you don't do this, then you know, you're not my friend.
Speaker 0 00:26:15 I love Jesus or whatever, or you're not my friend. And so you can search for it. If you put a, it shows up usually first on most searches of something in that vein, um, to this day. But so listen to this hundreds of thousands of people have read that post since I wrote it four, five, six years ago, I guess now, so hundreds of thousands of people have been reached with that. I would say it was mostly a spiritual teaching because it takes that statement and it goes to the Bible about reasons why we shouldn't share those kinds of posts because they're manipulative. And it turns people off to the guys, all kinds of reasons for it. But that is the, like as much as I would like it to be a different topic. That's the greatest message of my life so far is that you shouldn't share that post that says share this if you love Jesus, because that's the one that's reached the most people.
Speaker 0 00:27:06 So here's the point is that, did I know when I wrote that, that hundreds of thousands of people would read that post there and that it would, you know, it would presumably has tons of comments on it, but it would make people think differently about that. I had no idea. I thought it might be something interesting. I thought my church might appreciate it. Maybe a few people around there would hear it too. Maybe they'd share it with a few friends. That was kind of my hope. I never thought that it would do all the things we're talking about, where it would show up on search engines. And so people in other countries and people in Nigeria are reading this post and maybe making little behavior changes and maybe wondering, Hey, maybe I shouldn't share this post. And it's been something that, uh, you can never, when you create a blog post, you kind of learn sometimes what's going to work and what isn't, but there are posts out there that will, like we said, they'll communicate the gospel.
Speaker 0 00:27:56 They'll let you communicate 24 seven around the globe for years and years and years and years, that post has only grown. It's not kind of waned in its presence out there. It continues to grow. Um, I don't even have, uh, ownership over the site that it's on anymore, but it's still a post that's on that site because I'm not at that church anymore. And they have control over it and God bless them. I'm happy about that, but it's kind of strange to think about it, but there is great power in this. And so, uh, your, your legacy might be a very well, could be more about what you blog than what you preach. If you're pastoring and average size church in this country, which is 60, 70 people, or so your potential to reach a broad audience is infinitely higher on a blog than it is on Sunday mornings, uh, in a small town, especially, or in a smaller church. So thoughts on that,
Speaker 2 00:28:44 I just have this picture in my head of your house, getting bigger in heaven, uh, by the, by the moment, every time someone, every single time someone accesses that blog and reads it. But no, I mean, do you think about that though? It's something that's constantly bearing fruit for you and it's something it's, you could feel good about that, that, Hey, listen, you know, I may have not shared the gospel with someone today, but I, but my blog did and I shared it back then. So, uh, I just think it's kind of funny, but it's also a really cool thing. Uh, and so no, I, I think that that's a good last point to end on in it to encourage pastors is that this is another reason why it's worth doing, because it is something that will communicate your message and, and obviously churches messages, Jesus, and I, you said there's different topics, civic topics, other things we can do.
Speaker 2 00:29:31 But all of that we know usually is going to steer people back to what our main mission is and that's leading people to the Lord. And so I think that that's a really, really cool way to, to of it and makes it all worthwhile when you know that this will be out there for years to come, uh, and, uh, and producing fruit for you. So, you know, when you go to heaven and you're before the Lord, Thomas, I bet, you know, it's going to talk about all those people that you invited, but he said, but this one here was really the one that pleased me. I'm kidding.
Speaker 0 00:30:00 Here. Here are your crowns. Yeah, no, I don't. I don't, uh, I don't do it for that purpose. Obviously. There was no financial incentive in us. We don't, I don't think churches should ever monetize their blogs. I think their content should be free and there for people, I don't encourage anything like that, but I think if you want to reach an audience with, um, with, you know, maybe that wasn't a good post for introducing people to Jesus for the first time. Uh, but I think it probably spared a lot of people from, uh, hopefully it, it changed people's hearts and it spared people from, uh, turning people off towards the gospel because they see Christians sharing this kind of junk that says, God will love you if you share it. And they'll hate you if you don't. Uh, so you lose your house tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 0 00:30:46 Right. So, yeah. So do it guys. That's our encouragement to our audience. I think that, uh, like we said, at the beginning, count the cost, know that this will take, um, work blogging, uh, things that are worthy of being blogged. It takes hours a week, probably for people to create this kind of content and might take building a team. But I think the rewards are out there and there it's one of those, it's one of those low hanging fruit things that, um, right there, it's an easy thing to reach out and grab and it could make an enormous impact. So I hope that, uh, hope that inspires someone out there to, to write some, write some blog posts and start doing it. One of the things to leave you with is that this is something that can't be done a couple of times and then expect there to be fruit immediately, because the way this works is that in the beginning, uh, it starts off very slowly.
Speaker 0 00:31:38 You'll have your members maybe take a look at it and then you'll be kind of discouraged and you'll look at it like why did only five people from our church read this? I can't believe that they would only, you know, like most of our churches even doing this, why do I do this? Um, it's something that pays off over time, but you have to be consistent with it. So, um, that's part of the cost is don't think I'm going to write three blog posts, let them sit. And then we're going to start to see these kinds of results. It's something that I would recommend a minimum of weekly. Uh, so if you're going to start a blog, I think not, maybe not just, you maybe, maybe get four people from your church, you and three others that commit to every fourth week, you're going to get out there and write a blog post, and you're going to do that for the next a year at Lake.
Speaker 0 00:32:21 So you're going to do that. I think after a year's time, you still probably won't have a ton of results. If we had stopped after a year, we'd see a little bit of fruit, but we would never have seen the kind of content that we have. Uh, the kind of the results that we see now, I guess. So, so count the cost plan on doing it consistently, but go for it. It's low hanging fruit. And I think it's a great way to reach people with the gospel, anything to close with you. No, no, I think that's a good thing to close with and to encourage pastors with. So, um, no, we hope this, uh, helped inspire, uh, some pastors to get on this right away. Yep. That's it? That's it. Well, if you're inspired or if it's been a helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review, subscribe like this podcast, wherever you're watching it, if you're on YouTube, thanks for watching there hit the like button. That means a lot to us there. Uh, let us know in the comments, wherever you be listening or watching this, any other topics that you are looking for, or want to hear more from the reach, right. Family here. We'd love to share what you're looking for. So, uh, get back to us on that. Uh, and we'll catch you guys next week. So yeah,
Speaker 1 00:33:25 <inaudible> thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online at <inaudible> studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week. <inaudible>.
