Author: Ryan Dunn

Time-saving digital tips for local pastors

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The biggest stressor for most of us when it comes to digital ministry is that the digital parish is not necessarily the campus to which we’ve explicitly been hired or appointed. Rev. Dan Wunderlich delivers valuable time-saving tips and tactics for staying on top of our digital ministries while trying to keep balance with the other demands of ministry.

Dan Wunderlich is pastor at Lakeside United Methodist Church in Florida. He’s the host of the MyCom marketing podcast. One of our sister podcasts with the United Methodist Communications. Also, Dan is the founder of Defining Grace ministries.

Understanding our online behavior with Kelly Price

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In this session of Pastoring in the Digital Parish we hear from Dr. Kelly Price. Dr. Price provides an in-depth perspective on why many of us do the things we do online and how understanding our digital consumer behaviors helps us meet people and form community in digital spaces.

Dr. Kelly Price is associate professor and master of digital program for East Tennessee State University. She presents at conferences on topics relating to consumer behavior. Her research interests include digital behaviors and online teaching.

Who is at your table?

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It’s easy to exist in an echo chamber these days. But the holidays, and Jesus’ story, remind us that beloved community neither begins nor exists in spaces where everyone else is just like us. Beloved community begins when we are intentional about participating in settings where we may not have much in common with some other participants.

Building relationships through branding with Mike Kim

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Mike Kim discusses branding and relationships on Pastoring in the Digital Parish. Mike offers an important way of refocusing how we think about marketing and branding, making them a lot more palatable for those of us wary of business-ifying faith. Mike says that “marketing isn’t about a sale, it’s about  beginning a relationship.”

Mike Kim is a business coach and marketing strategist who specializes in personal branding, product launch strategies, and copywriting. He’s the author of You Are the Brand, a book that is super-relevant to the future of the pastorate, especially as it relates to digital ministry.

Bonus: Fierce Love with Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis

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Jacqui Lewis shares how a fierce love that starts with loving ourselves well will change the world. We are fully who we are–fully human–when we realize that we belong to each other. Everyone’s success depends on everyone’s success. So we are called to love one another as we love ourselves.

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis is a public theologian and the senior minister at the multicultural Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan. She’s appeared on CBS, CNN, PBS, ABC and more. She’s written several books, including the just-released Fierce Love–which is a kind of manifesto for offering a healing antidote to our divided culture.

Rest for the always-on minister

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Licensed social worker and minister, Lindsay Geist, shares practices of rest and healthy boundaries for digital ministers.

One of the possible pitfalls or traps of ministering in a digital parish is that our field of ministry is always active. It’s always on and accessible. By extension, those of us engaged in digital ministry can feel like we need to always be on and accessible… and working weird hours… and responding to everything immediately… and throwing a lot of our personal life into public space.

Rev. Lindsay Geist, MDiv, MSW, LCSW is the Church Transition & Clinical Resource Specialist providing mental health resource support for clergy and congregations in the North Georgia Conference. Lindsay is a Deacon in Full Connection in the North Georgia conference as well as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW).

Reconstructing burned out faith with Brian Zahnd

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We all have questions about faith. Sometimes those questions are so burning that they start a proverbial fire that threatens to burn our whole system of belief down. Brian Zahnd joins the podcast to share about the ways God is revealed through both the fire and the daily workings of life.

Brian Zahnd is the founder and lead pastor of Word of Life Church, a non-denominational Christian congregation in Saint Joseph, Missouri. Brian and his wife, Peri, founded the church in 1981. Brian is probably more widely known as the author of several books, including, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, Water to Wine, A Farewell To Mars, Beauty Will Save the World, and his most recent work, as of this recording, is When Everything’s on Fire. This book helps our modern, skeptical minds move from deconstructing belief to reconstructing faith.

Understanding and getting started on Twitch

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In this session of Pastoring in the Digital Parish, we’re talking Twitch. Have you heard of this platform? Curious about whether or not a livestreaming platform like Twitch has relevance for your ministry? Are you curious about how to get started and build a following on Twitch?

Russel Dornisch and David Petty from CrossFire: Faith+Gaming talk us through the uses of Twitch and how we can get started streaming. They also share the story of CrossFire–an online faith-based community that aims to break down the barriers many gamers face: social isolation, disconnection, and stigma.

Pastoring in the Digital Parish is your online class for answering questions like this and finding community for ministry in the digital space.

Hope when life gets messy with Jake Owensby

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What is God doing when bad things happen? In this episode, we discuss this question and the place of hope in the midst of our messy lives with Bishop Jake Owensby.

Hope is not merely wishful thinking. Hope digs deeper and moves us in a way that wishful thinking cannot. There is hope because we act in hope. And we’ll see that because there is hope, there is a movement of the Divine.

Jake Owensby is the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Western Louisiana. Author of five books on everyday spirituality, a speaker, and a retreat leader, Jake focuses on helping people discover meaning and purpose in their own lives. His most recent book is Looking for God in Messy Places.