Episode Notes:
In this week's episode of The Ministry Growth Show, we are starting a new series where we'll be sharing our thoughts and insights on all things marketing and storytelling for the ministry space. This will be a 13-episode series where we'll go in-depth and share how we approach messaging, strategy, brand development, design, storytelling, and all things marketing. If you've ever wondered how we view brand and storytelling, you won't want to miss this series.
Episode Transcript:
you're listening to the ministry growth show brought to you by Reliant Creative, the Creative Agency for gospel centered ministries. Find out more at Reliant Creative dot org. Welcome to the ministry growth Show, a podcast dedicated to helping churches and ministries grow and make more effective impact for the Kingdom of God in an ever changing digital world, whether you're building and growing a gospel center ministry or leading a church, if you want insight into the strategies, struggles, challenges and successes of other ministry leaders, you've come to the right place.
Welcome back to the ministry Growth show today on the show and for the next handful of episodes, we're gonna be doing things a little bit differently in the past, we've always interviewed ministry leaders on the show, sharing their insights, expertise and experiences over the course of the next couple of weeks.
Instead of hearing how other ministries think through process and strategize on things like strategy, fundraising, organizational development, and brand development. I want to be sharing my thoughts on these popular marketing and storytelling subjects.
We're 70 something episodes into this show and I feel it's time to share with you how we think through all of these things as a digital agency. In today's episode, I'm going to give you an overview and then in the following episodes, I'll dive down deep into things like strategy messaging, brand identity and visual storytelling.
If you listen to our podcast for any extended period of time, you'll notice that we interject or share our thoughts in the show every once in a while. But for the most part we try to allow our guests to share their thoughts and expertise on the topics that we discuss.
If you've ever wondered how we think about the topics that we discuss with our guests. This series is hopefully going to answer those questions. So for today, let's give some context and background and provide an overview for the episodes to follow.
To start things off. I want to share our purpose statement as an organization because that's going to give clarity and inform everything that we do as an organization. Our purpose statement is to help the church testify of all that God has done.
Pretty simple, pretty straightforward, but it's what we believe as an organization. We believe that communicating the stories of how God is working, how he's rescuing and redeeming how he's saving and healing and restoring humanity back to himself.
That sharing those stories will first serve to bring him glory and second serve to inspire the church and mobilize her around what God is already doing. We believe that God is already at work wherever we go, that he's always gone before his people.
We believe he's at work through the churches, the ministries, the missionaries that he's called and in that and through that work, incredible stories exist. Stories that if told well, would inspire the church to say, we want to get behind what we see God doing in this location or in this part of the world that can be right here at home in my local church context or that can be to the farthest reaches of the world because we know that he is at work in every corner of the world in some way or another.
We believe that storytelling has power, it has the power to engage with people and to move them to action. We also believe that generally the church, especially in the West, does a poor job sharing of what God is doing, that's not a bash on the church, she's just not been trained and equipped to tell his story as well.
But just imagine for a moment, what might be possible if we if we told stories better, what might happen if the church was emotionally engaged and inspired regularly with the stories of how God is moving and working globally.
This is the question we've set out to answer as a ministry, we believe storytelling is powerful, so much so that we try to interweave storytelling into everything that we do when we create messaging structures or develop organizational strategy, we use storytelling structures when we create websites and marketing campaigns, we use storytelling structures when we create films, we use storytelling structures so that those films engage and relate to people across cultures.
We do all of this because we believe storytelling is far more powerful to engage and inspire people than data, statistics and strategy, communication. We believe that storytelling has the power to move people.
We believe that great brands are built on great storytelling. We have set out to help ministries build and develop great brands that people want to be a part of brands, that people want to advocate for brands, that people can attach themselves to with loyalty because they share the same beliefs and values.
We believe that the stories we tell when told well can carry those brand beliefs and help our audiences attach themselves to our brands. We also believe that God is serious about stories. We believe he loves stories.
He has chosen to speak to us primarily through his word, which is a collection of stories in the stories he told us in the scriptures. He chose to speak to us primarily through a single storytelling structure that relates to all people across all cultures at all times.
And we believe that if we tell stories with structures that relate and inspire the audiences of those stories will be engaged and will be inspired to take action to invest with their time, their talents and their skills.
Were not simply arguing for storytelling, were arguing for a specific type of storytelling that relates to all people across our culture. We're arguing for a storytelling system that allows a brand to communicate what they believe, the type of storytelling that carries a ministries brand beliefs and delivers those beliefs to their audience.
And we're arguing for this because it truly works and that's the time and it's time that ministries started sharing what God is doing more regularly with greater thought and strategy and with purpose.
The exciting thing is not only is this applicable in a marketing and advertising context. The story structure we use has ramifications for sharing their testimony as well. The simple conclusion is that we have a story structure that works one of the that one that is template id so we can plug our stories into the model and start telling better stories more often.
We'll talk about more what that structure is in in later episodes dedicated to that topic. Later in this series, over the next couple of weeks, I'll be sharing our processes and strategy for every service that we offer as a digital agency.
I'll be sharing our marketing philosophy, but more than anything else, I'll be advocating for the use of better storytelling in the church. Stay tuned. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ministry Growth show.
If you enjoyed it, we'd appreciate it if you rate and review us on the Itunes store and make sure you subscribe. So you never miss an episode. If you have a story to share with other ministry directors and pastors or know someone who would be an incredible guest on the ministry growth show, let us know we love connecting with ministry executives and sharing their wisdom and insight with our audience.
Just send us an email at info at reliant Creative dot org. And lastly, if you need help telling your ministry story, we would love to share how we can help in our process. Check out Reliant Creative at Reliant Creative dot org.
See you next time.