Welcome back to the Priority Pastor blog post. I’d like to highlight for you some of the podcasts I listen to that I think are worth checking out, especially if you are in ministry, though they’re not all ministry podcasts.
Overall, I subscribe to 33 different podcasts. Some I listen to every single new episode and some I just selectively listen to based on the topic. Others I save for road trips because they’re so good to listen to on the highway and they help the time fly by. I’ve got a selection of marketing, ministry and news-related podcasts, as well as more general interest kind of podcasts.
The first one I want to highlight is one that I’m relatively new to listening to, which is the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast. I’ve been very impressed with this podcast. Craig is from Life Church.TV and is also a speaker at the Global Leadership Summit. The content on this podcast is really leadership focused, whether ministry or otherwise. What I like about this podcast is the episodes are on average 20 minutes long, but they’re just jam packed with content. In fact, I will often take notes, which I rarely do on podcasts, but I often take notes with Craig’s and will often download his show notes and handouts with that because the content is just so good.
I listened to an older episode the other day on innovation and came across a concept that’s been haunting me. The idea that dreamers have ideas, but innovators take action. As someone who likes to generate ideas and would in many ways be a dreamer, I need to remind myself to always take action and not just be content with generating and thinking about ideas. There is a time to actually do something. That’s just one of Craig’s recent podcasts.
Another ministry podcast I listen to is Unstuck Church Podcast with Tony Morgan, which is about general church growth and church health issues. Some of the episodes are just outstanding. One of the recent ones I listened to was an interview with Nona Jones who is a pastor with her husband and is also Facebook’s ambassador or whatever for faith-based ministries, so she has a lot to say. She’s written a book called “From Social Media to Social Ministry” that is definitely worth reading.
In the same episode, Tony also interviews Jeff Brodie from Connexus Church in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. It was just so encouraging to see what this church has done over the years technology-wise and how they’re rolling with the changes due to COVID-19. Even though they’re a larger church and are well-established in the online world, it’s just very hope giving to see what they’re doing and in what they’re learning. So the Unstuck Church Podcast is another one that I faithfully listened to from a ministry standpoint.
One that is kind of interesting that in some ways straddles the ministry and the marketing world is Think Marketing Podcast. It’s about a video marketing company. Think media and marketing and what’s interesting is they’re talking from a purely marketing standpoint, but they come from a faith-based background. The people who work at Think Marketing worked in churches. That’s where they kind of cut their teeth on working with media and video, so they will often refer to church issues or even have, from time to time, a ministry specific content there. If you’re learning how to do video at the church, if you want to learn how to use YouTube properly, it’s the podcast to go to beyond that.
There’s another podcast I want to highly recommend to you because it’s just so inspiring and encouraging and you probably haven’t heard of this one because it’s quite new. It’s called We Regret To Inform You: The Rejection Podcast. What it is? It’s stories of famous people like musicians, authors, movie people and inventors who were rejected multiple times, sometimes dozens of times, before they found success.
Even when I don’t agree with what the person stands for or what they’ve done, their stories are incredibly fascinating and inspiring. For instance, I am not a Lady Gaga fan but her story and where she came from is absolutely amazing. Another one is with James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, among many other things, just an outstanding story.
Every time I listen to this, there’s kind of two subplots that show up again and again. One is persistence, perseverance, and keep going. The other one is the need for people around you who support you and encourage you; really the need for a team. So some great principles there. I could see these using one of these episodes in a in a staff or board retreat context where you just listen to it and talking about it and just seeing what you can learn from the principals there as a team.
A few others I listen to which are a lot of marketing related stuff is Freakonomics Radio, which talks about just different stories in the world and business and marketing. This is one of the ones I listen to on the highway, uh, because they just, it makes the time fly right by.
I think one of my favorites, which is marketing related, and one I probably listen to every new episode is Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson. Russell is a Mormon, so obviously not on the same page, but he’s so full of energy and inspiring. He talks about marketing principles, but shares from his own life and his podcast episodes are short, so I kind of like that. In fact, the reason I did my podcast episodes so short is because I like his format and in some ways I’ve tried to maintain that kind of length, so I just listened to it because it gives me ideas for online ministry and online marketing in nice little bite sized chunks.
There are many others I listen to that are very interesting like HBR Ideacast and one from Canada called Ideas, which is sometimes long and cerebral, but really fascinating. The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish, which just has a wide variety of guests and you always learn something incredibly fascinating.
I think that’s all I’ll highlight for now. As I said, I listen to 33 podcasts; a handful of them all the time, and most of them some of the time, and those are the ones I would recommend. I encourage you to especially check out the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, Unstuck Church and We Regret To Inform You. I think you’ll find something that’ll encourage you and give you a boost today.
Thanks again. God bless, press on.
