Prolific Quality Output

This post is commemorating the 300th episode of my podcast Priority Pastor. I was toying with several different options and I’ll explain all the different factors in a while. I was considering making this the last one of this podcast, making a big shift in the podcast itself, just mixing it up in some way, or just continuing as I have.

The reason I started this podcast was due to a course I was taking that really challenged the idea of publishing content regularly. I actually initially started publishing a blog post pretty much every day, which is a bit of work for me. I love writing and think I write fairly well, but you’re moving towards perfectionism when you’re writing (at least I am) and it was a lot of hard work.

I found that doing a podcast, or as I call them, almost like a “blogcast” it’s a little bit more free association. It’s a little bit less structured, a little less prep, and it’s more just kinda me thinking and talking about things I’ve been thinking about, getting my thoughts clear and sharing those others.

When this podcast started, I called it PPX or Priority Pastor X because it was about the training I have for pastors and about what’s important for pastors. But the X kind of gave me the license to go wherever I wanted, and I talked about marketing and online things as well, because for me, it all kind of blurs together in some measure.

Over time, this has become more about pastoral ministry, church ministry, disciple-making primarily. The reason I do and keep doing this podcast is there’s this acronym PQO, which comes from Brendon Burchard and stands for Prolific Quality Output. The idea being that whatever you’re doing, it’s important to be producing content regularly.

I’ve been maybe leaning towards the prolific side and not as much on the quality side. I know I need to up that a bit and I’ll explain what I’m doing to do that. The important thing is that there’s been this regular output where I’ve been regularly communicating what I’ve been thinking. It forces me to think through what I’m thinking and is crystallized, at least in some way.

If you listen to the podcast, you kind of understand the style which is free flowing. If you just read it on the blog, you’ll notice that the English isn’t the best, because it’s simply an AI transcription with minor editing of what I’m saying, which interestingly, conversation is not always grammatically correct. Even though it may show up on the blog as a transcription, primarily for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, actually, it’s really a verbal communication.

So what are the plans going forward? I am not ending this podcast, which was an option I seriously considered. I’ve actually started another podcast, simply called Disciple Making with my friend, Tim Beadle, who is a passionate disciple-maker and which I aspire to be. I am passionate about disciple-making.

In fact, when you talk about priorities for pastors, disciple-making is of course at the top of the list. That’s what we’re to be as followers of Jesus, pastor or not, making disciples who make disciples. We’ve just started, but already published a few and around 10 or 12 episodes recorded and in the queue ready to go, each one very specifically on the topic of disciple-making. That was a theme I would come back to from time to time in the Priority Pastor podcast and that Disciple Making podcast, which is co-hosted and will probably be interviewing other people as well, will take up all of the slack as far as disciple-making.

So this podcast, I plan to continue it, but I probably will not do it weekly as I have been doing. I’m thinking probably a couple of times a month, at least monthly, or as I have things I’m thinking about and feel like talking about. My hope is that it will be less prolific and more quality. They might be a little bit longer, a little bit more thought out, a little bit more prep in terms of notes.

My notes have often been just a sticky note with some chicken scratchings on it that I can’t read half the time, whereas today I’ve got a half sheet with a bunch of notes on that I’m that I’m sharing from. I’ve never gone the fully scripted version for a podcast for me. My life as a pastor, as a speaker and as a consultant is so structured and so scripted that for me to have this outlet that is less structured, less scripted and less scheduled has really been very good for my soul as much as anything. It’s taught me about these different topics I’ve wrestled with and forced me to clarify my thinking.

In the background of all of this is something you’ll be hearing more about in the weeks and months ahead. I’m actually on the brink of starting a very different kind of ministry, a different kind of church. Again, I’ll tell you more about that in the future. It’s an alternative model. It is facility free. In fact, one of our taglines is “Lose the building, build the people.” It’s going to be highly digital though.

Of course, we want to meet in person. Really the core idea is we really don’t want to be tied to a building. We don’t want to have the weekly grind of producing a service. We want to reallocate the resources that go into the weekend service in most churches and reallocate it for mission, reallocate it for personal evangelism and for actual disciple-making. It’s really about disciple-making.

So it aligns very well with that Disciple Making podcast that I’m starting and in a way it’s a next progression of Priority Pastor, because disciple-making is the priority. You’ll be hearing more about that, both in Disciple Making and in this podcast. In fact, I encourage you to hunt down the disciple-making podcast simply called Disciple Making. You should be able to find it as it’s been well syndicated everywhere like Apple podcasts and all the other big ones. I may post some of the episodes or excerpts of some of the Disciple Making episodes on this podcast partly as a promo and because it fits in with, obviously, Priority Pastor. So that’s what is going to be happening here.

Now, having said all that there’s one take-home I really want to suggest for you today and that is to find an outlet for yourself. A slightly less structured, less scripted outlet. It may be a podcast like I’m doing. It may be a blog. You could even do it on Twitter. To be honest, it may be a YouTube channel.

It may be just some consistent posting on Facebook with some intention behind it. Maybe a Facebook business page, even if you don’t have a business, where you focus in on a topic and do posts related to a certain topic. What you’re going to find is that it clarifies your thinking, as I found out. It just helps you crystallize your thoughts. It becomes fodder for your larger teaching and higher quality content. It builds an audience and it just helps you cultivate your passion for whatever area you’re passionate about.

So for me, this has been a good exercise totally apart from the audience and the feedback and the comments and the blog or whatever. It’s been good for me personally as far as finding my voice and really getting it rolling.

Just a note about podcasts. Podcasts are really growing. There’s 1.7 million podcasts. However, the vast majority of them are not producing regular content and they have less than 10 episodes. If you have more than 10 episodes in your podcast and have posted within the last 90 days, you are in the top 25% of all podcasts. So there’s a lot of room to do something there.

This podcast is hosted at Anchor podcasts. It’s where I started because it’s a free host with some pretty good amenities that way. My second podcast I hosted on Buzzsprout for various reasons. It’s a paid hosting and I really am impressed with Buzzsprout. If you want to know more about that, hunt me down. But as far as starting out, Anchor can do it and you can actually record your podcast on your phone and upload it and away you go, so it’s really easy for that. That’s highly prolific, easy to post content.

So I want to encourage you to do that. Find a regular outlet where you can clarify your thinking, build a bit of an audience and just kind of lay down some tracks for whatever is important to you.

Thanks for following along. Please hunt down Disciple Making and feel free to give me a comment on my blog. This is posted on my blog darenwride.com as a blog post with an embedded audio. Love to hear what you’re doing to develop content.

If you have any questions you want me to dig into as far as disciple-making, online marketing or online tools, we’ll do a little bit more along that line in Priority Pastor, since Disciple Making will capture all the disciple-making content.

Hope you’re having an outstanding day. God bless and press on.