Who you are and why we are here

Welcome to the Blue Vignette podcast. This is a podcast for Adventist administrators and ministry leaders designed to help you navigate the growing Adventist digital ecosystem. We'll be having expert guests, but also sharing our own experience as we build and invest in platforms that will help the church in the digital space. So, Shannon, how long have we been meaning to start this podcast?

That's a really good question and I'm thinking it's between like the four to six month mark. Yeah, it does sound about like that. Most good ideas have a tendency to sit on the shelf for a bit with me, so I'm hoping this is one of them. But the cool thing is like we've been having these conversations already, we just haven't been hitting record on them.

Yes. So, I'm super excited to finally get that going. Exactly, exactly. But for people who don't really have any context for who we are, let's start there.

So, what do you have as your bio line on Instagram or Twitter or something like that? What is the short version of how you describe you? Yeah, look, this is a really funny one because I feel like every single time I'm like, I should update this. I don't feel like this reflects me.

I feel like everything's changing and where I'm going is becoming clearer and clearer. And so, every time I'm like, oh, I should update that. I just opened you up on Twitter and it says, Shana Duke, co-founder of Blue Vineyard. I love improving opportunities within practical and digital discipleship.

Podcaster, musician, hiker, SDA. Do you feel like that's still fairly representative? Yeah. And I feel like it's more what I am leaning into at the moment and understanding about where I'm going.

So, it's pretty exciting. What about you, Luke? What's on your bios? I actually think I updated mine reasonably recently as well.

I started the same co-founder of Blue Vineyard in my off hours. I'm a podcaster, YouTuber, and all of the time I'm a passionate family man, SDA and ENFJA. So, for the 16 personalities or Myers-Briggs people out there, that's the Easter egg I leave in there for them because they read that and they go, oh, I know exactly what he's like. But anyway, we're not here to talk about Myers-Briggs.

And I'm assuming that if you found this podcast, you are probably in the adventure space. Hopefully, you are in either ministry or you work for the church or perhaps you provide services for the church. They are the general categories of people that we're speaking to. So, if that's you, congratulations.

You are part of an exceptionally small niche and this podcast is for you. Yeah. I'd have you along. Yeah.

To a great extent, this podcast is going to be a lot of our experience as we are working towards our goals. And at the beginning of this show, you would have heard our intro, which explained a little bit about it. But just to build a little bit of extra context around that. Shana, from your perspective, what are the things that you care about the most that Blue Vineyard is trying to achieve?

Yeah. And that's a loaded question. But yeah, I would say the thing that probably that comes to mind is just like, how can we make the digital presence, I guess, of the Adventist Church more efficient and more effective and not overlap? Because having conversations with people in America, in Europe, in Australia and hearing people with similar ideas and similar visions and wanting to make it happen.

But everyone having to start from scratch because they just don't know that someone else is doing it or they don't know how someone else is already pursuing that. Being able to have those conversations like, Hey, this person's doing this, let's connect you with this person. Let's see how that works together with that. Can we implement it with each other?

Can we make this a better thing because we're all putting our heads together on it? I feel like that's something that makes me excited. I love that. I love that.

Because I grew up, fairly well grew up in the church. My parents were baptized when I was five. And I always just naturally assumed that the church had some kind of digital ecosystem where things were tied together. I just assumed that that was a thing.

And eventually I got to a place where I realized that what we have is an institution, not an ecosystem. And that's okay, because the institution is important. And that's what allows us to have that like as a as a church, which gives us great durability. And we've got the ability to reach into unreached areas in ways that a lot of other denominations just don't have the capacity to do.

So I appreciate the institution and what it represents and what it is. But there is this gap where there is digital things that are happening because over the digital revolution, our church, along with a lot of other churches got left behind really badly. And in coming out of that, there are people who are visionaries that are doing amazing things. But just like you pointed out, they are, they are not in a meaningful ecosystem.

They are serving the church in their area. And that tends to create these silos where people might have great ideas or great tools, but they don't get shared to where they need to go. And so I'm really passionate about that part of what we're doing as well, just to be able to connect those dots and stop people from reinventing the wheel, allow the some of those synergies to take place. Yeah, I feel like if we have both said the word ecosystem several times already, I'm just wondering, should we start there and just explain like what we see that as, what's not and what can be?

Great thinking. And as I've been thinking about this and we've been starting this initiative, I've been thinking a lot about companies who have built really successful ecosystems. And in my mind, probably the best example of that is Apple and the way that so many people are Apple fans. And sure, a lot of that is brand loyalty.

And you can talk about any of that. But some of the real and significant value that Apple has created as a company comes from not just building individual products that are really good, but they build products that create an ecosystem. And once you're in that ecosystem, stepping out of that becomes very difficult and painful. So therefore, a lot of people don't want to get into it.

They tend to stick to it. Yeah, like if you have your laptop and you have your phone, then you don't want to have an Android phone and a Mac computer unless you're Shana. That's right, we've corrected that. Makes it a lot more simple.

Yes, that's the one. But yeah, as I think about the church and I think about Apple in the way they've done that in a really effective way, that's what I've been thinking about. How do we bridge that gap? And one of the things that I think is important to recognize is that it's very difficult to do that from within the system because of the way the system is designed, as I was mentioning before, in this really robust way where it can work in multiple places and there's so much value to that.

But it's in some ways, it's a victim of its own success, right? So the people that are doing cool things tend to stick to their own world field. And I think that if there is an external group that are tying those links together and allowing that information sharing to take place, I believe that that is something that can be a really big benefit. But also to be able to share resources.

Like obviously, there are the church makes some resources available in divisions and unions. And I think that's fantastic. But I think that there is so much that we could do partnering with people that are also believing the same, right? People that are Adventists that are business owners and entrepreneurs.

And this is one of the things I love about what Hive is doing as an example that are tying these entrepreneurs together and being able to provide services and resources to them. And I see what we're doing is very complimentary to that in that we are seeking to create an ecosystem that's specifically in this digital space. And that can look like a lot of different things that can look like digital services like web development. We've done work for the Adventist review and I'm sure on future episodes, we'll talk more about that.

But we've done work for the Adventist review and redeveloping their site and we've been able to help out with communication support for Adventist schools and some conferences and creating registration software for camp meetings and events. And throughout all these experiences, we're not just doing this in a haphazard way. We're thinking about how do we create an ecosystem that helps the church do the work better because there's a lot of places that we can improve. Sorry, I feel like that was a rant, Shana.

Can you bow me out of the rant? Shana I feel like it's tightening things up, hey, and making quality services and not just services but platforms and yeah, like everything is as bigger than just those things, but tightening that up and making that a more successful and more efficient way of doing things. Is that kind of how you would say it? Shana Yeah, to go back to the original illustration, you know, Apple wasn't the first person to market or the first company to market with MP3 players or phones or smartphones even, but they were able to tie the ends together in such a way that it made it more valuable to the people.

And hopefully that's what we can do. We can find ways to make that happen. And there's also throughout the formation of these ideas for Blue Vineyard, we've spoken to a lot of people in the Adventist space who are really talented specialists, be that in SEO or in marketing or in development or in social media or content production. We've spoken to a bunch of different people getting insights from them.

And I really believe that if we can bring together those perspectives, it's going to allow the church to grow together in a much more effective way, like you're saying. Shana And I think another point I just want to bring up as like talking about this is some people might feel threatened or like, are you guys trying to take over what we're doing? Or, you know, are you trying to fill a place that someone's already trying to fill, which is not the case at all. Like, inclusivity is probably one of our biggest highest values that we're trying to work from, right?

And so instead of being like, these people are doing this and I'm being super vague, but these people try and do this and we're trying to compete with them. Like, no, not at all. If you're trying to do that, we want to work with you. Like, we want to pull it together so that it can be a tidership and it's not just you're doing your thing, I'm doing my thing.

Hopefully we get clients and whatever. Like, it's not about that at all. It's about how can we work together? And so the last thing we want anyone to do leaving this conversation is be like, you're trying to create an ecosystem.

If I don't fit within that, then I'm still a competitor. It's like, well, actually, no, let's have more conversations. Let's figure out how we can work together, how we can grow this and make this an efficient thing because it's not going to be efficient if we're not working together. If we're just trying to do it on our own.

And so from our perspective, if anyone's listening to this, who does provide services to the church in any digital space, we would love to chat to you because there are opportunities that we get to hear about that have been basically would be so valuable, it would be so much better if we had more people that were within the ecosystem that we know about because I keep hearing about people who are doing amazing things that I've just never heard of before. And so if you are one of those people who are working in this area and trying to serve the church and Adventist ministries, yeah, by all means reach out to us because we would love to meet you and learn more about what you're doing. Yeah. And overall, the church is trying to do amazing things.

We have the commission to spread the gospel to the whole world, right? And the digital space is what is reaching the most amount of people these days. That's where people are going to find information on any topic, especially on the gospel and finding Christ. And so if we can improve that and work together, and when you think about the potential of like how many people there are on this earth that we're going to share the gospel with before Jesus comes back, like that's a lot of people, which means we need a lot of man hours.

So if we start thinking we can do it all by ourselves, then we've completely lost the big picture. So we started talking a little bit about who we are, but I think it would be helpful just to lay a little bit of backstory and our approximate trajectory to get to where we are. So, Chanak, where did you start? How did you get from where you were to this area of digital entrepreneurship working with the church?

I mean, it's kind of a long story, but I'll just keep it short. The idea of being faithful in whatever sphere you're in, that's totally where I started. Like when I finished school, I was like, what am I going to do with my life? And as a question that most young people ask themselves, and I decided to, well, I was praying between studying or giving a gap year to ministry.

And so I ended up doing that gap year, putting it into full time ministry, which included doing literature evangelism, running youth camps and being involved in PA, secretary and online websites would have worked with one of the guys in that ministry. He sort of mentored me and helped me in that space. So it was like the first time I got excited about that. So between that and learning more like graphic design skills, I was like, wow, there's so much potential here.

And so yeah, I just kept praying my way through that and figuring out what that looked like and just kept being faithful and learning the skills along the way. And I'm just trying to think where that exactly bridged because that was probably like five or six years of just keeping on doing that sort of stuff. But in the last couple of years, I also got in touch with Luke and when he shared what he was doing, and I was like, man, that's something I want to do long term, but it hadn't sort of happened yet. And so we sort of started conversations a little bit.

And it wasn't until probably 2020 when I was like, yes, I definitely feel called to go this direction working in the web industry and helping in that. And so we had more conversations and Luke was sort of mentoring me through that. And then an opportunity came to work together, which is where we segue a bit more. Do you want to feel that on that, Luke?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just to trace my own trajectory before that, I've been working in the web industry since I was 17, which is a very long time ago.

And I have been, I've done some work for churches, but I never saw that as being a viable target market because obviously the commercial space is a more profitable one. I would love to work with churches, but I never thought I could. And I just did what came up. And fast forward to almost exactly one year ago, I got a phone call from a friend of mine who is also one of the partners in Blue Vineyard, Jonathan Wald, and for anyone who knows him, he's been working as an entrepreneur in the WordPress space for a long time as well.

And he said, hey, would you be interested in doing some work with the Adventist Review? And like I said, we'll probably make an episode specifically around the work that we've done for the review. But the short version is that we were invited to work on the redevelopment of the review project. And Shana and I had only just started working together.

And I called Shana and said, look, if you want to do this, let's say this is a six month commitment and let's work together on this. And she said, yes, she began project managing. At this point, I was going to jump in and say at this point, I was just doing a trial with you. So I'd done like a month or two November, December of working with you.

And then you call me up and you're like, hey, you can get for six months. Are we doing this or not? I'm like, um, I guess it was a very tight timeline. And so there wasn't really time for, oh, let's have a think about this.

So that was what we did, right? And that was some amazing time working with the team is getting everything together and launching that project. And that really opened up my mind to what was possible. And that's when I really started seeing these needs.

And Jonathan was pointing out things because he's also been an advisor to the church at multiple levels in the digital space. And he started pointing out these areas that could be improved. And we realized that there's just so much opportunity and no one is serving that opportunity. And so this is where these ideas started from and they begin to form.

And so we, as I said, we worked for the review. And then we started taking on these other ministry projects. And then I reached the point in my business where I decided it was time to close the commercial side of the business and focus completely on blue vineyard. And since that point, that's, this has been our focus.

And both Shannon and myself, we've been 100% committed to making blue vineyard a reality. And that's really what we're doing now. Like as we're going into 2023, where there's so many cool things that we're working on and we're looking forward to doing a lot more of that as we go into the new year. So is that a fair broad summary, Sharon?

Yeah, for sure. And I think it's all just happened fairly organically. It wasn't like, we're going to start working together and do this massive crazy vision. It was like, when do this crazy thing together?

It was like, this is working. Oh, there's more needs in this space. Oh, we feel passionate about this. This is what our background has made us notice and want to help in.

And now we see potential there. And it's just been really exciting to see how it all has unfolded. One of the things I find really exciting about it for me is that obviously I've been a professional in the web industry. I'm familiar with what the industry looks like.

But I, the thing that really stood out to me is that I have spent a lot of my life focusing on ministry outside of work, right? Like one of the reasons that I have always been entrepreneurial by nature is that I want to preserve time in my week for ministry to occur. I don't want to be locked at a desk nine to five and then be too exhausted to do anything else. And I understand how the work, how the church works quite well.

I have a ministry podcast that I work on the last table talk podcast and Shannon does too. By the way, she has the Cultivate podcast for country living and gardening. And as I look at the unique batch of experiences that I've had, doing this kind of bridging work for ministry and churches in the digital space is something I'm uniquely qualified for. And so that's one of the reasons that I'm so excited about that.

And that's another reason this podcast itself is an exciting thing because it's something that both Shannon and I have experience in in our own ways. So this is like bridging that gap from ministry to entrepreneurship and applying that in the church context, which is super exciting. So just before we wrap this one up, let's talk a bit about the things that we expect to have on this podcast, because to be really honest, this is an experiment. Like we are not coming in with this is a clear format.

We're going to give you this every single week. We are going to be trying multiple things and we want to hear feedback from you guys. What is it that you enjoy? What hits well?

What would you like to hear more of? But let's, Shannon, let's just share a few of the ideas that we've had for things that we would like to have on the show. Yeah. So some of the things that we're excited to share about would be ways to improve the ecosystem, which is kind of what we've already just been talking about a little bit of, you know, the needs of the ecosystem.

But yeah, more specific ways in how we can improve that. Specific advice from Avernus specialist. We really want to get people in who know what they're doing and have more of those conversations. And then reviews of online assets.

So the different things that are working well, or maybe not working so well, and how we can analyze that and make it a better space. And then... I was going to say, if anyone's listening that has an online thing that's working well, and that could be anything. This doesn't have to be like direct frontline ministry focus.

This could just be a great tool, whether that's for tithe management or like, you know, whatever it is or something that's helping the church run better. If you're either using a tool like that or you have created a tool like that, we would love to hear about that. So we can feature it on the show. So, and obviously one of the other things that kind of attaches to that is updates on our project.

Because as I say, there are different parts of this project that we work on. And like we mentioned the review, but there's a number of other things like schools and platforms that we're working on. And we would love to highlight some of those case studies of things that we've been able to be involved with and help out with. So if there are any other cool things that happen, we definitely want to share that with you guys.

So if you want to get involved, you can do so as well. So before we just let you go, I just would encourage you to jump on our website. It's pretty bare at the moment. We're planning to be posting a lot more there in the near future.

But if you want to go to blue vineyard.com, you can jump on there. There will be any of our latest blog posts that we've started writing. Also, there's going to be a place there that you can join our newsletter. If you want to join the newsletter, we're going to be putting out the main things that we discover.

Obviously, you'll be notified of episodes of the show as they come out. But we'll also want to be adding extra value there, sending it out to you via the newsletter. So if you want to join that, jump on to blue vineyard.com, sign up for the newsletter, we'll let you know as more things become available. Also, let you know as more of these podcasts come out.

But I think that's all from me, Shana. Anything else from you? Yeah. Ultimately, let's just think out loud more.

Let's have these sort of conversations. Let's be involved in what each other is visioning and planning. Yeah. Let's just see how we can make this a better space because we're all passionate about it and want to see it succeed.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. We will leave it there. Thank you guys for joining us and we'll catch you for the next episode.