Welcome to the BlueVignette podcast where we explore the Adventist digital ecosystem. I'm Luke Frugia. I'm the co-founder of BlueVignette and I'll be your host. In each episode, we'll sit down with different ministry leaders to uncover insights, hear inspiring stories, and get their hard-earned wisdom for future ministry leaders to use.

On today's episode, we have now Dr. Larry Witzel. Larry is a recurring visitor on the show and he has so much experience in this digital ministry space. He leads sermon view and he has recently finished his PhD.

He studies parasocial relationships and in this conversation, we go deep into that and explore what that means and how it can be used in a ministry context. So with that said, I'll hand over to the interview and I hope you enjoy. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Blue Vignette podcast.

My name is Luke and I have a second time visit from Larry Witzel. Welcome, Larry. Hey, it's great to be here. Nice to see you again, man.

Good to see you too. Since we had a chat last time, you've got some new letters after your name, right? You have the coveted PhD has been added. Yes.

Can you tell me what that PhD was? Just give me a little bit of context. So I got a PhD in strategic media. I've been working on that for the last three and a half years.

And it is way more work than I thought that it would be. Yeah, it was, it was, I wanted to do it because I wanted the letters. My dad had a PhD, my brother has a PhD. And I've always wanted to get a PhD myself.

So that's why I started. And kind of what motivated it was I wanted to do research on Seventh-day Adventist proclamation evangelism. That's what I wanted to study. And I reached a point where I realized in the work that I was doing, I needed the academic rigor that a doctoral program would provide.

So that's how I got into this. But in the process, it changed me. It has influenced me so much. It's shaped how I think, how I approach the world, how I look at the world.

It's been just an incredible experience. And two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago at the time of this recording, I flew out to Virginia. It was actually the first time that I'd met most of my classmates. It's the first time I met any of my professors in person.

It was 100% online program, but I got all dressed up in my doctoral regalia and we marched in and did the whole nine yards. It was really, really cool experience. That is very, that is very cool. So you say that it changed you in many substantive ways.

So let's perhaps, if you were to look at your career thus far in chapters, obviously this is going to be a new chapter that you're going into. What is the dominant change? What is the biggest one or two things that have changed about you in this process? Yeah.

The big thing for me here at Sermonview, is that we're putting a much heavier emphasis on digital evangelism today than we did before. As I dug into the digital transformation of society, as I began to look at this idea of parasocial relationships, which we'll talk about in a second, I just realized that our customers, the pastors that we serve, really needed a lot of help in this area. We haven't pivoted the company, but we definitely have added a pretty big emphasis on the digital evangelism component of it, helping pastors get online with more frequency. Parasocial relationships, it's something that we hear bits and pieces about, and I've been watching you on social media for a while, and I noticed this word creeping more and more and more and more into the vocabulary.

Can we just start with the meta question around that? Like, why is that an important concept and what is that? Yeah. So a parasocial relationship is the illusion of a relationship that you have with somebody in the media.

It's a social connection that's one sided. You feel like you know this social media influencer because you've, quote unquote, spent all this time with them and you've gotten to know them. but they have no idea who you are. They don't know anything about you. It's a one-sided relationship.

And the phrase parasocial relationship was actually coined back in the 1950s as television was growing to become the dominant medium for the next 40, 50 years. These psychiatrists did a paper talking about what they called a parasocial relationship. And then the idea, the theory kind of sat there for for decades, a little study here and there. There's a few studies in the 80s, a little bit in the 90s.

And then with the rise of social media influencers in the mid 2000s, the academic research just exploded in this. Last year, there were over 400 published peer reviewed papers and dissertations on the topic of parasocial phenomenon of some sort. And this is important because it It is happening. It is something that whether it's good or not, that's not to be debated.

The fact is that it's happening. And emerging generations in particular, because of all the social anxiety that is so prevalent among Gen Z, this pushes people toward parasocial engagement because it's safe. They can have a quote unquote relationship with this social media influencer. but they don't have to put themselves out there. They don't have to risk exposing who they are or the criticism or being put down or anything like that.

And the interesting thing is that psychologists have discovered that the human brain can't distinguish emotionally between a parasocial relationship and an in-person two-way relationship. That the emotional benefits that come from parasocial relationships are very significant. And because of this, one of my mentors told me about a study that he ran across a few months ago, that 70% of the most significant relationships among Gen Z today are parasocial. These relationships are being built through these online communities, through social media, through YouTube.

And my research is specifically on how pastors can leverage this phenomenon for evangelism, because social media influencers do things to cultivate parasocial connection, and then they exploit these relationships by monetizing them through selling merch and Patreon and advertising and sponsorships and all this. Well, pastors can do the same thing to cultivate these relationships, but then instead of exploiting them for money, we're going to harvest them evangelistically. So what can we do to help people take another step forward in their walk of faith. And that's what my dissertation was all about.

It was about how pastors can cultivate and harvest parasocial relationships for evangelism. Interesting. You used the word exploit, right, when you were describing how influences have typically used the phenomenon. Yeah.

And that's literally the word that academics have used to describe it. It's a it's an economics concept to exploit an asset. And of course, we don't like the word exploit because it implies something negative. Yeah.

But it's it's what it's what social media influencers are doing. Yes. Would you say that? And I would assume that the the fact that especially for younger people, it's it's unconscious.

Right. They're not thinking, hey, I'm I'm exchanging value here. They're not thinking that. Right.

Right. Despite the fact they are. Right. They're exchanging their attention.

And, you know, again, I'll use a strong word, but they're almost exchanging, in some cases, worship for the connection. Right. The feeling of connection. And that's a that's a really interesting thing that, you know, yeah, OK, it might have been present in times gone by because there's public speakers and there's always been an asymmetric connection.

That has always been a thing. Right. But the scale that it happens at now. And the level of authenticity and regularity that a person can speak into the life of another based on technology is exponentially higher than it ever has been before.

And it is so prevalent today. Three stories I want to quickly mention. One, three years ago, my son was following this social media influencer. My son loved Minecraft.

He loves games of all sorts. But this was a Minecraft YouTuber, one of the best 1v1 uh Minecraft players on the internet at the time and my son would watch him uh his YouTube videos while he was himself playing um Minecraft uh you know on two screens side by side right one day he came my son came to me and said hey my friend Technoblade just um it was just announced that he has he has cancer he has brain cancer And so we talked about that and what that might mean. And a few weeks later, he came into my room one afternoon just crying and saying, Dad, Technoblade died. And it impacted him.

And I spent the afternoon talking with him and mourning with him. And my son joined millions of other Minecraft players who put up the Pig King icon. in their social feeds and whatnot in honor of Technoblade. And actually in the Minecraft movie that just came out a few weeks ago, a couple months ago, there is an homage to Technoblade in that movie where the Pig King icon appears in the movie because of how many fans are. So it's like my son had this connection with him to the point where when he passed away, he mourned this loss.

My daughter, my daughter follows a ton of social media influencers. She's in her, well, she's 20. A few years ago, she said, dad, I've been following this one couple, Christian influencers. And I saw that they had moved, but they didn't say where they moved.

And then I recognized as they were driving, I recognized the neighborhood. It's this neighborhood a couple of miles away from where we live. And then she was working at uh, a Starbucks and this guy comes up and orders coffee from her and she's just freaking out. She's like, Oh my goodness, it's this person.

I'm like, so did you say, you know, hello? She's like, no, of course not. I didn't, I didn't want it. I didn't want him to see me.

I didn't want it to, I don't want to be stalking him or whatever. And I, you know, I wanted to say, um, you kind of are that's what parasocial relationships are, you know, And I'm like, imagine how impactful it would have been for this guy, I'm explaining to her, if you had said, hey, by the way, I follow you on Instagram. I love what your family's doing. I appreciate the inspiration that you've given me so much.

Imagine how impactful that would have been for him. And she's like, yeah, I'll never do that. And then the third thing for me personally, I follow on social media for several years, I followed a comedian by the name of Taylor Tomlinson. And she grew up a Christian.

She's no longer a Christian. I do not recommend that you go watch Taylor Tomlinson. It's contemporary comedy. It has topics that are not great, but she's got some pretty funny stuff.

And I discovered how connected I was to her when I found out that she was named to be the host of a new TV program, a late night TV program on CBS after midnight. And I watched the video of her getting revealed and announced and I was so excited for her. I was genuinely excited for her and what a great opportunity this was. And then she just announced a couple months ago, two seasons of this program, and she's like, yeah, I can't do television.

I need to be touring. I do stand up. That's what I do. And I was sad because I'm not going to be able to see her, but I was also really excited for her again because she discovered something that she's not good at.

So I have this connection with this person that she has no idea who I am, but I genuinely feel excited for her. You know, as she's talked about stuff. So parasocial is really, really powerful. That's super interesting.

As you're talking, like I'm thinking about different creators that I follow and like, you know, and especially that one, that example that you just gave, because you, it's like you knew her before she was mainstream, right? And so like, that's a very unique kind of a dynamic, a unique feeling. Like, you know, I've always followed Peter McKinnon, who is a Canadian photographer and filmmaker. And I just happened he just happened into my YouTube feed when he was very, very small.

And now he's like one of the biggest in that industry. And so when I see other people being like, oh, I just found this guy, he's so cool. And I'm like, oh, man, I've been here forever. I'm Peter and our friends.

You know, he literally and this thing. I'm not like a big fan sort of a person like I don't get super invested in things. Typically, it's not my natural state. But I literally had a dream once that like Peter arrived at my house and we hung out together.

And after that, I was questioning myself. I'm like, how invested am I in this dude? Yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah.

So anyway, so I have a question. So, you know, so I want to get into the tactical stuff and what it means for you and Sermon View. But one question before we go there is there's obviously a lot of people out there who are trying to create these parasocial relationships, right? Like people are trying to be influencers.

There's a lot of, you know, one of these in the space, as well as people who are successfully doing it. What separates the wannabes from the ones that do it successfully? How is it done in a way that actually works well? Number one thing, consistency.

Consistency. The more frequent you can be on there, up to a point, if you're dropping 10 videos a day, the value of that is not going to be high. But if you're dropping a new video every day, a short form video of some form, Even three or four times a week is going to do something toward cultivating these parasocial relationships. Consistency is the most important thing.

And I teach pastors that want to get into this. I'm like, don't record six videos and then drop them all in the same week and then disappear. Spread them out. If you can do consistently one episode a week, if you can do one video a week, then do one video a week.

But once you start, don't stop. Keep going. So, and then there's other things, having the direct eye contact into the camera and talking to the person as if you're having a conversation with them in your living room, talking excitedly to a friend, that's really important. And there's eight things in my dissertation that I talk about at the end that lead to cultivation of the parasocial relationships, but those two are really big, the direct eye contact, but more importantly, consistently, just being present in their feed.

But then as a pastor, once you have these relationships, you can be an influencer for Jesus, right? So instead of being an influencer and you're selling your influence to the highest bidder or whatever, inviting people, explicitly inviting them, calling them to take a step forward in their faith. And there's three specific things in my dissertation that I mentioned. One is just asking them, to make a decision, to do something, to take a step forward in their faith.

The second is to offer something of value, so a Bible study guide or a download or something that is going to help them to take that step. And then the third one, and really what I think is the most powerful and most important, is inviting them to an in-person experience, where you're actually inviting them to get out of their space and into a different space. because we know psychologically getting into a different environment actually helps you grow as a human. It helps you learn. It helps you make better decisions in your personal growth.

So inviting people. And there's a guy, so I followed seven social media influencers who are pastors for my study. And one of these guys, only one of them ever invited people to an in-person encounter. And every week, he was a Sunday church pastor.

He did this thing called the Saturday preview. And every Saturday morning, he would do a post, a video post that talked about what he was gonna talk about the next day. And then he would say, if you can come, I would love to meet you. I would love to see you there.

And if you can't be there in person, then join us online. And if you can't do that either, please, Find a community of faith this weekend and worship with them. Well, there's there was someone who was following him um, and I watched this exchange online where Where it turns out she traveled three hours to come to his church To meet him in person And the interaction online afterwards was just just amazing to see because she said i'm returning to church after years gone by I've I came to your church and best believe I'm going to do it again because you're family now and you can't get rid of me. So this parasocial relationship was cultivated and it turned into an actual in-person encounter that then accelerated this person's spiritual growth where they took steps closer toward Jesus as a result of this process, and that's what I'm talking about, the evangelistic power of parasocial relationships.

The bottom line is people are online, they're making connections with online influencers, and if you are not out there as a pastor, as a church leader, as a lay person who has something valuable to offer, your own testimony, if you're not on there consistently, then people are not going to be able to build these parasocial connections with you, they're going to do that with others. So in a sense, it's like we need to flood this with good spiritual content just to get out there to help intercept people in this experience. I love that. What you're telling me is giving me labels for things that I've observed.

And I love that. I find that super helpful. Like even the podcast, like I mean, I run this podcast for work, but I do a ministry podcast as well. And via that ministry podcast, there's three times that I know of, and we're little, like we are really little.

Like we're in like, you know, a very small audience space, but three times people have traveled to my local church because they wanted to meet us and connect with us. That's awesome. It is and it's so strange because we, you know, the, the, those that are on this podcast, we feel very, very, you know, everyday kind of, kind of people. We're not big influences.

We don't have followings of thousands and thousands of people, but like literally people will be like, Oh, like, I really love listening to you guys. I just kind of feel like you're my friends. Can I come to your church? And it's like, yeah, of course you can.

Like, you know, that's awesome. It happens even, I guess why I'm sharing that is what I want to say is it works even at the small scale. You don't have to be a celebrity pastor in order for this to work. You can just be a normal person.

You just need to show up like you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. All right. So as I said earlier in the show, I've been watching your personal social media for a fairly long time and there was a really obvious and abrupt shift into gear of you creating content.

What was the trigger for that for you? Yeah. So in my dissertation research, I ran across a study that talked about the power of an entrepreneur, founders, personal social media, and the positive effect that that had on the company's measurable success. And literally, I printed out this academic study.

I brought it to my social media person that I had just hired for our company and was like, read this, we're going to do this. And he brought it back after the weekend, all marked up. He's like, okay, we need to do this, we need to do this, we need to do this. And it shifted how we do sermon views, social media, the approach that we've taken there, but it also impacted my own personal social media.

So at that point, I decided I'm just gonna post three times a week. And I'm going to be consistent. And I'm just going to, I'm just going to talk about what I'm doing. And it's just, you know, in a sense, kind of random stuff, whatever's present, whatever's on my mind, what I do to make these posts.

I don't post in real time very often. I mean, when I graduated with my PhD, I definitely posted, you know, the next day I'm like, check this out. Yeah. And most of the time on Friday, one of my end of week tasks is I go back through my task list for the week and I harvest social media posts.

I'm like, oh, I had this conversation. This is really cool. I want to talk about this. And then I'll write posts for the following week on Friday afternoon and come up with images.

If I don't have a picture, then we'll figure out how we're going to illustrate this for Instagram. Since I started, I actually wrote a custom GPT in chat GPT that tailors my posts specifically for each platform that I use. So I post now four or five times a week, I post on X, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, and on Facebook. So I'll write my post.

And the thing about this is that to build this custom GPT, I fed in my writing style. And then I said, now, keep in mind the unique audiences of each of these social platforms. And then when I give you a post and ask you to tailor it, keep it in my voice, but then tailor it to each of these platforms. And so Axit keeps it under 280 characters and it uses, you know, and it, and it's, so I'll write a post and then I'll drop it into my custom GPT and say, tailor this post and it'll come back.

Instagram will have lots of emojis and you know, short punchy statements. Facebook is a little more personable and LinkedIn is more business oriented. It's just, it's amazing. So I'll, I'll, I'll look for three or four things that I did at the end of the week.

I look at the previous week and say, okay, I want to talk about these things. I'll write them up and I put them in this, in this worksheet that then my, my social media coordinator, um, takes those grabs photos, does he, and then all the mechanics of actually posting, he hand handles all of those. Oh, that is, that is so interesting. Cause I, I'm a big believer in using, uh, using AI, but the real question is where is it the right place to use, right?

Like, you know, that's, that's the challenge. Cause there are people that I know and all of their posts look the same and they all look like they're just being regurgitated out of chat GPT. And I don't read them. I see them and I just flip past.

Right. So there's a reason for that. So I love the fact that you found a way to to retain your voice and also minimize the time. That's fantastic.

Yeah, yeah. So in my personal social posts, I love just like showcasing all the different things that I do. You know, I'm on I'm on a committee for the North Pacific Union of Seventh Day Adventists. And so we meet four times a year.

So I always get a picture and talk about something that got discussed in, you know, in this meeting. And I'll post that. you know, and say last week we, you know, I had this meeting and this is what we talked about. I'll talk about, I mean, and silly little things. I bought a chair when we started Sermon View 20 years ago that was my favorite chair.

And literally it was this Frankenstein's monster of parts that it broke once and I found some parts and I fixed it and I fixed it like four or five times. And it's been sitting out in the conference room uh for several years now and then I'm sitting there in our weekly staff meeting and then one of the bolts broke and and I'm like ah and so then I go into fix it mode I'm like okay I'm gonna fix this chair I mean it's like wait a second is this really a good use of your time Larry? I'm like, okay, I'm going to give it five more minutes. If I can't get it fixed in five minutes, I'm throwing the thing away.

I'm going to let it go. It's just a thing, right? Even though I've had it for 20 years and it was my favorite chair. And I remember when I bought it and all this stuff.

So I'm like five minutes in, I'm like, this is going to take longer than this. So I took a picture of me kneeling next to my chair with a sad face and was like, this is the end of the chair, it's going away and it, you know, served me well. And like the response to that was like, people like understood how much you grow attached to a chair, right? So, and you know, stuff like that, just as things come up, I talk about stuff that is impactful to me at Sermon View.

So those are my personal social posts. At the same time, We started a new podcast last August called Ministry Insights. And these are anywhere from five to seven to eight or nine minutes, sometimes episodes, on just topics that are interesting to me, that I just share. I talk about some research on evangelism marketing that we discovered in our own research.

I talk about church websites, but I also talk about what does it mean to have grit and endurance. I talk about an idea that I've been wrestling with for several months now, chronic affirmation deficit, that we live in a world that is so negative, that this negativity spills over into us. And when you have chronic affirmation deficit, you're more risk averse. You don't try new things.

And so I shared some research on some things that you can do to reverse chronic affirmation deficit in your own life. And just talking about different things that are interesting to me, it's specifically for pastors, and it's about education, inspiration, and affirmation for pastors. And so I've been putting out an episode every week, Monday morning, every Monday morning, a new episode drops. Prior to that, we've been doing for the Propel Conference, which is an event.

We just had our third Propel Conference a few weeks ago. This is inspiration and innovation for church growth. It's four days where pastors and local church leaders come together and we learn from the top experts in our space. Every presentation gets turned into a podcast episode, so that every two weeks a new episode drops where we share all of this content.

So I have visibility now where people are actually building parasocial relationships with me. And part of the reason why we did this was, you know, I've been around a while. I've been in ministry now for over 30 years. It was 34 years ago that I moved from college and became a pastor in a church just down the street from where I live now.

And so I've been around a while and I have lots of connections with people in my generation and the generation above me, but I've been having a really difficult time connecting with millennials and Gen Z pastors. And I've been like, I don't know how to do this. And it's like, idiot, why don't you do things to build parasocial relationships with them? Because that's where they're at.

So we started this process and it's just been incredible. I went to a church planters boot camp a couple months ago at Camp Calaqua in Florida. I'm at breakfast the first morning and this guy comes over and sits down with me He's like, hey Larry, and he's all excited to see me and I'm racking my brain I'm like trying to figure out where I know this guy from and and he's he's in his 30s And he's like, oh, no, you don't know me. I came to the propel conference last year But I follow you on social media.

I listen to the Propel podcast. I've been listening to your Ministry Insights podcast. I love the work that you're doing. And there really was a little bit of celebrity where he was looking at me as this person.

And it's really weird. I don't know that I'll ever get used to it. but I love that it accelerates the in-person connection because then we had a conversation, tell me about your church, you know, and so now when I go out in the field as I'm talking to people, there are people that want to talk to me, which makes it easier and we can move the relationship along faster because they have a connection with me already. So that's why I started the Ministry Insights podcast. That's why I did these personal social posts, And I mean, it's crazy.

I go to church now on a Sabbath morning, and there's two dozen people that will come up to me. And they'll mention something that I posted in the previous week. Oh, Larry, that was so cool about, you know, like the chair. Larry, I'm so sorry about your chair.

I know how much you loved that chair. And it's like... It's really cool because they're paying attention to me. They have a relationship with me, but it accelerates the conversation on Sabbath morning about what's been going on in my life.

And so now on Friday night, I try to go online and take a look at what people at my church have been posting so that way I can do the same for them. Oh, hey, I saw this. That was really cool that it's been... It's been an amazing journey the last the last couple of years as I've been doing this.

I love what you just said about how it accelerates the connection because often when you meet someone, you know, if you had just gone, excuse me, gone to that event, if you had have met that guy just happened to sit at the same table, you would have had the entire conversation around figuring out who each other are. Right. You know, it wouldn't have there wouldn't have been any opportunity for you to go deeper than that. And so the fact that.

There's this pre-existing thing. You can hit the ground running and you can achieve more things in all of your communications. Right. Right.

I think that's fantastic. Right. OK. So you mentioned the Ministry Insights podcast.

That's more of like the official or formal content creation. And then you've got the other, you know, just what's happening in your week kind of posts. Right. Right.

What made you decide that like a podcast was the right thing? Because there's like so many ways that you can create content. Why a podcast? Yeah.

All right. So a couple of things. We've done webinars for several years now. We've done webinars consistently, but we heard from pastors that they listen to podcasts all the time.

As they're driving, as they're doing, you know, going about their week, their ministry of the week, they spend a lot of time in the car and a lot of pastors listen to a lot of podcasts. And we decided a couple of years ago that we wanted to switch from webinars to a podcast format. And it took us about six months of of thinking it through and throwing ideas around before I finally said, you know what? I know that it doesn't make sense that it's a podcast.

Nobody does eight minute podcasts, five minute podcasts. But one of my mentors was like, oh, I listened to it. There's a four minute podcast. And every week he shows up in my podcast feed and it's a quick hit.

And then I move on. And I like that better than the longer formats. So we decided to do this And the content that we did initially was all about church marketing. It was about digital evangelism.

But then I also wanted to do just some personal things that I was thinking about. Let me put it this way. I realized in the last two, three years, as my children have grown and my daughter is now really beginning to adult for herself, I realized that it was time for me to step out of the way and to support them and let them be the people. And so for the last two or three years, I've been looking for ways that I can pour myself into the next generation and just give everything that I've got.

And Roger Hernandez, the Ministerial Director for the Southern Union, he came and spoke at the Propel Conference, this most recent one this year, and he said something that stuck with me. he said that your career has three stages. The first part of your career, you're building the bucket. And then the second part of the career, you're filling the bucket. And then the last stage of your career, you need to be giving away the bucket.

And I'm like, I love that because I remember it has for me been these three distinct stages. I remember the first 10 years of my career, I was like just, just at this magnet for information and learning and understanding how to have a career and what that looked like and becoming a better professional. And then like doing the work and becoming relatively successful at the work that God's put in front of me. But now it's like, I just want to give it all away.

I just want to give it away. And so this became a venue, a format that allows me to talk about whatever God has put on my heart and share it. You're doing the YouTube videos and you're also publishing it as a conventional podcast. Do you think of it primarily as a podcast or do you think of it primarily as a YouTube channel?

Yeah, that was really hard at first. And if you go back to very early episodes, I would talk in... I do a little intro where I do a hook. to explain what we're going to be talking about. And then I say, in this video, we're going to da da da da da da da.

And after about two months, I'm like, what are you doing? This is supposed to be a podcast. So now I say, in this episode, we talk about this. I think about it in terms of video, and we proof the video in our review meetings.

But then I also listen to it each episode. like today. So a new episode dropped this morning on my drive home. I'm going to be listening to that episode and just, you know, cause I, I wrote it like two months ago. I recorded it two months ago.

Um, I don't even remember anything. It's like new material to me when I actually listened. I'm like, Oh yeah, that was, that was really good, Larry. That's impressive.

Uh, uh, so, so I think of it. primarily as an audio podcast, and I try to make it an interesting audio podcast. And everything that we do, I don't want visuals to be required to understand. So if there's a visual, I actually will talk about it so that someone... I have a background in radio.

When I was in college, I was a program director of a local radio station. So I've always had a bias toward the audio side, but I'm also a video professional. And this content on YouTube, was kind of what was driving me initially. So do I think of it as a YouTube video or as a audio podcast?

It's both and. Yep. And I think we're moving, just generally, I think the whole industry is moving in the direction of omni-content, right? Like, yes, you might create the... the the pillar content like around like I this is the podcast but then that's also video but then that can also be a blog post but that can also then write you started to Instagram post and into right ex post we all rest right and that's it that's exactly what we do I write I write a script then I record it and then the the our editor edits that the episode but then we'll also pull out 30 to 60 second shorts and we try to get three shorts out of every episode.

And then we stagger them. So like this week, if you follow us on the Sermiview social media feed, you'll see three different topics, three shorts on three different topics from three different episodes that are all landing this week. So yeah, when I write a piece of content, it goes up as a blog post. It's an audio podcast.

It's the video. We do the video shorts coming out of it. We try to get as much mileage out of the content as we can. How spontaneous is the content?

Is it all scripted? It's all scripted. I've reached a point where I understand that the spontaneous content, that it can be more authentic. It can be in some ways more interesting.

Most of the time, it's also a lot slower. The information density is not there. Correct. And it's really important that when you're listening to my podcast, that you're getting value as much packed into a short period of time as you can.

So I script it word for word. I use a teleprompter when we shoot and I just do two takes of the entire script. If I stumble, then I'll go back to the start of the paragraph and loop it through. But we have two complete takes of each one, and then the editor decides what they're going to use.

So with Ministry Insights, what was the biggest challenge you could say in the process so far? The biggest challenge was figuring out what the format was going to be. I mean, it took us six months of of really thinking about and talking about it. I'd go into my marketing director's office and it's like, I want to talk about this.

We didn't know it was going to be called Ministry Insights. We want to talk about this podcast. We know And we stopped doing webinars at the end of 2023, knowing that we were going to start doing podcasts at the start of 2024. And then we spent six months trying to figure out what we were actually going to do.

We didn't actually launch the podcast until the first week of August. So there was a period of time there where we were kind of missing some content, some what we would not naturally be putting out. The biggest issue was figuring out what was the format going to be. What's the hook?

What's the interest? And this is where ministry insights, I wanted the title to say what it is. If you're a pastor, you're going to get some insights from this thing that could really impact your ministry. So that was the hardest part.

The other thing that I've gone through the process that I've discovered is it is a grind to release a new episode every single week. it is a huge pain. And it doesn't matter where you're at in the season, in the cadence of your other work, you have to write four episodes every month or some, you know, every third month, it's five episodes, and then record them. And it doesn't take that much time, but it does require a lot of brain power, a lot of brain power. And at one point, I actually was afraid, as I was working on my dissertation, I talked to my team.

I'm like, I don't know that I can do both. I think that it's requiring too much creativity. And so we decided we're going to drop to every other week. And we began scheduling them every other week.

And then I got inspired. I woke up early one morning, I wrote a bunch of episodes. I was like, oh, I think we're caught up. Let's move them back up.

So we actually never missed a week, even though we decided that we were going to go every other week for a while. I have written episodes 49 through 52. I was supposed to record them this afternoon. Some other stuff got in the way.

So it's been a full year and it is a grind. And there have been moments where it's like, I don't know that I can... I don't know that I have enough to write. But the fact is that my list of ideas has been growing every month.

Like, I want to write about this. Oh, I want to do an episode on this. That list is longer every month, even though I'm pulling things off of it. It's longer at the end of each month than it started, even though I did four or five episodes off of that list.

So I feel like I really could do this in perpetuity for the rest of my life. Yeah, that is very cool. How many episodes have you done in total so far? So, I don't know how many we've actually dropped.

I have recorded 48 episodes. I've written 52. And by the end of this week, I'll have recorded all 52 for the year. And then, you know, we're going to end the season.

We're going to start season two with the first week of August. And so, yeah, I mean, it's fun. It's interesting. What would you say has been the greatest benefit to having started Ministry of Insights?

Two things. One, it gives me an outlet to be able to pour myself into the next generation. So if I feel God like putting something on my heart, I have an opportunity to share that. I'm not a pastor, so I don't preach every week.

I do sermon view full time. And so it's just an opportunity. Like I got this idea at one point that That pride is a problem, but it's actually a natural byproduct of success And just like God created the human body with that it uses oxygen and You breathe in oxygen and then it gets sent through the bloodstream to each of the cells who use the oxygen to to fire, you know, to burn and keep it alive. And then the byproduct of that life giving process is carbon dioxide, which then comes back and you excel.

You exhale that. Yeah. With each breath. So you breathe in oxygen and you breathe out carbon dioxide.

And the issue is that carbon dioxide is actually a poison. And if you don't express it, then it will kill you. You actually, if you're stuck in a room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you run out of oxygen. As the carbon dioxide levels increase, that poison will kill you before you run out of oxygen.

It occurred to me that pride is the same way, that pride is a natural byproduct of success. And as you're successful, if you're not breathing out that pride, that pride will kill your success. You'll reach a ceiling and you'll get stuck there, or worse, you'll end up stalling and then dropping from that. And so I just have this mantra that I, it was about a year ago that I thought of this, where it's like, breathe in the spirit, breathe out pride, breathe in the spirit, breathe.

And with each breath, I want to breathe in the spirit and I want to breathe out pride. Because if you don't get rid of that pride, then you're going to, I mean, scripture is very clear, pride goes before fall. If you don't get rid of the pride, it's going to get you. But pride is a natural byproduct of success.

When you're successful, people don't see God working through you. They don't see his spirit empowering you to do something amazing. They see Larry Witzel doing this amazing thing. I know it wasn't me, but if I listen to those people and let them influence me, then I'll start thinking that it was me, even though I know that it wasn't me.

And if I don't exhale that pride on a regular basis, this is going to cause problems in my ministry. It has caused problems in my ministry. Well, I had this idea and it's like, oh, I have an outlet to be able to share this. And that episode was in the first six months, that was the most listened to, the most watched episode.

Cause as you know, it's like we're a church marketing company, we're a digitally evangelized company. We should talk about what we do. No, it's when I talk about the power of insecurity or we talk about the impact of doing hard things that you're not wired to do. It's like the life skills aspect of it is the thing that pastors have been saying, we want more of this, to give us more of this kind of content.

I'd be interested if there was anything in your research. But it seems to me, and I've watched this arc in a lot of creators where they start in their field of expertise and almost universally they get into the domain that you're speaking of now into the into the life skills and the authenticity. Like it's this curve. And so it's like, correct me if I'm wrong here.

The way I have interpreted this, when I've looked at it, is that people need to see your competence in order to trust you. Once they see your competence in your domain of expertise, then they're willing to listen to what you have to say about life. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, yeah.

Well, and okay, so you brought up competence. One of the things about parasocial relationships, there's an element of attraction. People follow people that they find attractive. But when you think of influencer, you think of this, you know, young, handsome, trendy kind of a person, but that's actually not the most important type of attractiveness.

Psychologists have talked about three three different types of attraction. There's physical attraction, of course, we're aware of that. But there's also what they call social attraction, which is demonstrating competency within some social domain. And then there's task attractiveness, which is you demonstrate competency in some task.

You are a really good woodworker. That's attractive to people who like woodworking. You are really good Minecraft player. Technoblade was I'm sorry.

He was ugly. I mean, he was a gamer. He didn't take, he didn't have good hygiene. It was, but he understood gaming, the social dynamics of gaming and he was an amazing player.

And so people wanted to follow him. So that attractiveness, the, the expertise aspect of it is really important. And for pastors, if you're able to take the ancient scripture and apply it to contemporary situations, and you're able to do this in a way that's relevant to people, that task attractiveness, that domain expertise becomes something of value that people will follow. So I agree with you.

If whatever you're doing, you have to be able to demonstrate this expertise and then people will listen to you about other things as well. Yeah, cool. So just as as we wrap up, I just I would like to give you a blank check, so to speak, as far as. What do you think that people should know about this?

Let's say a pastor is listening to this and you just want to give someone who's starting a podcast. What is something that you think they should know that they don't currently? Yeah, the most important thing is consistency, man. That's it.

You got to be consistent and create workflows that work for you. So I've got a ton of check checklists for both the Propel podcast as well as the Ministry Insights podcast. And I have a checklist. when I write a script, there's 12 components, 12 things that I want to hit. Yeah, so it's my own content development framework, RIA, R-I-A, and it's relevance, insightfulness, and authority.

So I want the content to be relevant. It addresses a ministry application or personal growth. It speaks to common struggles or needs that pastors face. on practical, usable takeaways, and then insightful. Is it a clear idea, a silver bullet, if you will, a personal story or a strong opinion, a single topic?

And then authoritative. I want to cite scripture. I want to cite academic research. I want to tell my own stories using my own credibility, quotations from other trusted voices.

So I have these 12 elements that as I'm writing it, okay, and to be honest, I wrote, I created a custom GPT for writing ministry insights episodes, and I fed it in 30 scripts. So it knows my voice, it knows what my audience is, it knows what I'm trying to accomplish. I fed it in my rubric here, the real rubric. And as I'm doing it, I'll ask it, okay, I want to write an episode on such and such.

And then, I'll have a conversation, we'll talk about it. It's like, okay, let's work on core content together and we get the core content. And then I'm like, what's the RIA score? And it'll say, this is, you got 10 and a half out of 12.

Would you like to add a story or should we find an academic study that we can add? Um, so I'm using, I'm using AI, but again, it's my voice and what it generates in the end, I edit and tweak to make it work for me. Um, it's just a tool that accelerates it. Um, I wrote, uh, last week I wrote four episodes in 90 minutes, uh, which is a ridiculously fast pace and they were longer episodes.

It was about 40 minutes of content that I wrote in 90 minutes because I was using AI to accelerate it. Um, but I have checklists. So when it, comes time to set up the studio. I turn my office into a studio.

I've got lights that are permanently set up, but then I bring in the camera and I've got the tripod marks on the floor. So I know exactly where the tripod is going to be and the height. I have it marked on the wall, what the height of the camera is. I have a stool that I set.

I have marks on the floor where the stool goes. And I've got like check marks, you know, make sure that you erase the CFAST card. So that way, because one time I didn't and I didn't notice that it ran out of space and stopped recording and I recorded like three episodes before I realized that it hadn't recorded more than half of an episode. So all these checklists, which mostly come from mistakes that I've made, it's like, well, let's make sure that that doesn't happen again.

So I have a checklist for setting up the studio. I have a checklist for, okay, I'm getting ready to record. I actually have different glasses that I wear that don't cast as big a. a shadow, and I want to make sure that I look at the wardrobe and what I'm doing with the room. So I have workflows that I've put together that are filled with checklists for each stage of the journey.

And so if a pastor's thinking about getting started, number one, you're already doing 90% of the work with your weekly sermon prep. You're already taking the ancient scripture and applying it to a contemporary situation So if you're putting ten hours into your sermon prep take an extra half an hour and record three Shorts about the you know from that content You've already done the work and I think I always hate to suggest that pastors do more work If you can do this before your weekend preaching your weekend preaching is going to be better because it forced you to distill it into 30, 60 second snippets. And once you're able to do that, you understand the material better and you're going to preach better as a result. Um, but use that and just, you know, whatever you do, get started, do it.

You're going to, you're going to be terrible at it when you get started. The only way pass it is through it. So just do it, do it consistently and don't stop. Great advice.

And if anyone wants to find your content Ministry Insights in any of the places, where should they look? So if you go to youtube.com slash at sermon view, that's our YouTube channel. All the Ministry Insight Ministry Insight episodes are there on video. If you were to Google sermon view Ministry Insights, you're going to find the blog post.

You're going to find the audio podcast. You'll find the YouTube channel. If you go to sermonview.com, under training, there's a drop down, it says ministry insights, you go there, you can find it. And people can follow me, feel free to put up my social handles, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X, I post there all the time.

All right, Larry, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being so generous with all of that experience. So thank you. Thanks, Luke.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Blue Vineyard Podcast. For more episodes or information about our services, please visit BlueVineyard.com.