Month: February 2019

The Moral Checklist

Merianna and Sam discuss old friends, new parenting techniques while attempting to figure out what makes the church different from the garden club.

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Episode 151: Debating Narrative Preaching

Merianna and Sam (and newborn Baby Girl) discuss insider language in denominations, the LGBTQ question facing the United Methodist Church, narrative preaching, and the difficulties of studying for a sermon in 2019 in the age of unlimited entertainment.

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Episode 150: True Love Waits For Instagram Stories to Load

Merianna and Sam tackle Instagram Stories, performative social media, and generational gender divides in reading the Scripture.

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Does Your Nonprofit or Church Need an Alexa Skill?

Anyone can create a trivia game and share it on the Alexa store.

Source: Amazon opens up Alexa store for anyone to create and publish custom skills – The Verge

Nifty new capability now for anyone to script out an Alexa Skill. I’ve been telling clients that they should really consider “voice first” capabilities when thinking about their messaging and marketing. It’s not a bad idea to really think about the possibilities for churches and nonprofits as more and more people adapt to the Alexa / Google Assistant / Siri paradigm of computing (and it will inevitably be the main form of home computing).

Episode 149: Insta Bible Study

Merianna and Sam discuss Instagram Bible studies, reading the whole Bible in a year, and the search for authenticity in a time of societal shifts.

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Podcasting’s Big Moment

It’s probably the biggest news in the podcast industry since it began in earnest, because it’s such a huge play from a company with an existing network outside of Apple’s. Plenty of podcast startups have come and gone, but what’s unique here is Spotify could help the format reach millions of new users overnight.

Source: Spotify: podcast giant or giant distraction? – Charged

Instagram egg is worth “at least $10M”

Some days… I just don’t know… wow.

Marketers, however, are taking the bait. Nik Sharma, the head of DTC at VaynerMedia, told The Atlantic, “being the first brand to crack out of the egg is worth at least $10 million.” He went on to say that businesses, in fact, should “spend on the egg instead of the Super Bowl.” Read that again, because that’s a quote a supposedly human being made about a picture of an egg!

Source: VaynerMedia exec: Instagram egg is worth “at least $10M”