Ministry At Scale
The Ministry at Scale Podcast brings you the latest trends, interviews with experts and practical tips to help your ministry multiply it's impact. Brought to you by Five Q a digital agency with a kingdom impact. If you want to know how to grow your ministry in the digital space this podcast is for you.
#101 - 115,000 Beliefs Tracked | Matthew Ward
Most Christians know that they believe — but far fewer can clearly articulate why. Matt Ward, founder and CEO of BeliefTrack, built a free web-based platform to change that — and what started as a personal faith inventory has grown into a powerful discipleship and leadership vetting tool for churches. In this episode of Ministry at Scale, Chad Williams sits down with Matt to explore how a simple question — "What do I actually believe?" — became a tool that has tracked over 115,000 individual Christian beliefs.
Key Takeaways
A personal faith journey sparked a ministry-sized tool. Nearly 10 years ago, Matt beg...
#102 - Better Text Marketing With AI | Aaron Dolton
What if the content your ministry already has — sitting untouched on a shelf — could reach more people, deepen engagement, and activate brand-new donors, all through a channel with a 98% open rate?
In this DMC 2026 session, Aaron Dolton of Powered by Text shares a real-world case study with Jack Graham's PowerPoint Ministries that proves ministry-first strategy doesn't just honor the mission — it funds it.
Key Takeaways
"Money follows mission" is more than a ministry philosophy — it's a proven fundraising strategy. PowerPoint Ministries built their entire SMS strategy on a 90/10 rule: 90% ministry content, 10% fundraising. The results...
#100 - Solving Problems With AI Innovation| Don Barger
What does a hotel key card have to do with 400,000 people hearing the gospel? Don Barger, Director of Innovation and Artificial Intelligence at the International Mission Board (IMB), shares the unexpected story of how one small, tangible idea helped one of the world's largest missions organizations go from AI skepticism to full-scale adoption — in just a few years.
Key Takeaways
Easy wins change everything. The IMB's first AI pilots were deliberately small — translation of internal communications, a digital responder, and donor processing — and those quick wins gave skeptics something real to believe in before any large...
#99 - Why 95% of AI Projects Fail | Gregory Richardson
95% of AI projects are failing — and your ministry can't afford to be part of that statistic. Gregory Richardson, founder of Six Levers Consulting and a 35-year veteran of cybersecurity and technology leadership, brings a rare combination of deep tech expertise and unashamed Christian faith to one of the most important conversations in ministry today. This episode will challenge the way you think about AI, risk, and what it means to be a faithful steward of technology.
Key Takeaways
Gregory has sat in the boardrooms of companies like Blackberry and McAfee, served ministries like Global Media Ou...
#98 - From Siloed Data to 25% Donor Growth | Nathan Hill
Your ministry is stretched thin, your data is scattered across disconnected tools, and your donor acquisition budget may be reaching the wrong people. In this session from the Digital Ministry Conference, Nathan Hill of AVID walks through a real-world case study showing how Bible League Canada decreased their cost to acquire a new donor by 20% — and grew new donors by 25% — by unifying their tech stack and adding AI-powered automation.
Key Takeaways
New donors are worth far more than year one. Based on data from 43 ministries representing approximately $1.4 billion in annual revenue, the average first-year donor give...
#97 - Jake Carlson: AI Evangelism in Action — 140,000 Gospel Conversations a Month
What if your ministry could share the gospel with someone in a closed country at 2 a.m. — in their heart language — without a single missionary present? Jake Carlson, founder of The Apologist Project, is already doing it. In this session from the Digital Ministry Conference 2026, Jake shares how conversational AI is becoming a force multiplier for the Great Commission — and why the parable of the talents applies directly to how your ministry approaches this technology.
Key Takeaways
AI can meet seekers where they are — geographically, linguistically, and spiritually. Over two-thirds of the world's population is online...
#96 - Saved for Good Works: How Toby Weiss Built a Tech Career in Service of the Kingdom
Most ministries don't have a technology problem — they have a strategy problem. Toby Weiss, Co-Founder and CEO of Rooted Software, spent 14 years as the Global CIO of Jews for Jesus before launching a company with one purpose: helping ministries stop patch-working technology together and start wielding it strategically. In this episode, Toby shares what he's learned across hundreds of ministry engagements — and why the hardest part of a CRM rollout has nothing to do with software.
Key Takeaways
The "hodgepodge" trap is real — and costly. Ministries often solve technology problems one at a time, leading to a p...
#95 - Faithfully Leading in Big Tech with Rich Robison
What does it look like to carry your faith into one of the most skeptical environments on earth—and actually lead a movement there? Rich Robison is an Engineering Manager at a major big tech company, and he didn't choose to work there. God closed every other door until he finally listened. In this episode, Rich shares what happens when you fully surrender your career to God—and how the mission field might be closer than you think.
Key Takeaways
God's leading doesn't always look like a clear path forward. Rich spent six months resi...#94 - Faith and AI with Yvonne Carlson
In this episode of Ministry at Scale, host Chad Williams interviews Yvonne Carlson, the Chief Technology Officer at Global Media Outreach (GMO) and co-director of the Missional AI Conference. Together, they explore the intersection of technology, faith, and the transformative potential of AI in ministry.
Key Takeaways
Yvonne’s Journey: From childhood curiosity in her father's garage to becoming a CTO, Yvonne discusses how her passion for technology and missions led her to GMO.
The GMO AI Strategy: Yvonne emphasizes starting with vision and mission over technical questions, detailing how GMO developed an AI...
#93 - Blending AI with AU: Pathway to Victory’s Secret Formula for Engaging Hispanics
Featuring Kendell Stellfox, Executive Director of Partnerships with Kerux Group
Recorded live at the Digital Ministry Conference 2025.
In this insightful session from the 2025 Digital Ministry Conference, Kendell Stellfox—Executive Director of Partnerships at The Kerux Group—challenges ministry leaders to stop and consider not just what content they produce, but who it's for and how it’s received. As demographic shifts redefine our cultural landscape, Kendell unpacks the critical need to contextualize ministry content in a way that meaningfully connects with emerging audiences—especially the growing Latino population in the U.S.
Rather than sim...
#92 - 5 Ways to Repurpose Your Content with AI
Featuring Kenny Jahng, Founder of AI for Church Leaders
Recorded live at the Digital Ministry Conference 2025.
In this practical and fast-paced session from the 2025 Digital Ministry Conference, Kenny Jahng—AI educator and founder of AI for Church Leaders—demystifies artificial intelligence for ministry teams by showing how it can help multiply content without multiplying effort. With real-world examples and contagious energy, Kenny shares five proven ways ministries can repurpose existing content using today's AI tools—making what you already have go further and work harder across platforms.
Using his MIX framework (Modular, Interactive, Cross...
#91 - Using AI Chat for Ministry
Featuring Chase Cappo, Director of Enterprise AI Division, and Brianne Shaw, Senior Product Marketing Manager, with Gloo AI
Recorded live at the Digital Ministry Conference 2025.
In this inspiring and practical session from the 2025 Digital Ministry Conference, Brianne Shaw and Chase Cappo from Gloo AI unpack the remarkable ways ministries are already using conversational AI to deepen engagement, spark gospel conversations, and meet people in their moment of need. Framed around three key questions—Is AI good or bad? What can it do? And how can my ministry use it?—this session moves quickly from theory to te...
#90 - How to get a 360 View of Your Audience
Featuring Josh Kashorek, Five Q
Recorded live at the Digital Ministry Conference 2025.
In this insightful session from the 2025 Digital Ministry Conference, Josh Kashorek—Director of Marketing at Five Q—invites ministry marketers into the world of unified data strategy. Using the analogy of a puzzle, Josh challenges ministries to think beyond their CRMs and instead explore how disconnected data across platforms is limiting their ability to truly understand audience behavior.
With humor, clarity, and deep experience in performance marketing, Josh shares how many ministries are sitting on a goldmine of underutilized insights. Drawing from...
#89 - Biblical Framework for Understanding and Using Artificial Intelligence
Featuring John Dyer, Dallas Theological Seminary
Recorded live at the Digital Ministry Conference 2025.
In a thought-provoking keynote from the 2025 Digital Ministry Conference, John Dyer—programmer, theologian, and Vice President at Dallas Theological Seminary—explores the complex intersection of faith, humanity, and artificial intelligence. Far from another tech how-to session, this talk lays a deeply biblical foundation for how Christian leaders can approach AI not with fear or naïveté, but with wisdom, humility, and theological clarity.
Dyer walks ministry leaders through a full biblical framework—from creation to redemption—to challenge the common myth that...
#88 - Using Data to Tell Your Story
Featuring Daniel Jenkins, President, and Kristin Sukraw, Chief Storytelling Officer at StoryFind Films
Recorded live at the Digital Ministry Conference 2025.
In this engaging session from the 2025 Digital Ministry Conference, Daniel and Kristin explore the intersection of storytelling and data, offering powerful insights into how ministry leaders can use data to amplify the impact of their stories. Drawing from real-world experiences, including a heartwarming story of a young girl receiving a Braille Bible, they show how intertwining compelling data with storytelling can drive engagement, inspire action, and bring about measurable change.
Integrating data into...
#87 - From Text to Voice: How Truth for Life is Using Voice Cloning
Featuring Sarah Sharp and Mike Costlow, Truth for Life
Recorded live at the Digital Ministry Conference 2025.
When Truth For Life wanted to turn Alistair Begg’s two-year devotional series into an audio experience, they faced a challenge: time constraints made it impossible for Alistair to voice hundreds of entries himself. In this Digital Ministry Conference session, Mike and Sarah share how Truth For Life tackled this problem by responsibly and creatively adopting voice-cloning technology.
Rather than starting with a tech trend, they began with a ministry need—and brought in Theotech founder Chris Lim...
#86 - Using Data to Drive Your Social Media Strategy
Featuring Chris Martin, Director of Content, Moody Global Media
Recorded live at the Digital Ministry Conference 2025.
In this compelling session from the 2025 Digital Ministry Conference, Chris Martin—veteran digital strategist and content leader at Moody Global Media—pulls back the curtain on how ministry teams can use data not just to drive vanity metrics, but to deepen real connections with their audiences.
With transparency and humor, Chris recounts lessons from the infamous "pivot to video" era and how platforms like Facebook once inflated metrics by up to 900%. He uses this cautionary tale to high...
#85 - Bible Engagement in the Digital Nations with Adam Graber
Featuring Adam Graber, Christianity Tomorrow & Co-Host of Device & Virtue Podcast
Recorded live at the Digital Ministry Conference 2025
How do we saturate the digital world with Scripture? In this episode of the Ministry at Scale Podcast, Adam Graber unpacks findings from groundbreaking research conducted in partnership with the British and Foreign Bible Society. With a deep understanding of digital theology and years of experience consulting ministries worldwide, Adam reveals the current state of Bible engagement across 27 “digital nations” — platforms with over 70 million monthly users — and outlines where the greatest gaps and opportunities lie.
Listeners will dis...
#84 - The Rise of Sustainable Giving - Dave Raley with Imago Consulting
Dave Raley of Imago Consulting works with nonprofit and business leaders to help them grow
revenue profitably. His mission is to help nonprofits and businesses identify and understand
opportunities, develop new strategies, and launch new products and initiatives.
In this episode of The Ministry of Scale podcast, Chad Williams interviews Dave whose
upcoming book, The Rise of Sustainable Giving, explores how the subscription economy model
is transforming nonprofit fundraising. Raley draws parallels between the widespread adoption of subscription services (like Netflix or Spotify) and the increasing comfort with recurring<...
#83 - Digital Ministry Benchmarks: Key Insights from the Ministry of Skill Podcast
Josh Kashorek is the Marketing Director at Five Q, a digital marketing agency focused on helping ministries reach more people online. With over 15 years of experience in digital strategy, analytics, and marketing, Josh brings valuable expertise to this topic.
In this episode, Josh shares insights from Five Q's annual Ministry Benchmark Study, analyzing digital metrics across over 1,000 ministries. Here are some of the key topics covered:
The Continued Importance of SEO
Nearly 70% of ministries gained rankings for keywords in Google's top 100 search results this year, up from 50% last year. Josh emphasizes that SEO rem...
#82 - Mapping the Donor Journey with Empathy with Kedron Rhodes
Kedron Rhodes, Director of Digital Experiences at Crowe LLP, has over 25 years of expertise in optimizing customer journeys. In this insightful episode, he shares a powerful framework for enhancing donor relationships through empathetic experiences. Here are some key topics covered:
Why Cultivating Donor Empathy is Crucial
Kedron emphasizes the importance of stepping outside your own perspective to truly understand how donors feel at each touchpoint. He provides examples of how changing expectations can create mismatched experiences over time.
Building an Empathy Map for Your Donor Persona
Kedron guides listeners through developing a re...
#81 - Embracing the "Christitunity" of AI with Josh Kashorek
Josh Kashorek is the Director of Marketing at Five Q, a platform helping organizations leverage no-code tools and automation. His creative mindset and technical skills converge in an insightful perspective on how ministries can steward AI for greater impact. In this thought-provoking episode, Josh shares:
The Existential Crisis Inspiring His AI Experiments
Josh opens by recounting the "minor existential crisis" sparked by a report predicting that up to 70% of work activities could be automated by 2030. As someone in marketing/communications, he wondered if his skills were becoming obsolete. This led him to dive into exploring AI...
#80 - AI Innovations Changing the Game for Churches with Josh Burnett of Church.tech
Josh Burnett is the founder of Church.tech, an AI-powered platform helping churches streamline operations and engage people more effectively. Drawing from his background in ministry and entrepreneurship, Josh brings a unique perspective on leveraging technology for greater kingdom impact. In this insightful episode, he shares:
How AI Transcribes, Summarizes and Generates Discussion Content
One of Church.tech's core features is the ability to upload sermon videos and instantly generate transcripts, summaries, discussion questions and more using advanced AI models. Josh walks through a live demo showing how churches can quickly create robust small group...
#79 - Innovate with Purpose: Insights from Dave Raley of Imago Consulting
Dave Raley is the founder of Imago Consulting, helping organizations innovate to grow their impact. He draws from over a decade of experience leading a digital team at a major nonprofit agency. Dave is also the author of the Weekly Wave Report on innovation trends and co-host of the Purpose and Profit podcast. In this insightful episode, Dave shares:
Why an "Outside Mindset" is Critical for Innovation
Dave emphasizes the importance of looking beyond your expertise to see problems differently. He shares how his narrow perspective as a fundraiser initially blinded him to insights from...
#78 - How to Turn Your Sermons into Engaging Social Media Content with Corey Alderin
Corey Alderin is the founder of Sermon Shots, a platform that helps churches transform their full sermons into popular short-form video content for Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. In this hands-on workshop, Corey shares his expertise on leveraging AI to create thumb-stopping, engaging clips that reach people where they are consuming content.
Why Vertical Video Content Matters Now More Than Ever
Corey highlights the seismic shift happening in social media, where follower count doesn't determine who sees your content. The AI algorithms analyze each video's content and match it with the right au...
#77 - Personalized Engagement: The Key to Spiritual Transformation with Arnie Cole
Arnie Cole is a social scientist and researcher at Back to the Bible, who has studied the spiritual lives of over 1.5 million people over the past 20 years. In this insightful episode, he challenges ministries to truly understand the spiritual state of the people they serve in order to help move them closer to Jesus.
The Importance of Asking "How Are You Doing Spiritually?"
Through examples from his own family's equestrian ministry, Arnie highlights how children are remarkably open about their spiritual struggles, but something happens as they become adults and stop sharing. He argues it...
#76 - Leveraging AI to Increase Biblical Engagement with Andrew Rogers of BibleChat.ai
Andrew Rogers is the co-founder of BibleChat.ai, an innovative app that uses AI to help people engage more deeply with the Bible. With over 75,000 downloads and users in 188 countries, BibleChat has been pioneering the use of artificial intelligence for Christian ministry. In this insightful episode, Andrew shares:
The Alarming Decline of Biblical Literacy
Andrew highlights shocking statistics like 26 million Americans stopping Bible reading since COVID and only a third being able to name the four gospel books. This Biblical illiteracy crisis represents both a huge problem and massive opportunity.
Introducing Faith Assistant...
#75 - How to bring Joy to Your Donors - Jeff Kliewer of ViewSPARK
Jeff Kliewer is the founder of ViewSpark. He has worked in fundraising for over 30 years and brings much experience to this episode. Jeff has taken his experience with fundraising and, through ViewSpark, has put a powerful way to connect with your donors right at your fingertips. In this episode, Jeff shares a variety of topics, including:
Why Customer Feedback is Critical for Innovation
Jeff shares how ViewSpark customers started using the product in ways he had never imagined and how those experiences have helped shape their product development.
How Real-time...
#74 - The Four Practices of Responseive Fundraising - Aly Hammond & Chip Johnston with Virtuous
During this talk given at the Digital Ministry Conference in 2022, Aly Hammond & Chip Johnston from Virtuous provide 8 responsive mindsets that ministries and organizations can utilize to solve some of the big problems that many non profits are facing today.
Personal For All
How do we treat all donors the way we treat major donors? This doesn’t mean you’ll have the capacity to take all your donors to dinner, but it does mean you can send every donor a personal thank you email, call and text. If you have hundreds of thousands of people in y...
Why Conversion Tracking Matters with Anthony Elliott from Five Q
Anthony Elliot is a senior software developer at Five Q. On today’s episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, Anthony joins Chad to talk about conversion tracking and why it’s so important.
For many people unfamiliar with conversion tracking, there’s one big question: what are conversions?
As Anthony put it, it has similarities to a spiritual conversion. Much like how a spiritual conversion involves a person on a journey through life interacting with something that causes a change, a conversion on a website happens when a user comes to a site...
#72 - 4 Steps to Preparing Your Ministry for Disasters with Pete Marra from Colson Center
In this session from the Digital Ministry Conference, Pete Marra, the Vice President of Innovation at the Colson Center discusses how to get started with risk mitigation for your ministry.
Your Ministry is Like the Three Little Pigs
In the story of the three little pigs, each pig picked different materials to build their house, one used straw, another used sticks and the last pig used bricks. When the Big Bad Wolf stopped by and began huffing and puffing the results were often disastrous for the little pigs. Your ministry is likely built on straw, s...
#71 - Your Ministry and Web3, Blockchain and the Metaverse - John Cobb of Ligonier Ministries
John Cobb is the Vice President at Ligonier ministries. He started looking into Web3, Blockchain and the Metaverse simply as a way to understand what they are and how they could impact ministries going forward. What he found is that there are three main buckets he thinks ministries should be considering. The three categories are community, content and censorship.
Community
When he first began he discovered NFTs since he has an interest in art and photography but found that it goes beyond the art, NFTs can also be used to build community and show membership i...
#70 - How to Develop a Communication Strategy - Cheryl Brunkow with Bethany International
Marketing Communications can be a critical part of your ministry. It ensures your message is presented effectively, all of your resources are consistent so you can stand out in a sea of other organizations and that your materials are engaging your audience. In this episode we speak with Cheryl Brunkow, the Marketing & Communications director at Bethany International, and she shares her five C’s for building an effective communications strategy.
The five C’s for effective communications are clear, clean, concise, consistent and creative. Be sure to listen to the full episode as Cheryl gives very practical advi...
#64 -- The Power of Identity -- Shea Bynes with Kingdom Driven Entrepreneurs
Shae Bynes is the Chief Fire Igniter and founder of the Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur movement. On this episode of the Ministry at Scale Podcast, Chad sits down with Shae to talk about what a kingdom culture looks like and how to focus on using a kingdom approach to business.
In 2009, God told Shae to quit her corporate job at IBM.
She originally started out as a software engineer and had continued to work her way up in the company, but she knew it was God telling her to move on because it...
#69 - Personalizing Your User's Experience with Sam Rinearson of Bott Radio Network
During his time at Bott Radio Network, the director of marketing Sam Rinearson came to speak at the Digital Ministry Conference in 2022. He taught how to personalize your user's experience in a way to build connection and to increase your number of divine appointments every day.
Personalization is defined as “the process of tailoring a message or an experience to each individual which speaks directly to their needs, interests, and concerns.” In today’s day and age, we’ve come to expect personalization. On Netflix, we expect to be told what to watch based on our watch history...
#68 - 6 Rules of Employee Engagement - Ken Coleman with Ramsey Solutions
Ken Coleman is America’s Career Coach, the #1 national bestselling author of The Proximity Principle and From Paycheck to Purpose, and host of The Ken Coleman Show. Ken helps people discover what they were born to do and provides practical steps to make their dream job a reality. During this talk given at the Digital Ministry Conference in the spring of 2022, Ken spoke about the 6 rules of employee engagement and gave lots of practical tips about how to ensure employees feel valued, cared for, and passionate about their work.
The Purpose Rule: Your people should be using what th...
#67 - Using Social to Maximize Your Reach - Chris Martin with Moody Publishers
Chris Martin is the content marketing editor at Moody Publishers. From his talk at the 2022 Digital Ministry Conference, Chris shares some practical tips for maximizing your reach using social media.
Just a few years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to reach a high percentage of your followers on social media with just a single post. Reaching 50% of your followers was not unheard of. Today, however, the average organic Facebook post reaches about 5% of followers. The best way to use Meta is to free yourself from Meta. If we learn to use social media as a means to an...
#66 - Path to Innovation - Tabitha Kapic with Chalmers Center
Tabitha Kapic is the Director of Innovation at the Chalmers center. In this talk from the 2022 Digital Ministry Conference in Nashville, she talks about design thinking and how teams can be better at innovation.
Be the solution
What if teams started asking the question "What do people need?" rather than "What can I give people?"
Get uncomfortable
Design thinking can be uncomfortable if you’re not used to it. Tabitha uses drawing in the creative innovation process with the Chalmers center and many times, teams don’t feel comfortable drawing out thei...
#65 - Embrace the Race - Chad Williams with Five Q
On this episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, we hear a talk given by Chad Williams from the 2022 Digital Ministry Conference held in Nashville. Chad is the founder and CEO of Five Q and gave this talk on the opening night of the conference based on the theme of the conference: Embrace the Race.
Chad used the story of his son Josiah’s high school running career to teach about some deeper principles. Since Josiah started cross country his freshmen year, he grew to love the sport and really wanted to push himself to improve and be...
#62 - How S-O-C-I-A-L Are You? - Heather Heuman with Sweet Tea Social Marketing
Heather Heuman got her start in the digital marketing space 22 years ago. After working as a special education teacher, she switched career paths and began work at a digital marketing firm. After beginning a business of her own, she began to grow that business using her digital marketing experience and started helping other businesses do the same. For the past 7 years she has been helping businesses grow using social media with her digital marketing firm called Sweet Tea Social Marketing.
In this interview, Heather shares about how you can do social media well and how can you...
