Explore the key factors influencing church growth and religious trends with social scientist Ryan Burge, featuring insights on data-driven decision-making and effective communication in Episode 102 of MyCom.
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In this episode
It’s a data-driven conversation with Ryan Burge, a social scientist and minister, who explores the intricate factors influencing church growth and decline. Burge sheds light on how external demographics, strategic church planting, and the balance between divine calling and data-driven decisions shape religious communities. The episode also covers clergy satisfaction, positive chaplaincy experiences, the evolving religious landscape, and how Substack fosters meaningful audience engagement. Don’t miss this insightful discussion on the complexities of religion in modern society.
Ryan Burge is an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, and author of over thirty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters alongside four books about religion and politics in the United States. He has written for the New York Times, POLITICO, and the Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared in an NBC Documentary, on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, as well as 60 Minutes which called him, “one of the country’s leading data analysts on religion and politics.” He has served as a pastor in the American Baptist Church for over twenty years. Ryan authors the very influential Substack, Graphs about Religion.
Some of Ryan Dunn's favorite Graphs about Religion posts:
- Are people really lonely and miserable? (subscription required)
- "I'm spiritual but not religious"
- Does religion generate higher levels of self-reported well being?
In this episode:
(00:00) Guide pastors to think like social scientists.
(06:39) Churches largely apolitical; misconceptions about religion exist.
(08:18) Context influences church growth more than efforts.
(17:16) Bridging religious and non-religious through impartiality.
(18:45) The numbers readers care about.
(23:45) Email remains essential, resilient against platform changes.
(28:23) Recommended podcast episodes for digital strategies.
Related episodes:
- [82] Techniques for getting to know your audience
- [97] YouTube tools and strategies
- Pastoring in the Digital Parish: Planting digital first, Substack and Oikon Church
Episode transcript
Ryan Dunn [00:00:03]:Welcome to the MyCOM Church Marketing Podcast. The podcast for outreach, communications, social media, and new technologies to bring your congregation into the digital age. My name is Ryan Dunn, and we're going to meet another Ryan in this podcast. Yeah. Ryan Berge is his name. Mr. Berge is a social scientist and expert in religious data who explores the fascinating world of religious trends and statistics. This Ryan is the creator behind the popular Substack newsletter graphs about religion.
Ryan Dunn [00:00:35]:
And he's gonna share his journey from tweeting data insights, to building a substantial following through the newsletter. We hit on all kinds of topics, including the factors influencing church growth, the importance of understanding broader trends in religion and utilizing Substack for communicating effectively. I think this conversation really is packed with insights that challenge conventional thinking and offer some fresh perspectives on the state of religion, whether you're deeply entrenched in church leadership or just interested in the current religious landscape. This episode is sure to provide some helpful takeaways besides creating graphs about religion. Ryan Birch has authored over 30 peer reviewed articles and book chapters alongside 4 books about religion and politics in the United States. He is ordained in the American Baptist church and currently works as an associate professor at Eastern Illinois University. Let's get into it. It's a data driven discussion with Ryan Berg.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:40]:
Well, Ryan, thank you so much for jumping on with us on the Mycom podcast. Let's start with this. Tell me about graphs about religion. What is your mission there?
Ryan Burge [00:01:52]:
World domination.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:54]:
Yes. How's that going?
Ryan Burge [00:01:57]:
It's going okay. I mean, the world's a big place. It's hard to dominate, I suppose. My goal is just to I mean, my my adventure through this whole world has been sort of circuitous, and it's not really been in a straight line. And started out, you know, just tweeting, and that led to a website called religion in public with another academic named Paul Jupp. And then, eventually, I decide I saw Substack sort of, like, blowing up and becoming this thing. And I thought, you know, like, I like tweets, but sometimes tweets are misinterpreted. I don't have enough space there to kind of expound upon my thoughts or dig through different ideas.
Ryan Burge [00:02:36]:
And so the sub stack basically became a way for me to, like, just flesh out some ideas in a more complete way. And I started it, April of 2023, and it's really grown exponentially. I have 16,000 free subscribers now, and it's in the top 25 religion, newsletters in the world. And it's just been it's been great, man. The goal there is just to to kinda help the average person understand religion in a way they probably don't understand it now. Yeah. I'm train I'm a kind of a classically trained social scientist. So, I mean, I took research methods.
Ryan Burge [00:03:06]:
I wrote a dissertation. I published in in journal art. You know? And so my job is to kinda tell pastors, like, for a long time, you have been, you kinda I I think the problem is, like, the most dangerous person on earth is someone who does something very part time. He'll just see a statistic and repeat it, and, and, like, what went behind it, and what are things they need to utilize things. So I guess my goal is just try to help the average person just think more like a social scientist when we talk about these problems and just help them understand the world. I would say my goal is to be as objective as possible, as neutral as possible. My my goal is to make everyone mad and everyone happy. I don't really care how you feel, to be honest with you, when you read my stuff.
Ryan Burge [00:03:49]:
I mean, I want you to be entertained and informed. But beyond that, I really don't care. As long as I do the methods right and and come to, you know, being an honest broker of what the data says, then everything else is is on the reader. Know, like, what do I do with this? Or what does this mean? My answer is I don't know. That's your job to figure out and I sort of love that, like, roll the grenade in the room and just walk away and let everyone else try to figure out what that means for society and the church and, you know, politics and everything else.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:19]:
Yeah. Well, as much as you try to be objective in in reading your stuff like that does come across, but you do care about the church, we kind of get that as well. So let's maybe make people mad a little bit first. Like, as you look through some of the the trends that you keep uncovering through this research, like, what are the things that you're seeing that it's like you just wish the church would hear you on? Like, what are they missing?
Ryan Burge [00:04:48]:
Gosh. So much stuff. One that just pops in my mind to just today is, like, I wish that evangelical pastors would stop calling the mainline liberal. I just think that's such a, like, a such a stupid thing, honestly. Like, at this point, it's almost like you're purposely being ignorant of what the data says because I've been pushing this out for literally 7 or 8 years now. Like, the the main line, you know, for those listeners who are on the main lines like the Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, United Methodist Church, American Baptist, ELCA, PCUSA. The the the knock against them forever is when they are super liberal, super liberal. 52% of members of the Presbyterian Church USA voted for Donald Trump in 2020.
Ryan Burge [00:05:31]:
58% of United Methodist voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Stop saying things that are factually false. Like, you've got you don't and and at some point, you can claim ignorance to a to a point. And then to me, it just it just falls into malice. And I think that's one of the things that really grumps me about, like, evangelicals, especially, is they want to identify the mainline is the reason they're failing is because they're liberal, and that's not what they are. There are actually a lot of them are purple churches. Yeah. Which is exactly what evangelicals used to be 30 years ago, by the way.
Ryan Burge [00:06:03]:
So that's just one that pops in my mind. But, I mean, there's all kinds of stuff, like all the nones are atheists. Mhmm. You know, I could go on and on. Black Protestants are liberals. No, they're not. They're actually moderate Democrats. I wrote a whole book about this.
Ryan Burge [00:06:18]:
I wrote a book called 20 Mis Art Religion and Politics in America. And, like, I could probably write a 60 myths about religion and politics in America right now. One is that people become more religious as they age. That's factually false. They actually become less religious as they age. Every birth cohort is less religious today than they were 20 years ago. You know, there's just tons and tons. Oh, politics and the church.
Ryan Burge [00:06:39]:
You know, nonreligious people think that, like, churches are political meetings, and, we ask, weekly churchgoers. We gave a list of 15 issues, political issues ranging from, like, poverty to immigration to, one was even voting. Right? So it was the most basic political issue that exists. And, 55% of our sample had heard their pastor speak about 0 or one of those 15 issues in the prior 12 months. So the vast majority of churches are largely apolitical. And I think people just misunderstand religion, and they wanna cast upon the worst version of it, which is unfair to religion. And, honestly, like, again, my goal is just to tell you you're wrong. You know? Like, your understanding of the world is based on your own biases and your own bubbles and your own perception.
Ryan Burge [00:07:26]:
My job is to kinda fly out with a drone and say, no. No. No. Let me look at let me show you the broad landscape and see where you where you live in a bubble and where you don't.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:37]:
You've been engaged in the ministry. What's something that you've come across that you wish you had known years ago?
Ryan Burge [00:07:46]:
It's not all my fault. You know? Like Beautiful. Yeah. Like, that's honestly, like, a huge part of it, though, is I I I grew up I grew up Southern Baptist and became an American Baptist in my early twenties, and I I've had I've been on staff of 3 American Baptist churches. 2 of the 3 don't exist anymore, and the third one will probably close in the next 5 years. And, I mean, there's really only 2 ways to look at that. 1, I'm the worst pastor in the history of the world, or there's a lot of things, which might be true, by the way, or that a lot of things are just against me. You know what I mean? There was a lot of headwinds.
Ryan Burge [00:08:18]:
And and a lot of times, like, your church growth is probably not all you're doing nor all your fault. You know? And, actually, I I as a social scientist, we're trained to think about, like, the environment as much as so the in in social science, you talk about the idea of, like, institutional influence versus individual influence. And, like, we have to understand that you're all born into a a context. Right? And, you know, Billy Graham one of the reasons Billy Graham, we know his name now is because he was born at the perfect time to be the most famous evangelist in American history. You know, he was in his late thirties during the peak of the baby boom in the post war period. Like, you could not have asked for a better timing than that. If you would have been born 20 years earlier, 20 years later, you probably would have never heard of Billy Graham before. And so, you know, as a pastor in a church, I think people need to be painfully aware of is your community growing? Is it declining? What how is it growing? How is it declining? Is it older? Is it educated? Is it uneducated? What's the income like? All those things will probably have a larger bearing on the size of your church in 5 years than how many hours you spend on sermon preparation or outreach ministries or anything else.
Ryan Burge [00:09:34]:
And I think that's the real key is, like, it's not all your fault. It's a lot of macro level forces that you have no control over. So control what you can control and do what you can do, but then don't stress about the rest of it. Leave that to somebody else.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:47]:
Have you been able to dive deep on commonalities of churches who are growing? Like, is it really just kind of related to geography or placement?
Ryan Burge [00:09:59]:
Absolutely. Like, I wrote a whole post. Like, here's a formula for growing a successful church. And the formula is basically, like, find a community that's growing population wise. And the way I did this, by the way, is I looked at Outreach Magazine's list of the fastest growing churches in America over the last 5 years Yeah. And just did, like, county level analysis of where those churches are. And there's huge commonalities in that. It's population growth.
Ryan Burge [00:10:23]:
It's, high levels of education. So you wanna have about 35% of people in your county have a college degree. It's a little bit of, mobility, population mobility, which means you'll move some, but not too much. And it's, it's really a combination of those factors. If you if you plant a church, let's say like in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, you're gonna have an easier time growing than if you plant a church in rural Pennsylvania. You know what I mean? So like, can you grow a church in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania? Sure. I'm not saying you can't. But, man, it's gonna be a whole heck of a lot harder than if you you're, you know, a community where population is growing 2% a year or 3% a year, and you got good college degrees.
Ryan Burge [00:11:05]:
So I mean, I think you just gotta be very clear about, there are places, you know, actually in the end of that post, I think I listed, like, 45 counties that meet all the criteria. So, like, if you wanna go plant a church or one now the pushback I get, well, what if God did not ask me to plant a church or one of those counties? I go, well, then good luck. You know, like you should go where God calls you to go. I, you know, I firmly believe that, but I also believe that God gave us data for a reason. You know, and he gave us logic and and and knowledge for a reason. So you might as well make a good decision, you know, a a more successful decision. And that's really where I fit into the whole thing is, like, I can give you all the menu, and then you get to pick from what I lay out there for you.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:51]:
Being both a church leader, or having been involved in church leadership and and a social researcher, has there been some data that you've come across or even trends that you've observed that have just really kind of surprised you or blown you away in a way?
Ryan Burge [00:12:09]:
Yeah. Recently, I wrote a post. It was about clergy satisfaction. You know, like, it was just like a a question of it was a whole bunch of clergy. You gotta ask all these questions about, like, do you feel relatively satisfied with your life, you know, and and and things like that? And honest to goodness, pastors by and large are doing okay. You know? They they weren't this whole, like, you know, the the clerk there's gonna be this huge clergy problem and, you know, and we're gonna we we are, by the way, but that's not because of satisfaction. It's just because a lot of young people aren't religious. And if they're not religious, then they can't you know, the number of potential pastors goes down.
Ryan Burge [00:12:44]:
But the pastors, especially and you know who are the happiest is the older pastors. I guess part of it is you self select out of the ministry if you hate it. You know?
Ryan Dunn [00:12:52]:
That's true.
Ryan Burge [00:12:54]:
But at the end of the day, like, I I read that and go, man, Pastoring is not that bad of a gig at all. And then I wrote a post last week about, chaplaincy. Yeah. There was a great survey about, like, have you interacted with a chaplain? And only about a third of Americans have interacted with a chaplain in their lives. But among those who who have, like, something like 90% said it was a good experience. You know? And he asked, like, was they were they compassionate? Were they helpful? Were they you know, all these things. And, like, 90% of people said yes. They were compassionate.
Ryan Burge [00:13:20]:
They were helpful. And I'm you know? So, like, ministers are still, I think, kind of I don't think they're as bad off as we think they are. You know, they're not in the same category as, like, car salesman or congress or something like that. I think they're still even non religious people have some respect for the ministry. And it seems like there are people who are being benefited still from, you know, interactions with pastors.
Ryan Dunn [00:13:48]:
Take me through the process a little bit. I'm fascinated by, like, what are the mechanisms that you have available to you where you are able to see this data?
Ryan Burge [00:14:01]:
So almost everything I do is publicly available, honestly. Like, I would say, like, 90 plus percent of what I write about on my on my newsletter is data that you can go grab right now. And I actually not only do I do that, I show you the code at the end that I use to create those graphs. So, like, I'm a big believer in transparency. You know? Like, sunlight's the best disinfectant, and I don't I don't believe you can be too, you know, transparent, too accountable. And so, a lot of what I do is actually, I don't even know where I come up with my ideas. Someone asked me, I'm like, I don't even know. Like, today, I'm working actually, the thing I was working on before we started talking was, it started with someone asking me a question on Blue Sky about the relationship between conspiracies and religion, like belief in conspiracy theories.
Ryan Burge [00:14:49]:
And I knew that I had some data somewhere on my hard drive that asked about conspiracy, so I went back and looked at it. And then I'd made one graph for that person. I was like, well, shoot. That needs to be a whole like, that could be a whole post. And so a lot of it is just, like, knowing what's available out there means that you know what questions you can ask and answer and which ones you can't. And so, like, that's really my unfair advantage in doing this whole work because I've spent the last 8 or 10 years, like, basically understanding what data exists. And so a lot of what I do is, like, media folks will email me and say, is there data on this? And I can basically tell them yes or no. You know, those are answerable questions or not.
Ryan Burge [00:15:28]:
So a lot of the ideas just come from looking around what data is available. And then when new data is uploaded to some websites, I'll go take a look at that. Sometimes it's denominational statistics, for instance, like, the I wrote post last week of the Episcopal Church. They just released their new membership and attendance data, giving data, and, baptisms and all this stuff. And I was like, well, I can, you know, make something out of that. So a lot of it's just, like, scratching my curiosity itch Yeah. In in a bunch of ways. And I especially like doing stuff that's a little off the beaten path.
Ryan Burge [00:16:01]:
Not all I I try a lot most of what I do is still survey data. It's like straight up survey data, but, like, you know, like Bureau of Labor Statistics data on clergy compensation. Right? Or I'll do, like, a text analysis of, sermons, or I'll do, oh, the, seminary, the Association of Theological Schools, like, has, like, a database where they collect all kind of information about their partners. So I can write a post about the number of clergy in, seminary departments. You know? So it's it's just like I get to explore all these different areas, and I kinda get get to take my readers along for a ride, with me. And they learn and I learn, and it's it's been good.
Ryan Dunn [00:16:39]:
And what kind of reader responses are you getting?
Ryan Burge [00:16:44]:
I was I think I think that the vast majority are very positive. I mean, I mean, we have a negativity bias. I'll I'll always remember the people who said mean things about me. I try not to read the comments too much. That's one thing on my Substack, especially, is I don't read the comments very much. Or if I do, I read them very superficially. Like, the questions I wanna answer are questions about, like, data and method and measurements and things like that. When they, like, start spouting off about evangelicals being evil or the mainline being liberal, like, I really try to avoid all that stuff.
Ryan Burge [00:17:16]:
I want those kind of conversations to happen with me sort of, like, sitting in the other room watching with, like, an ear towards the door. But, you know, what's what's really fascinating is so most people who follow me are religious people, but there's actually a significant number of people who follow what I'm up to who are not religious people, but are interested in religion as a concept, you know, as part of American life and society and politics and culture, and just wanna try to understand that. So my job is to sort of bridge those two different spheres, of the religious people who wanna learn about religion, but also non religious people who are interested in religion. So, I mean, I've given talks all over, like, the Secular Coalition of America and then the Southern Baptist Convention. And I just love that. The fact that everyone just wants to learn from an impartial referee, and that's what I try to be. It's just an impartial referee.
Ryan Dunn [00:18:04]:
You know, the church at large is a very broad statement or observation, but the church at large kinda has a tendency to ask questions that are only relevant to the church. So as you're engaging with people who are, sort of from the outside point of curiosity, like, what are some of the questions that they tend to ask? Do they fall into certain categories? Is there a common thread that runs through some of
Ryan Burge [00:18:31]:
them? See, the problem is that church people want who are interested in these, like, really inside baseball questions that, like, the average person does not give too
Ryan Dunn [00:18:44]:
Okay.
Ryan Burge [00:18:45]:
And I think that's what I really struggle with is, like, I I'll, like, I'll post something about, like, the the new episcopal numbers, let's say. And I'll get a comment saying these diocese numbers have to be wrong because this, that, and the other thing. And I go, my the average reader of my substack does not care at all about inconsistencies in diocese level reporting of the Episcopal church in America. Now you care about it a lot because you're Episcopalian, but less than 1% of Americans are Episcopalian. And of that 1%, the share who actually care about the data of the Episcopal church is probably a quarter of that 1%. So, like, let's put things in proper context. Here's what I realized. Everyone wants me to write about them and their denomination or their like, the chaplaincy thing did really well because every chaplain in America read it and shared it, I feel like.
Ryan Burge [00:19:33]:
When I write about the Episcopal church, they want, you know, they wanna read that and share that. Everyone wants me to write about them specifically. And and that can be okay, but you also gotta understand, like, my my audience is not just Episcopalians or not just chaplains. Like and my job is not just to write for church people either. Like Yeah. I want to change the culture about how we think about religion in this country, and I'm not gonna be Barna. I'm not gonna be Lifeway. I'm not gonna be, you know, a pastor, traditional pastor in that in in that kind of work.
Ryan Burge [00:20:03]:
So they have to understand that everything I do is not for them. It's actually for them and for everybody else. And I think that's the the the church folks want. They want just more Barna stuff. Like, how do I grow a church? How do I retain disciples? How do I, you know, keep, do good children's ministry? How do I do this? How do I I'm like, I I don't that's not a great question for all my readers, so therefore, I'm not gonna write about it. I think that's the problem is church people tend to only write for church people, and non church people tend to only write for non church people. And I think there's a there's a way to bridge both those divides. And that's what I've been trying to do a lot more is try to make make everyone interested in what I'm up to, not just one specific niche.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:45]:
Well, you've mentioned that, pastors tend to be a little bit happier than we thought about, previously. What have been some other blips of good news that, have struck you as you've done your research?
Ryan Burge [00:21:03]:
Let's see. Okay. So religious belief is still very strong in America. 85% of Americans believe in a higher power, at least in a higher power. The share of Americans who believe in God without a doubt is still, like, 45%. I mean, it's down, like, 20 points from the 19 eighties, but it's still really good. Mhmm. Evangelicals are going to church, more now than they ever have before.
Ryan Burge [00:21:29]:
It seems like religious people are more religious today than they've ever been before. It's just the the the non religious people now are way less religious than they were a while ago. K. So, you know, there's the the non denom story is a huge story. The share of Americans who are nondenominational has, like, 15% of the country. It was 3% of the country in the 19 seventies. So, I mean, that's there's some green shoots there. A lot of the smaller denominations in America tend to be doing okay numbers wise.
Ryan Burge [00:21:59]:
Like, for instance, the Anglican church in North America is doing pretty good. The PCA, Presbyterian Church of America, is doing pretty good. Yeah. I mean, you see a little, like, you know, the the listen. The general consensus is things are bad, and I think there's nothing in the data that I look at that goes, no. No. No. No.
Ryan Burge [00:22:16]:
No. Like, anyway, it says, like, religion is reviving in oh, the the rise of the nuns has stopped in the last couple of years. They were they're still they've not risen in the last 3 years, which is really big news. So there's, like, there's a listen, the overwhelming push is, like, America's becoming less religious by the year. Like, there's just no other way to look at the data and say anything else. But inside that, there's these little smaller stories of, like, things go both directions. You know, sometimes things are bad, and sometimes they're good. And and there's some green shoots in there.
Ryan Burge [00:22:48]:
I would say that in in the future, America's gonna be a a less religious, but but more religious at the same time. And that the people who are left are actually gonna be more devout and more involved and more engaged. So it's like, what do you want? Do you want a whole bunch of nominally religious people, Or do you want a small number of very religious people? Because I think we're moving a lot closer to that second reality right now.
Ryan Dunn [00:23:11]:
I wanna take a slight right turn. This podcast is for church leaders who are engaged oftentimes in outreach, marketing and communications. And certainly understanding audience is a huge part of that. And that's where your work is so important. But you're also kind of laying into an area or a platform, which a lot of us are a little bit unfamiliar with in substack. So, as you're working through stub substack, like, how do you feel like that? That platform has impacted your your practice of ministry or your practice of community building?
Ryan Burge [00:23:45]:
I think that I'm a big subset booster to be honest with you. Like, I think I don't know if I don't know if this is one of those blips where it's like that the era of Myspace, you know, where it was like, really cool for like, 2 years, then it like, went down. Like, I don't know if it's it's gonna end up being like Myspace or like Facebook. You know? Because Facebook has been dominant for 15 years now. Right? And Twitter is it's it's waning, but it's still, you know, fairly big part of the conversation. I I think here's what I know, and this is not like, here's some practical advice for church communications people. The email address will never die. Okay? Like, let me reiterate that point.
Ryan Burge [00:24:24]:
Like, so I was on Twitter for a long time, and I would tweet probably 500 tweets a year graphs just about religion. And I grew a nice following on there. I think, you know, I think, like, 20 I think, 27,000 followers right now, which is pretty good. It's definitely, like, in the top 1%. But then I I started my Substack, and I would get people who subscribe to my Substack and go, I never heard about you before until this. And you look at their email address, it's atandt.netorcomcast.netoraol.com, meaning they're old. Like, that's what those those email like, no young person under the age of 45 has an email address like that. They'd have, you know, Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail or something like that.
Ryan Burge [00:25:03]:
Right? So what that tells me clearly is that email still works. We try to kill email with Slack and with messaging and with everything else on Earth. Email is still the backbone of tech you know, like, electronic communication in the world, and there's no sign of it ever going away. So what's nice about Substack is the algorithm can do whatever it wants to me, and it does not matter. If I hate what substack is up to, I hit export on my email list, I drop it in an Excel file, and I move to a different provider and start again. But not not from scratch, from however many 16,000 subscribers I have right now. Twitter tweaks the algorithm, and I'm I'm sunk. You know what I mean? Facebook out.
Ryan Burge [00:25:46]:
And you can see this by the way. Twitter did tweak the algorithm a year ago and basically killed the opportunity for me to build my subs at through my Twitter following. Facebook changed its algorithm about 3 years ago to down ring rank links.
Ryan Dunn [00:25:59]:
Yeah.
Ryan Burge [00:26:00]:
And so the thing about it is how do you break through all that stuff? Email email email email. That's the only way to get through all that stuff. And that's what I love about it is that everyone like, here's what's the best part though. Someone goes, I love I love that that email you send me twice a week. I go, the subside. I go, what's the sub stack?
Ryan Dunn [00:26:15]:
Right. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. It's not obvious. It's
Ryan Burge [00:26:17]:
like the Exactly. The platform sort of recedes into the background, and the communication is what takes the center stage. And I think that is what kind of network you wanna be on. It's like, I'm on Twitter to read about you, or I'm on Facebook to look at your content. It's like, I wanna find your content wherever it's housed. And Substack sort of takes a back seat to all that stuff. I think that model is so incredibly helpful for people who are not super tech savvy.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:46]:
Did you find in starting on Substack that there was a little bit of resistance to people feeling like they needed to jump on another platform? Or did it just feel like they were signing up for your email?
Ryan Burge [00:26:57]:
Really? Because you don't have to sign up for a Substack account. You can just do the email thing. You know what I mean? Like, so it's only a one step thing as opposed to, like, oh, make a username and get a profile picture and and all that kind of nonsense. Instead, it was just like, hey. Just type your email in this box and hit sign up, and you're gonna start getting these emails. And I think making it as frictionless as possible has been incredibly, good for for a lot of my subscribers.
Ryan Dunn [00:27:22]:
Yeah. Cool. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast with us. Any parting shots, final thoughts you wanna offer our listeners?
Ryan Burge [00:27:33]:
Follow me, graspaboutreligion.com. You can find me on Twitter at Ryan Berg. Ryanberg.net is my personal website, and, always happy for new subscribers. I'm running a special right now on paid subscribers, $40 for the year. That will end on December 25th. So if you wanna get and I'm raising my prices on January 1st to, $6 a month, $60 a year. So if you wanna catch a good discount now between now and 25th is a great time to do that.
Ryan Dunn [00:27:56]:
Yeah. Well, and if you check it out now, it looks like a bunch of the posts have been unlocked through a Lily Grant. I don't know if that's a permanent thing or not, but there's a ton of information there.
Ryan Burge [00:28:06]:
Oh, I've got a 175 post in the archive right now. So you'll get access to I mean, it's like almost 3 books worth of content. So if you think about it that way, it's actually a pretty darn good deal and ongoing new content every week. So it's to me, it's one of the best deals in in this world if you're looking for religion data.
Ryan Dunn [00:28:23]:
Cool. Alright, listener. Before I lose you to the rabbit hole of religious data, let me tell you about a couple other useful episodes of the Mycom podcast. Firstly, episode 97 YouTube tools and strategies is a good one. Episode 82, 3 techniques for getting to know your audience is also going to relate to this particular episode. And for a bonus, I'm gonna offer an episode from the pastoring in the digital parish podcast, just in case you're not that familiar with substack. That episode is called planting digital first substack in OiCon Church. I'll link to that in the show notes.
Ryan Dunn [00:29:01]:
I'm Ryan Dunn, and I'm looking forward to connecting with you again through episode number 103 of the MICOM podcast. That's due out in 1 month's time. Find more MICOM in the meantime through resourceumc.org, which is your spot for fresh ideas and empowerment for church leadership. I'll talk to you soon. Peace.