We’re 133 chapters in. And we have a ways to go.
I’m talking about Bible in a Minute, a project that I’m producing at The Riverside Church. (Have you seen it?!) But this isn’t about all the reasons why you should watch it (there are so many!). This is about the story behind the project, how it all came to be, and what I’ve learned along the way.
(Buckle up, because this is a long one. But a good one!)
This idea has its roots back in a project I produced from 2012-2018. I had just finished seminary and had so much free time (ha, kidding). I was in the middle of a project I called “5 Days of Anything” where I spent each week trying one thing every day. There was “5 Days of Pushups” where I did 100 pushups each day for a week, “5 Days of Reading” where I (tried to) read a book a day for a week, “5 Days of Water” where I drank 200 oz. of water each day for a week, and more. Basically, it was things I would love do 365 days a year but I knew that they would inevitably fade out. But 5 days? I could do anything for 5 days!
And then one week was “5 days of podcasting” where I would record a 30 second podcast every day. I recorded the first episode with the mic on my headphones from the hotel on a work trip. I recorded enough for the whole week. And then I just kept going.
This “5 days of podcasting” turned into a four year project with 1,225 episodes being published every single day. (I called it Thirty Seconds or Less.)
Over time the project evolved a bit. I quickly realized that as short as 30 seconds was, it still took a lot to come up with something every single day. So I invited some friends to record, and then others reached out asking if they could read excerpts from a new book they had released or a project they were launching. I added video to go with each one, both as a way to migrate this project to YouTube (maybe I should go back and repurpose it all as YouTube Shorts?!) and as an excuse to teach myself video editing. And before I knew it this was no longer a content project but a network project.
Let me say that again: This daily 30 second podcast/video idea had evolved from a content project, where the focus was on the daily content I was creating, to a network project, where it was about the growing network of contributors and people I could collaborate with. (Seriously, a project like this gave me space to reach out to all sorts of people and invite them to record 30 seconds of audio that I would produce. Many people said no or just didn’t respond but a whole lot also said yes!)
One turning point with Thirty Seconds or Less that is especially pertinent to Bible in a Minute (did you forget that this rant is really all about that project?) was the Thirty Second Bible series I produced during Lent for the final year of this project. I had taken to producing a new series for Advent and Lent each year and in 2016 I decided to go through every book of the Bible with two episodes for each book. One would be a summary of the book and the other would be the good news in that book. Each videos would be thirty seconds or less. Which meant there would be over 100 videos to squeeze into the season of Lent.
This focus taught me two things: there were a lot of people who could talk about the Bible in a brief amount of time and there were a lot of people eager for content like this!
Thirty Seconds or Less came to an end in December 2016 (more on that story another time) and just over a year later I began producing a new daily project. During the season Lent in 2018 I was a year into my role at Riverside and we launched Be Still and Go, a devotional podcast with a new episode every from Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday.
This project quickly tapped into what I had discovered with Thirty Seconds or Less, that it’s not just a content project but a network project, inviting dozens of pastors and faith leaders and congregants to write and record audio reflections on various lectionary texts that I would produce into a devotional podcast with a soundscape to accent their words. (Really, this project was an excuse to teach myself audio editing and finally go from GarageBand to Logic!)
Be Still and Go continued every Lent and Advent (and the occasional bonus season in the summer/fall) through 2023. 14 seasons. Almost 400 episodes. Over 50 hours of audio devotions.
We landed this project for a couple of reasons:
First, it took a good amount of work to produce each season. From recruiting contributors and editing content and developing ways to promote each season and every episode, a lot of energy went in to making something incredibly beautiful (yes, I’m a bit biased but I still think these are some of the best editing I’ve ever done) but the project had begun to plateau in reach and engagement. I began to evaluate whether all the work was worth it. (Also, it’s hard to be a one person podcast team!)
Second, I needed to end one project in order to make space for another. Throughout the final years of Be Still and Go I had seen short form vertical video content emerge as Instagram and YouTube spun up their TikTok clones. Somewhere in my doomscrolling I had the idea for a new daily project designed specifically for these short form vertical video spaces that would go through the entire Bible, one chapter at a time. And so we decided to let Be Still and Go come to an end so that I had space to organize and produce a new online project.
Bible in a Minute would be an intentional way to go through the entire Bible, one chapter a day. It would have three goals:
Teach people something new about the Bible.
Inspire people to open the Bible and read the chapter for themsleves.
Model an progressive and liberative lens for Biblical interpretation.
This new project would build off of everything I had learned from past daily projects. It was more than a content project but a network project, inviting dozens (hundreds?) of contributors to record reflections. And rather than utilizing social media platforms to direct people to the content (like we had done with our Be Still and Go podcast) this project would exist as social media content. Instead of a post directing you to go somewhere else, you would experience it entirely in the feed. (Seriously, this was a huge step as I could focus more on producing the project rather than promoting it, letting social media be the content rather than the giant foam finger pointing to the content.)
And that brings us to today, Monday, January 29, 2024. We’re over 100 chapters in and on pace to publish a new one every day through December 2026. This has already proven to be our most “successful” online project ever, both in quantitative measurements like views and subscribers and qualitative measurements like engagement and feedback from people who watch each video.
But the most important thing to remember is that this idea didn’t just come out of nowhere but has its roots in at least two other projects (probably more!), nearly two thousand other pieces of content, and countless hours of trying, failing, reflecting, learning, and trying again.
Because that’s ministry, especially digital ministry — trying, failing, reflecting, learning, and trying again. (Really, that’s life!) The goal is not to avoid failure but to fail fast so that we can learn even faster.
Wow, that was a long one! And look at you, reading all the way to the end. Send me a message and say “I did it!” so that I know that you made it all the way here. I just might have a little something for you!
Thanks for the inspiration to "fail faster." I just subscribed last week to your 24 best ideas for digital ministry and look forward to watching them all this week. I serve a church in a small town in Midcoast Maine, and digital ministry is essential in bad weather and good. We have 27 members who live in Florida in the winter and come to Maine in the summer. Thanks again for the ideas and inspiration.
Great article--your energy and enthusiasm for digital ministry still emerges from your written words. Now I have to go check out this series!