Taking My Own Advice

In a recent webinar (that I still need to edit and share) I recommended that churches could use Substack as a platform to share their sermon manuscripts. You’ve already written (and preached) the sermon so why not make it available in every medium possible?

(Side note: yes, some/many people write for preaching different than they would write for someone to read. Either give it a little extra work to make it what you want it to be or just let it go and make it available as is. Your dissonance with your preaching voice vs. your writing voice is probably in your own head than anyone else’s!)

Back to the idea and taking my own advice.

We’ve had a handful of congregants regularly ask for copies of the manuscript from Sunday’s sermon. We often have it on hand from the preacher and will share it as requested. But why not just use a platform to make this process even easier and more accessible?

Which is why The Riverside Church has officially launched a Substack. (And yes, you should subscribe.)

We will be using it to share both the Sunday sermon video and manuscript as well as The Word Made Fresh, our weekly sermon prep video.

There isn’t really any additional work on our end but it simply lets us repurpose content in a new space and to a new audience.

Substack is ideal as it lets us reach people directly in their inbox as well as organically through the platform and app. And in a world where more and more of what we share online is mitigated by the omnipotent algorithm, it’s nice to utilize a space that allows us to go directly to someone’s inbox, one of the few algorithm free spaces remaining in our world.

All this to say, I’m taking my own advice. I’m eager to see how it goes over time and I continue to be convinced that this Substack space is worth leaning into more and more and more.

What about you? How do you feel about this space? What advice have you given yourself lately? And most importantly, have you subscribed to Riverside’s substack yet?!