REACHRIGHT Podcast

Thomas and Shiloh sits down with Mike Signorelli, lead pastor of V1 Church and #4 on the ReachRight Pastor Influence 100 list, whose online teaching now reaches millions every month. This episode is for pastors who want their online reach to turn into real people in the room. They talk about what most pastors misunderstand about fast-growing churches, the challenges that come with rapid growth, an...

The person visiting your church for the first time in 2026 isn’t the same person who visited twenty years ago. This episode is for pastors and church leaders who want to understand who’s really walking through their doors now. We talk about why so many new visitors are coming out of loneliness and spiritual curiosity rather than tradition, how most of them research your church online before Sunday...

Church tech is a crowded space, and everyone has something to sell you. This episode is for pastors and church leaders trying to figure out which tools deserve their time and budget. We rank the biggest church tech trends of 2026 with a green, yellow and red light system, from website chatbots and hybrid livestreaming to church apps, AI-generated worship music and automated visitor follow-up. Alon...

Every year, Outreach Magazine publishes a list of the fastest-growing churches in America, and buried in that data are clear patterns most pastors never notice. This episode is for pastors and church leaders who want to know what growing churches are actually doing differently.  We break down why they invest heavily in kids and students, how they mobilize volunteers instead of only hiring staff, a...

AI has changed the rules of church marketing again, and this time the shift is moving faster than most churches can keep up with. This episode is for pastors and church leaders who know AI matters but aren't sure what it actually changes for their church. We talk through why content creation is no longer the bottleneck and how small churches can now personalize communication at scale.  We also cov...

Most churches are active on social media, but almost none of them are reaching anyone beyond their own congregation, because 95% of the people who see their content don't attend their church. In this episode, we break down the single biggest mistake churches make online, creating content for members instead of strangers, and run through the rest of the list, from broadcasting instead of engaging t...

Most churches pour nearly all their energy into attracting new visitors while ignoring the fact that only 10 to 20 percent of first-time guests ever come back a second time. In this episode, we make the case that retention, not acquisition, is the fastest and cheapest path to a growing church, and we break down what a real connection sequence looks like in the critical first 30 days after someone...

https://www.chmeetings.com/  With 93% of pastors now using or exploring AI, the question for churches is no longer whether to use it, but where the line actually is. In this episode, Thomas goes through a long list of real AI use cases happening in churches right now, from sermon research and discipleship chatbots to pasting giving records into ChatGPT and posting AI-generated prayers without disc...

Every pastor has been handed a book, framework, or five-step plan promising to fix their church's growth problem, and most of the time it wasn't built for their context. In this episode, we rank the most common church growth advice out there, from genuinely effective to advice that should probably be retired for good. We look at real numbers behind kids and student ministry investment, home-based...

Most church teams know AI is supposed to help but have no idea what a real workflow actually looks like in practice.  In this episode Thomas and Shiloh walk through the specific AI-assisted workflow that is saving church staff teams real hours every single week, starting with the Sunday sermon as the content engine and working through every repeatable task that follows. From generating a full week...

Your church website is the first impression for thousands of people who will never tell you they visited it. Seventy-five percent of people judge a church's credibility based on its website alone and 61 percent leave within five seconds if they cannot find what they need.  In this episode Thomas and Shiloh break down the specific patterns that separate high-performing church websites from the ones...

TikTok is stable, it has 1.5 billion monthly active users, and it is now functioning as a real search engine where people are looking for churches and spiritual content every single day. The question for most churches in 2026 is no longer whether TikTok is worth paying attention to. It is whether their specific church should be on it, what a realistic strategy actually looks like, and how to use i...

Sixty percent of Protestant churches are plateaued or declining and most of the conversations about fixing that focus on what churches should add. This episode flips that conversation entirely.  Thomas and Shiloh walk through five specific things that growing churches have intentionally stopped doing and the shifts they made instead that actually moved the needle on growth, discipleship, and commu...

Most churches invest significant time and energy into creating a great Sunday experience for first-time visitors and then do almost nothing with that investment after Monday morning. Only 10 to 20 percent of first-time guests return without intentional follow-up. Churches that reach out within 24 to 48 hours see three times higher return rates than those who wait a week or more. And 29 percent of...

If someone searched "church near me" in your city right now would your church show up?  For most churches the honest answer is no and this episode is the practical fix for that. Thomas and Shiloh break down every new rule of church SEO in 2026 including why your Google Business Profile is now more important than your website for local search, how AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are directly a...

Most churches treat social media like a task to check off and hand it to whoever has a little free time. A volunteer, an intern, the pastor's kid who knows how to use Instagram.  But seventy percent of people engage with a church online before they ever visit in person, which means this is not a side task. It is a ministry role that directly shapes whether new people ever walk through your doors. ...

Most churches have a social media presence. Very few have a social media strategy and that gap is exactly what this episode closes.  Thomas and Shiloh break down the complete playbook that high-performing churches are running on social media right now in 2026, including why consistency always beats polish, how to turn one Sunday sermon into a full week of content, why Instagram should be the prima...

The AI tool landscape for churches in 2026 is overwhelming and most church staff do not have the time to figure out what is actually worth using. In this episode Thomas and Shiloh go category by category and give an honest and practical breakdown of where AI is genuinely delivering time savings for ministry teams and where it is still more hype than results. From sermon prep and church communicati...

Every year a new wave of social media trends hits the church world and most ministry teams do not have the time, budget, or bandwidth to chase all of them.  In this episode Thomas and Shiloh go trend by trend and rank every major social media move for churches in 2026 using a simple and honest three-tier system. Hot means do it now. Worth Trying means good if the bandwidth exists. Skip It means st...

Gen Z is already showing up to church more than any other living generation and most churches are repelling them with the exact strategies designed to attract them.  In this episode Thomas and Shiloh unpack the Barna data that completely reframes the young adult conversation, name what chasing looks like and why it consistently backfires, and give pastors a clear and practical picture of what Gen...

AI is already inside your church and the staffing questions it raises are not coming in the future. They are here right now. In this episode Thomas and Shiloh get specific and honest about which church staff roles are most exposed to AI compression, which roles are safest, where pastors are already crossing lines they have not thought through, and a practical three-question framework any church ca...

Seven fresh data points from 2026 just landed and most of them challenge what pastors think they know about who is coming, who is giving, and where their marketing time should actually be going. In this episode Thomas and Shiloh walk through every data point one by one, name the real-world implication for your church, and give one specific action per point that any church can implement this week....

Most church marketing teams are working hard and getting almost nothing back for it. In this episode Thomas and Shiloh apply the 80/20 principle directly to church marketing and get specific about what to stop, what to keep, and what the handful of high-leverage moves actually look like for churches in 2026.  From the death of organic social reach to the untapped power of Google Business Profiles,...

We have been having the pastoral burnout conversation for years and it keeps getting worse. That is because we have been talking about the wrong thing.  This episode is not about workload, time management, or self-care tips for tired pastors. It is about the loneliness and isolation crisis that is actually driving the burnout numbers to levels the church has never seen before. Pastoral loneliness...

A third of practicing Christians now trust spiritual advice from AI just as much as advice from their pastor. For Gen Z and millennials that number is closer to 40%. Four in ten Christians say AI has already helped them with prayer, Bible study, or spiritual growth. This is not a future trend to prepare for. It is a present reality happening inside your congregation right now.  In this episode Tho...