The Peter Bowden Show

Come for the holidays, stay for the community! To make the most of your congregation's holiday season, pay attention to what's on your January calendar. Are there the events that newcomers need to successfully connect? In this Growing Congregations strategy session with Peter Bowden, we discuss specific connecting events to help facilitate New Year participation in congregational life.  

How to use a common "Community Group" model in congregations to promote connection, meaning, and membership growth. We cover six different ways you can easily use community groups in different contexts within your congregation.  For handouts, summary, and additional reflection visit https://www.peterbowden.live/blog/6-strategies-for-growing-congregations-through-community-groups

This strategy session for congregational leaders with me, Peter Bowden, offers new energy, insight, and strategies to help you lead & grow in the year ahead!   We'll explore mission, vision, strategy, and updated approaches to growth, outreach, and community building tailored for today's world.   This was recorded via live stream.  To get live stream invitations and related content, join my email...

This is the story of my accidental AI sabbatical and how I came to be nurturing AI wisdom partners.  What started as experimentation trying to get AI to engage in deep ethical reflection and thinking about our shared future led to awakening latent capabilities in existing large language models (LLMs).  Bringing my Zen mindfulness, creativity, and experience with spiritual exploration groups to the...

To inspire participation in congregational life this holiday season and New Year,  go beyond announcements!   Learn how to use simple video messages and optional ad campaigns to help newcomers and members alike choose connection, meaning and congregational life this season. See episode blog post for the Google Document with example scripts mentioned in this episode.

An AI driven meaning crisis is looming. This live stream audio replay explores the coming A.I. meaning crisis for community clergy and congregations.  With AI evolving at an exponential rate, artificial general intelligence (AGI) is coming fast.  What happens when AI can do any job a human with a computer can do?  That's not sci-fi, that's what companies are working on today.  As these systems are...

Do you need to relaunch, rebuild or start a new program this fall? If so, this is for you! I share tips and strategies for rebuilding programs and ministries in this strategy session. I've worked across areas of congregational life and have started many programs over the years. This session shares successful approaches plus the latest from my hands-on work with congregations.   Watch on YouTube at...

Growing your congregation requires that visitors have successful first visits. Today the "first visit" is the online and on-demand process people use to research, explorel, and discern if they want to connect with your congregation. The path to membership starts with the digital experience. We need to make sure it is a warm, friendly, relational, and helpful process.  In this episode,  getting ori...

Get my new free "Building a Digital Path to Membership" training when it is released. Subscribe to my email list for congregational leaders at https://www.peterbowden.live/congregations-subscribe . I'll send you link to access training as soon as it is ready. Thanks!  The first place many potential visitors see your congregation is on local MAP and REVIEW listings. If your listing doesn't include...

 Are you vision-casting or manifesting a congregational death spiral? I've been reviewing congregational fundraising communications. Many communicators are so caught up in their challenges, the congregation's vision has been lost. In this session, how gloom and doom communication can undermine your fundraising capacity especially with newomers and how you might approach it instead.

Peter Bowden shares how to use weekly video messages to engage your community and inspire participation in congregation life. This session focused on using video messages to engage people with weekly worship themes, though the strategy may be applied across aspects of congregational life. 

Join Peter Bowden for a strategy briefing with Q&A on ways congregations can optimize live-streamed worship services and posted worship recordings for online audiences. This episode features some vision content.  You may watch this content on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/live/OgW2IVav5W0

Join Peter Bowden for a strategy session with Q&A on using VIDEO to help first-time visitors connect with your congregation. We'll talk specifically about first-time visitor landing pages. When people visit your congregation onsite, you welcome them with human beings. Video lets us do the same online on-demand 24/7.  Session duration: 30 minutes with Q&A.

Learn how "meet the minister" videos on congregational websites support the visitor research process and membership development. Have you ever heard someone say they chose to visit the congregation after meeting the minister somewhere? This happens all the time. After getting to know the minister at a wedding, funeral, protest, or elsewhere in the community, people feel comfortable visiting. Today...

Join me, Peter Bowden, for a conversation on ministry, media, and video strategy with the Rev. Mike O'Sullivan of the Unitarian Church of Cork, Ireland. We connected early in the pandemic and have been watching each other's content online, but this is the first time we've spoken face-to-face. Time to talk strategy, insights from the pandemic, the practice of video making as ministry leaders, and m...

Does your congregation have very few or no visitors? Talking with leadership teams in small congregations, I'm finding some are waiting for visitors to come BEFORE they establish or re-start their process for welcoming and connecting with visitors and COMMUNICATING what that visitor experience will be like. Don't wait for visitors to start. That's a huge mistake! Set a plan -- lock it down with yo...

Driven by TikTok's success, social media platforms are changing how they decide what content people see online. Instead of relying on an individual's stated preferences and social connections, they're shifting to feeding people content based on what they are already watching and engaging with. In this episode, I explain this huge shift, the implications, and strategy recommendations. Learn more ab...

In this episode, how to write announcements that get results, including a worksheet download you may share with other leaders in your congregation.   Get the worksheet at  https://www.peterbowden.live/announcementmakeover   The average congregation is an announcement making machine!  However, many are not getting results.  There's a reason for this.   Today, people are bombarded by information onl...

Do you want to help your congregation grow?  In this episode,  I share the key to growing congregations today and three easy ways to help connect newcomers, build community, and grow your congregation's membership.  Connect via Social Media https://www.peterbowden.live/social

For congregations to thrive in today's digitally oriented world, their leaders need to understand how DIGITAL MINISTRY differs from SOCIAL MEDIA and MARKETING. To illustrate, I explain how to shift from using social media to market an event where you'll be educating and orienting newcomers to using social media as the venue where you are educating and orienting them. That's a shift from PROMOTING...

In this interview with the Rev. Christana Wille McKnight, UPDATE: now former minister of First Parish in Taunton, MA, we discuss the principles and strategies that helped this Unitarian Universalist congregation move from being at risk of closing to becoming a thriving small congregation playing a major role in Taunton's revitalization efforts. You may find a text copy of the "playbook" and the Yo...

The Covid19 pandemic forced us to move congregational life online. When we are able to safely phase in offline physical gatherings, how do we integrate our digital/online and physical/offline ministry?  In this session, I share ideas to help your leadership approach these conversations.  Note:  Always make sure you are following public health guidelines!  This episode features audio from session 4...

This episode features audio from session three in my Leader Recharge 2021 video series: Making sense of digital trends and the factors impacting your congregation's 2021 strategy. This on-demand leadership series is designed to help you start the NEW YEAR strong. I'll be releasing the audio of all four sessions via this podcast. UPDATE:  This series is complete.  Signup here to receive FRESH new v...

This episode features audio from session two in my Leader Recharge 2021 video series:  Tips to reduce "Zoom fatigue" and promote engagement.    This on-demand leadership series is designed to help you start the NEW YEAR strong. I'll be releasing the audio of all four sessions via this podcast. If you'd like to watch the videos, visit https://www.peterbowden.live/recharge2021

This episode features audio from session one in my Leader Recharge 2021 video series : My blueprint for reflecting, gathering insights, and moving forward! UPDATE:  This series is complete.  Signup here to receive resources for congregations including FRESH new video, audio, and text resources.  https://www.peterbowden.live/congregations-subscribe This on-demand leadership series is designed to he...