African American Readings of Paul – Dr. Lisa M. Bowens

We’re honored to learn from Dr. Lisa M. Bowens about her new book “African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance & Transformation” published by Eerdmans Publishing.

Dr. Bowens provides a historical, theological and biblical analysis of early interpretations of Paul by African Americans from the early 1700s to the mid-twentieth century, especially the passages from Paul directing slaves to obey their masters.

These scriptures were tragically used by American churches and pastors to justify slavery and oppress our Black communities. Churches even developed theological positions that doubted the humanity of Black people or even the idea that African Americans had souls.

Dr. Bowens reveals ways the African American community during this period understood Paul’s writings and used his words to fight oppression, racism and argue for their freedom.

Her detailed research includes an analysis of countless autobiographies of ex-slaves, slave petitions, sermons, biographies and powerful conversion stories. Her fantastic book also includes radical stories of how Jupiter Hammon, Lemuel Haynes, David Walker, Jarena Lee, John Jea, James Pennington, Julia Foote and Harriet Jacobs resisted the oppressive readings of Paul and found power and liberation.

Dr. Lisa M. Bowens is associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of “An Apostle in Battle: Paul and Spiritual Warfare” in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10. Her research interests include Paul and apocalyptic literature, Pauline anthropology, Pauline epistemology, aspects of discipleship in the gospels, African American Pauline Hermeneutics, and New Testament exegesis and interpretation.

You can subscribe or download this show on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe to the video series on YouTube.

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Social Listening is Vital for Understanding Issues That Matter to Our Communities & Predicting Social Trends

Social media monitoring is vital for understanding our target audiences and knowing what sort of content we need to create to be helpful.

Monitoring conversations also helps us avoid being tone deaf when sharing out social media posts. It’s important to be sensitive to the issues happening around us, which gets more complicated for global social management.

The trouble with analyzing social data is that it is time consuming work. The social tools can help us identify influential and important conversations around specific topics, but that’s the easy part.

Most of the time is spent reading through the conversations to understand the who/what/where/why on each channel — and also acknowledging sarcasm and meme humor that social tools have trouble analyzing. This is crucial work during times when specific trending issues need to be analyzed.

I’m thankful for tools like Brandwatch, BuzzSumo, Spredfast, Hootsuite, Keyhole.co, Radian6, Pulsar Platform, and others that I’ve used to help me with this process.

The next evolution of social listening will require more insights around predictions of how topics and issues may trend up or down over time and where. We also need better insights into social video stories (e.g. Twitter Fleets, TikTok), audio data (e.g. podcasts, SoundCloud) and live streams (e.g. Twitch, YouTube Live, IGTV).

A Biblical & Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination – Dr. William Witt

We’re honored to learn from Dr. William G. Witt about his book “Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination” from Baylor Press, where he provides an analysis of the various arguments used by Protestants and Catholics against woman’s ordination as well as the biblical and theological cases for women’s ordination to the offices of both word and sacrament.

In this podcast, Dr. Witt discusses how those on both sides of the debate embrace new theological positions in response to cultural changes and outlines positive ecumenical arguments for the ordination of women and the importance of women in leadership roles in churches.

His arguments in support of women’s ordination stem from a biblical, historical, systematic and liturgical theology. He also reminds us that all Christians bear the image of God and are called to serve as icons of Christ in service of the gospel.

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Inclusive Digital Marketing: Don’t Confuse Representation with Portrayal

The November 2020 “Best Practices Guide for Inclusive Marketing” from eMarketer is brilliant.

It provides key insights into how U.S. consumers think about D&I in digital comms efforts from brands — and how different communities feel about their representation and portrayal.

The report addresses two separate categories that we need to think about as digital comms professionals: representation and portrayal.

Representation is vital to promote diversity and inclusion — but just because we represent different communities in social media posts or ads doesn’t mean we are portraying these groups properly.

You could have the right intention, but actually hurt a specific community by the way you talk about or portray their group.

This impacts every meme we create, every animated gif we use, and every photo or video we promote. Are we portraying a stereotype? Are we hurting a community group accidentally?

Leading with empathy means not assuming that we know and humbly reaching out to get counsel from different community groups on ways to better portray them on social media.

We all need more input. We all need to stop assuming we’re doing it right.

Here’s a key example from eMarketer:

“An ad aimed at the LGBTQ community that uses a stereotypical white gay poster boy, dance music, and the word ‘fabulous’ is offensive and doesn’t reflect the diversity of the community,” he said. “The same goes for an ad that features a person of color in a supporting or service role surrounded by white people.”

What can we all do to become more inclusive digital communicators?

Beyond Old & New Perspectives on Paul: How the Early Church Understood Paul’s Views on Works of the Law – Dr. Matthew J. Thomas

We’re grateful for the opportunity to learn from Dr. Matthew J. Thomas about his book “Paul’s ‘Works of the Law’ in the Perspective of Second Century Reception” published by IVP Academic Press.

Dr. Thomas spent nearly nine years studying early church writings and scholarship focused on Paul’s writings on the works of the law, which led to his doctoral thesis on this topic at Oxford University.

Thomas’ fascinating and helpful scholarship builds on research by Markus Bockmuehl, Dean Ireland’s Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at Oxford University, and received praise from Alister E. McGrath, John M.G. Barclay, N.T. Wright and dozens of other Biblical scholars.

This podcast with Dr. Thomas includes a discussion on his personal spiritual journey, what led him to pursue ministry and academic research, ways he’s navigated difficult Biblical texts, why reading early church writings are crucial for understanding the context of New Testament writings, why Calvin disagreed with Augustine and Jerome, ways to understand the old and new perspectives on Paul (as well as the earliest church perspectives), why Origen is sometimes misunderstood, and a discussion on the conflict between Pelagius and Augustine regarding the use of the law in salvation.

You can subscribe or download this episode on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also watch or subscribe to the video series on YouTube.

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Navigating Political Conversations at Work (And Not Alienating Your Colleagues)

It was an emotional weekend for most of us.

Some of us are celebrating and excited about our new administration. Others may be disappointed or upset about the change in political direction.

I have family and friends on different sides of the political spectrum — and some refused to vote for any major party candidates.

No matter your political viewpoint, I hope all of us can use this time as a moment of reflection. A time to think about the past — and what we can all do to improve our communities in the future.

Reflection and taking time to pause is important for all of us.

Think about ways you can take some time out today to just pause and think about how you’re feeling.

My therapist always wants me to journal, but I prefer going on long walks to think through different issues. Figure out the best way for you to pause and process how you’re feeling.

I also hope we can all work on cultivating more empathy for each other and spend time seeking to understand those who don’t feel our happiness or disappointment.

The art is knowing how to listen and becoming more curious — not combative. It means entering into these political conversations with humility and love. It also means seeking to find some common points of agreement.

Here are some empathic questions to help you:

  • • How are you feeling right now?
  • • Why do you feel that way?
  • • How has your political viewpoint been misunderstood?
  • • How can I be a better listener for you?
  • • What’s it like to be in your political party right now?
  • • What are you excited (or disappointed) about?
  • • What do you want others to know about your political viewpoints?
  • • What are some points of agreement you have with opposing political parties?

One caveat here is that empathy doesn’t mean you should tolerate hate or toxic conversations. Sadly, we’ve seen a lot of hate speech on social media lately, especially anti-Asian racism and hate toward our LGBTQ+ and Black communities. It’s traumatizing — and that’s never okay online or at work.

If you ever encounter hate or toxic behavior at work, you should address it with your manager and/or H.R. leader as soon as possible.

As we move toward empathy (and look for places of agreement), I hope everyone can recognize and celebrate the historic moment of having our first female vice president and woman of color in that role. It’s an exciting period in American history and an encouragement to all the little girls and women who never saw themselves in a presidential position like that.

May empathy and humility be our guide.

Reach vs. Impressions: What’s the Difference on Social Media?

Defining an impression is tricky — and often confused with social media reach.

The way we define an impression can vary by social platform, type of content, how much of your content is visible on screen, and sometimes by how long the content is visible to someone.

Yeah, it’s sort of complicated.

There are impressions that require someone to see your video story for a minimum of 2 seconds, 15 seconds or even a specific amount of time (e.g. 25% of your video story must be seen on Snapchat for certain impressions).

There are also impressions that require your content to be visible for at least one second — and at least 50% visible on screen (e.g. YouTube thumbnails visible appearing briefly on your mobile device while you scroll).

There are too many definitions out there and I have to look up the definitions regularly.

This is why we should try to always provide exact definitions in our social media reporting and not assume that people know what an impression means.

In general, reach refers to the total number of people who see your content. Impressions refer the number of times your content was displayed, but that depends on each networks definition.

Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of a Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity and Islam – Dr. Rachel S. Mikva

The Bible can provide us with encouragement and wisdom, but also pain and sadness.

There are exhortations to love our neighbors and examples on ways to care for the hurting, but also Biblical passages of violence and oppression.

Our understanding of these Biblical texts will vary depending on how we’ve heard them interpreted by the faith traditions we’ve been exposed to.

Sadly, the Bible has been used to defend slavery, oppress women, marginalize our LGBTQ+ community, and even justify violence. It’s no wonder why so many of us might want to avoid reading our Bible altogether.

In “Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” Rabbi Rachel S. Mikva reveals how different faith traditions have discussed and debated their sacred texts — and how their interpretations on these texts continue to evolve. She also addresses some of the dangerous ideas that our sacred texts have expressed.

She shares why it’s important for us to be self-critical readers of our sacred literature, which means asking the hard questions and dialoguing with others about ways to understand these texts, especially conversations with those outside our own religious traditions.

In this podcast, Rabbi Rachel Mikva discusses ways to approach these dangerous sacred texts. You can subscribe or download this episode on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also watch or subscribe to the video series on YouTube.

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Social Media Metrics That Actually Matter: 4 Ways to Use Social Data to Drive Business Results

When I first started managing social media profiles for brands 15 years ago, we spent a lot of time working to increase our follower/fan counts. It’s what we reported on monthly and what we told leadership was important.

After all, fan count was a measurement of potential reach initially — and brands spent a lot of money to increase that reach count because more social media followers could mean more web traffic, music plays, email subscribers, leads and sales. But, as you know, that fan count metric started to become less important as social algorithms evolved and follower counts didn’t provide the reach and engagement it once did.

Fast forward to today and follower count is mainly just a vanity metric that doesn’t mean much from a social business perspective. It doesn’t guarantee reach or engagement — and it isn’t even a sign that your brand has a legit community. There are too many fake accounts, bots and people who randomly (or mistakenly) followed your page a while ago, but haven’t interacted with your brand in years.

So here are four ways to think about ways to use social metrics for business:

1. Ignore social vanity metrics (e.g. follower counts) and focus on the engagement metrics that impact your business.

There are many social data points that are helpful to analyze in order to improve social campaigns and content strategies, but not all are useful to driving social business results.

It’s important to step outside our social media roles and think about the data sets that are important and actionable for business leaders.

Here are some helpful metrics that you should consider tracking to for business results:

  1. Web traffic from social channels
  2. Revenue and sales
  3. Leads & email subscribers
  4. Reputation, brand sentiment, community growth
  5. Customer care issues & complaints
  6. Competitor analysis and industry issues trending

And, remember, the social data that you have access to evolves so make sure to keep an eye on new data points that can help you and your leaders in the future. For example, video watch times, peak live viewer counts, video CTR and completion rates can inform your future video social strategy on each platform.

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How Jews & Christians Read the Bible Differently – Dr. Amy-Jill Levine & Dr. Marc Zvi Brettler

We’re honored to learn from Dr. Amy-Jill Levine and Dr. Marc Zvi Brettler in this week’s podcast about their latest book “The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently.”

They share how Biblical texts can be interpreted in different ways depending on the historical, literary or theological perspective used. And how those interpretations have varied throughout the ages — even within the same religious tradition.

The podcast discussion includes a discussion on the historical model of Biblical interpretation, the doctrine of original sin, the challenges of applying Biblical ethics like Sabbath day observances, and the ways that ancient Israel and Biblical writers expressed monotheism and polytheism in our Hebrew Bible and New Testament.

You can subscribe or download this episode on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also watch or subscribe to the video series on YouTube.

This podcast includes discussions on:

• Jewish & Christian Views on Doctrine of Original Sin
• Creation of Humans: “Let us Make Man in Our Image”
• Monotheism & Polytheism in Ancient Israel
• Jewish Understandings of the New Testament
• Sabbath Day Observances
• Polytheism & Supernatural Beings in the New Testament

EP09: How Jews & Christians Read the Same Stories Differently

Dr. Amy-Jill Levine and Dr. Marc Brettler talk with us about the importance of empathy and growing in awareness for the different biases and filters we all use when reading the Bible (even when we try to be objective). They also share with us about the importance of learning how different religious traditions interpret their Bibles — and why we all need to become more familiar with each other’s perspectives. Dr. Levine also talks with us about how the Bible isn’t just a dialogue to engage in — but a trialogue.

Listen to part one:

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