 Getting started in Christian media. Number one, the right mindset. When I first began to create videos on YouTube in September of 2007, all I knew was that I wanted to reach more people for the sake of the gospel. I was the cameraman, the editor, the preacher, and the one who uploaded the videos. Sometimes when preaching at a church or youth camp, I would enlist the help of a friend who would record me preaching. I would then take the footage and spend hours learning to edit. The PC software I used for editing would crash every 30 seconds to 5 minutes, so I had to painstakingly craft my videos while saving my progress after nearly every single edit. When I would finally post, the videos would get 20, 30, 100, and if I did really well, maybe 300 views. From September of 2007 to September of 2009, I gained a grand total of 20 subscribers. That's 10 a year, less than one a month. Just about 11 years later, I reached my first 100,000 subscribers. And it took about 16 years in total to reach my first million subscribers. But get this, only about nine months from then to reach the next 600,000. And what took us our first seven years to reach, we now reach daily. That's what you call exponential growth, or as one of my dear pastor friends says, gradually, then suddenly. Of course, one has to ask, do numbers matter? And the answer is, it depends. Why do you want numbers? We can safely assume numbers matter to God. A whole book of the Bible is called Numbers. But why? Why do numbers matter? Because numbers represent people, and people need the truth of God's word. So long as you give God the glory and celebrate for the right reasons, numbers can be exciting to watch grow. Don't despise the day of small beginnings. The Lord rejoices to see the work begin. Jesus referred to the kingdom of God as a mustard seed that eventually grows to a great size, giving the birds a place to nest. Just because it begins small, doesn't mean it stays small. Just because it starts slow, doesn't mean the growth won't accelerate. Gradually, then suddenly. Don't count yourself out just because you aren't where someone else is. This is a marathon, not a sprint. I remember asking the Lord, am I just kidding myself? Is it really possible to do this sustainably? Do I have what it takes? I felt like Moses. Lord, why don't you just use my brother Aaron? I recall once even asking my dad, dad, at what point do I just accept that I'm not gifted in this area? At what point do I call it quits? Thankfully, he didn't entertain that question. If you're going to step out in faith and pursue content creation for the sake of the kingdom, you have to start with the right mindset, except that the journey will be longer than you want it to be, and harder than you thought it could be. But determine that no matter what, you're going to give it your all. Remember that we do what we do to glorify Jesus. Many times, we lack passion simply because we lack clarity. Your consistency of diligence will be directly proportionate to your clarity of focus. Your why will fuel your what, and it's all for God's glory. Remember that we are servants, not celebrities. We're doing what we do to help others not to be celebrated or to gain status. Number two, find your flow. Once you've embraced the right mindset, it's time now for practicality and diligence. Start with finding the message God has given to you. In order to become dynamic, you must first become specific, focus. What we're all called to preach the gospel. Each one of us is gifted in a unique way. If a man's gift is to encourage, let him encourage. For me, the messages I upload often fall under these three categories, the Holy Spirit, prayer, and spiritual warfare. Now that doesn't mean I don't preach salvation, and that doesn't mean that I don't cover other topics. That just means that I have an area of focused grace, and so do you. Find your flow. Worship, revival, prayer, deliverance, faith. If your life could share only one message in addition to the message of salvation, what would that message be? Be specific enough to have a direction, but broad enough to allow for flexibility and variety. Don't overthink it. Just follow God's leading, and you can always expand and narrow the scope of your theme as you're helped by the Holy Spirit. He'll guide you as you go. Just ask Paul in Silas. Number three, theme, topics, and types. Once you've found your flow in terms of your theme, you can now begin to work on topics. For example, if your channel theme is the supernatural, you could cover topics like miracles, faith, and healing. If your theme is spiritual warfare, you could cover topics like deliverance, angels, and intercessory prayer. Don't imagine this to be too rigid. You just need to find a general focus for your content. Not everything's going to fit into a neat category, and there's no clear line between a broad theme and a specific topic, but don't let that stop you. Don't allow overthinking to become underacting. You do, however, need to have a clear focus. People are more likely to follow your content if your channel has a clear reason for them to follow it. If there's no clear direction of content, there's no clear reason for people to follow. Find your overall theme, then find at least three topics that fit that theme. Then funnel these three topics into three types of content. For example, types of content could be how-to, misconceptions, and Q&A are questions and answers. Here is how that might look. The theme, that broad overall umbrella, the supernatural. Topics could include miracles, healing, faith. Video one, how-to increase your faith. That's the how-to type of video. Video number two, why you can't buy a miracle. That's the type of video that addresses misconceptions. Video three, why aren't some healed? That would be the type of video that would fall under the category of the Q&A. Now, of course, you could add other types of content too, like lists, stories, studies, etc. The idea is simple. Theme plus topics plus video types or the supernatural theme, topic, faith, type, how-to. And then you can mix and match these and even continue to add more types of video in which you present your topics and all under your channel theme. Have you ever attempted to create content only to not be able to deliver? Maybe you set up the camera and lights, you sat down, stared at the lens, and then froze. This happens primarily because we don't have a clear direction. Once you know what you want to say and how you want to say it, the rest flows a little more easily, though still not without diligence. Take your theme, your topic, and your chosen video type, and then write notes or create an outline. Go over said references, and then it's time to record. Now here, I must advise that if you're vlogging, sharing stories, or posting content that's more entertaining than it is edifying, that's different. Because if you're teaching, preaching, and discipling online, you absolutely must meet the standards of First Timothy chapter 3. Far too many skip the process and go right to the platform because social media allows you to seemingly bypass that process. But whether you're presenting to entertain, to minister, or to inform, you as a potentially public figure need to consider the implications of your testimony, accountability, spiritual headship, and solid Christian friends are key for the journey ahead. Number four, make a schedule. It's at this point that your excitement must begin to turn into action. But passion cannot become productivity without structure. In fact, many would be creators lose passion simply because their lack of planning makes them feel overwhelmed. So many get stuck at talking about one day or soon. This is why I constantly tell myself, just do the next thing and figure out the next step when you get there. Just create the channel. Just plan the videos. Just practice the content. Just record a final version of that content. Just edit the video. Just plan your title and thumbnail. Just do the next thing. Solve problems as they arise. Momentum will be built as you just persist. This, of course, doesn't mean that you should just go about creating chaotically. It's a balance. Plan what you can. Yes. But then do something, even if it's not perfect. Do the next thing. What might be a good next step is to create a schedule. But if you're going to create a schedule, you'll need a goal. How many videos do you want to make and in what period of time? Can you commit to said frequency? Can you create consistently? Make a goal that's focused, tangible and practical. Focused as in clear. Tangible as in you'll know when you meet it. For example, saying I want to impact the world isn't as tangible as saying I want to reach 10,000 people in the next 90 days. One can be measured, the other not so much. Finally, practical. As in it's a fine balance between both being realistic and challenging. Faith is a muscle. You can believe God for more as your faith grows. Faith will always reach for what is just outside of its reach. If you don't believe according to the measure of faith God has given to you in this season, you risk having pressures put on you that your character can't handle. You also risk being disillusioned. Can God do anything he wants? Sure. But he gives us a measure of faith that he might test us and process us before promotion. Consider this too. Whatever you do to gain the growth, you have to do to continue to maintain the growth. Now, you may feel led to do one live stream a week. You may even feel led to do a daily live stream or daily videos or 10 short videos a day. But just remember that if you decide to stop once you start, you will see a dip. So be careful what you decide to start with. Can you change it later? Yes, of course. But it's much less pressure to add more content than it is to have to take some away. Taking everything we've learned at this point, you can ask yourself some key questions that will help you to determine next steps in terms of your schedule. Number five, do something. So you believe that God has called you to do this. You have a good Christian testimony. You meet the standards of 1 Timothy chapter 3, and you have your theme, topics, and types. You've picked the subject matter for your next videos. And while there are many other factors to consider, it's about time now to turn toward production. Now, this video is more about getting started in media ministry. So I'll just give you some homework in this area. You'll want to study things like camera composition, lighting, specifically three-point lighting systems, microphones, audio recording, set design, and so forth. Back on the content side of production, you want to rehearse your video in front of the camera, film yourself, and yes, watch yourself. You may cringe while doing so, but this will give you great insight into ways you can improve. If you're a Christian creator who found this helpful or you're serious about getting started as a Christian content creator, consider applying to my content creator mentorship group, Numa Creators. Once a month, myself or a guest consultant will coach you and a group on Zoom. We'll cover topics like short form content versus long form content, gaining subscribers, improving viewership retention, live streams versus pre-recorded content, production and equipment, marketing, fundraising, knowing and reaching your viewer, algorithms, editing techniques, and so much more. Now, there is a monthly membership fee. However, in addition to the Numa Creator monthly Zoom call, you'll get access to upload your content on our censorship-free, gospel-friendly streaming platform, Numa Streaming, which also doubles as video storage just in case you ever get kicked off a secular platform. Numa Streaming is on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire. For now, the amount of creators on the platform is being kept to a minimum so it's nowhere near as difficult to stand out on Numa as it would be on another platform. As a Numa Creator, you'll also get access to our Numa Music Library, which features original music that you can use on all your content without having to worry about copyright strikes. If you're a serious Christian content creator or want to become one and you're looking for mentorship like this, you can apply to join Numa Creators by going to numacreators.com. That's N-U-M-A, creators.com. I'll post that link in the description and a pinned comment. Let's connect.