In 2017, Sarah Burnett, Associate Director of Bloom Communications, began to lead the charge in creating a podcast for church planting women. This was no small task! After almost a year of research and preparation, in April of 2018 Bloom launched the Plant Strong Podcast! It’s been an incredible year for the podcast team. Let’s celebrate  the Plant Strong Podcast 1-Year Anniversary with some of the podcast numbers for the first 12 months:

• • 27 women attended the Virtual Launch Party in April 2019
  • 7,792 podcast episodes have been downloaded as of May 30, 2019
  • 1,164 podcast episodes were downloaded in April 2019 alone
  • 25 total episodes total have been recorded
  • 12 more episodes will come out this year!

The Plant Strong Podcast has featured women on the front lines of church planting, seasoned women who have started multiple churches, influential leaders in organizations like Stadia and World Vision, and several other empowering voices.

The podcast has covered a range of topics such as Developing Your Voice as a Speaker (Laura Buffington, Episode 15), Starting Something New (Jessica Bettencourt, Episode 16), and Vulnerability (Mandy Smith, Episode 9).

Some of the most popular episodes are Greg Nettle’s conversation about women in ministry (Episode 8), Positivity in Church Planting (Anne Milam, Episode 11), and Sue Ferguson’s interview about leaning into your own gifting (Episode 21).

Over the last three months, the Plant Strong Podcast Team has seen an increase of overall downloads and is already planning a packed-out schedule for 2020 to help women thrive in church planting. For busy women who lead in many different arenas of their lives, this medium continues to be an accessible resource that women can listen to on the treadmill, on the way to work, after the kids go to bed, or anywhere that fits into a full life!

I asked Sarah Burnett what she is celebrating most after one year of podcasting. She assured me that there was a great deal to celebrate:

“I am celebrating all the hard work and the amazing guests, and am just grateful that it’s  valuable to women in church planting and church leadership. I can’t wait for the  summer series and the interviews that are coming up!”

Speaking of summer series, make sure that you subscribe to the Plant Strong Podcast so that you don’t miss a single episode! Interviews with Albert Tate, Kadi Cole, Jenni Catron, and other high-impact leaders have already been recorded and will be released every other week this summer.

Season 3 of the Plant Strong Podcast released on June 4th. You don’t want to miss a single episode! If you’re still catching up, you can download and listen to all the previous episodes on your podcast app of choice. Here’s to a summer of binge-listening to the Plant Strong Podcast while road tripping or lying by the pool!