Life Renovation Podcast, a ministry of Life Services Spokane, launched in January 2024, aimed at “breaking down the walls that divide us through meaningful conversations around faith, family, and sexuality.” The pregnancy center’s Executive Director Glendie Loranger and Business Director Elizabeth Morrison host the podcast.
“Our long-term goal is to help change our culture so that people will actually talk about these issues,” Loranger said.
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In a previous pastoral role, she had already found a dearth of resources for people who came to her with issues in the areas of faith, family, and sexuality. Once on board at Life Services Spokane, she knew “it wasn't just our clients, it was everybody involved with Life Services who needed to be connected first with help and then in healthy community.”
“We would go to churches and hear people come up with stories of abortions that they had never dealt with,” Loranger said. “They had faith issues, how the church had hurt them, and they also had big family issues.”
“We're willing to open that can of worms,” Morrison said. “We know we're not going to solve things in 20 minutes, but we can at least start the conversation.”
Massey, Morrison, and author Abigail L. Johnson/Life Renovation Podcast
The conference that “flopped”
Three years earlier, Life Services Spokane tried addressing these same issues through a two-day conference complete with keynote speakers and 15 breakout sessions.
“We had speakers on sexual trauma and fatherlessness and sex trafficking,” Loranger said. “Those are just such heavy topics that it was hard for people to stay emotionally engaged.”
“It kind of flopped,” she said.
“We realized that a conference might not be the best format,” Morrison said.
So, she suggested a podcast: “something that people can pause, something that people can come back to, something that people can listen to multiple times, something that they can listen to in the privacy of their own home or their car.”
By chunking content into 20 to 30-minute podcast episodes, the hosts hope to make complicated and perhaps painful discussions easier to process for their listeners. The format seems to be working. Analytics indicate the show gathers listeners from 30 states and nine different countries.
The two most popular episodes so far have been one with Life Services therapist Karen Keith discussing healthy boundaries, and another exploring the journey to addiction recovery with Emily Olson.
Abundant content and support
“We just never run out of content, honestly,” Loranger said. There's so much to cover.”
In the first few episodes, the hosts shared their own stories in hopes of building trust in their audience. Subsequent episodes included other Life Services staff with their stories, intermingled with a variety of guests from their broad network of trusted experts.
Morrison said, “We think about, ‘What's an issue that people don't often hear about?’ So, we have a series coming up on parenting different-aged kids. We obviously talk about divorce and abortion, which you don't really talk about in the church, and that just happen to be our personal stories.”
Loranger added she and Morrison also set an example of friendly dialogue between different generations, as they are 23 years apart in age: “Elizabeth and I can relate to each other pretty well, but also help people hear things from both of those perspectives,” she said.
She noted that in recent years American society has largely shut down public dialogue on controversial topics.
“People stopped talking about anything deep, including these bigger issues [like abortion],” she said. “But one of the consistent themes among directors at the Heartbeat Conference was that the church needs to talk about these topics more.”
Raising the five thousand dollars needed to begin this ministry effort was not a hard sell. Life Services Spokane supporters had already aligned with the idea of a conference on faith, family, and sexuality issues, so they quickly got behind the podcast venture too.
“The idea of being able to reach beyond our walls and even possibly reach beyond Spokane was highly favored,” Loranger said. “They were already bought in, realizing that our pregnancy center is not just about saving babies or just about that mama, that the issues and problems in the areas of faith, family, and sexuality involve every single person in any given situation.”
“We feel like the podcast is kingdom work, that this was something that Elizabeth and I knew that we were called to, our board was invested in, and knew that we were called to take a kingdom mindset, not just a Life Services mindset,” she said.
Tweet This: We feel like the podcast is kingdom work, that this was something that we knew that we were called to.
Advice for future pregnancy help podcasters
For other pregnancy help organizations that may be considering starting their own podcast, Morrison and Loranger offered some wisdom from their own experience.
First, the hosts recommended talking with people already successful in podcasting. They hired Dee Massey, a former podcaster, as producer. Dee helped identify the necessary equipment and set up a studio using the resources available. The Life Renovation studio occupies a room formerly used in their maternity housing program.
Second, as important as it may be to provide visual content along with the audio, they recommended initially posting transcripts as a blog. Once audio production is mastered, video production could follow.
Third, before bringing on guests, Loranger suggested having them sign a memorandum of understanding. Life Renovation speakers agree to approach their topics from a biblical worldview aligned with the center’s statement of faith and their stance on marriage, gender, and sexuality.
Fourth, regarding possible content, Morrison challenged centers to consider ways to use materials like curriculum that isn’t yet landing well, turning it into a podcast conversation.
“Think through using a podcast to get content out like you would in a newsletter or video,” she said. “Just kind of the creativity outside of the box.”
Finally, they encouraged other centers not to rule out podcasting as a possibility due to their organization’s size. Though Life Services Spokane includes 32 paid staff, roughly 100 volunteers, a ten-member board, they feel their podcasting success results not from their center’s size, but their intentionality.
“[Our podcast] comes out of what makes us unique,” Morrison said. “So, whatever makes a pregnancy resource center unique in their theology and their mission and their approach to their audience, I think that would be the thing to show the world.”
“It doesn't matter how small a center is. You can still have a big voice and be a small center,” Loranger said.
One benefit of podcasting, Loranger told Pregnancy Help News, was that as guests come on the show from outside the walls of the center, “It connects people. It actually creates more momentum within your community for your center.”
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
