Spreading ideas
in a new era.

01Keep the purpose; reconsider the methods

Change the means when needed; keep Christian faithfulness and service to people at the center.

Rick begins by building on an earlier contribution from Alex: an organization needs foundations strong enough to guide it when the methods change. The way his father ran Fiel Publishing decades ago cannot simply be reproduced today. But the reason for publishing faithful Christian teaching does not need to be reinvented every time a platform changes.

That distinction puts humility before innovation. A ministry may be useful without becoming indispensable. Rick reminds his listeners that God does not need their organization, even when its work is fruitful. Recognizing that dependence can keep a successful leader from confusing personal importance with the importance of the task.

It also changes how a team is built. A publisher needs capable colleagues who can exercise judgment, not people whose only role is to agree with the leader. Setting a direction and protecting core convictions belong alongside helping other people succeed. Sometimes leadership means encouraging an experiment; sometimes it means slowing one down.

The history of printing gives Rick a way to frame the present. Reformers did not invent the printing press, but they understood its usefulness for spreading ideas. Publishers today face a different medium and different risks. The lesson is not that every technological shift is good. It is that responsible publishing requires understanding the tools through which people now receive ideas, while keeping those tools subordinate to Christian purpose.

02Be present where questions are answered

Make a concise answer an entrance to deeper study, not a replacement for it.

Rick describes a movement from printed copies, to websites connected by links, to services that assemble answers. A reader may now ask a question and receive a synthesis before visiting any publisher’s page. For a Christian publisher, the concern is not only a lost visit. It is whose teaching shapes the answer.

His example is pastoral: someone asking about assurance of salvation in Romanian will encounter some account of that subject. Are trustworthy local voices available to inform that encounter? Are resources understandable and accessible to the people whose questions they address?

This is the motivation behind his emphasis on discoverability. He does not celebrate a culture of shallow answers. He worries that readers can become accustomed to a little information without developing the patience to study deeply. Churches, families, pastors, and publishers still have a responsibility to nurture that deeper reading.

An accessible answer can therefore be a beginning rather than an endpoint. A short explanation may introduce a reader to a substantial article, a chapter, a book, or a conversation with someone qualified to help.

The practical recommendations that follow are Rick’s publishing framework, not a formula guaranteeing placement in an AI answer. Platform behavior can change. His more durable challenge is to ask whether the publisher’s best material can be found, understood, trusted, and followed into something deeper.

03Give good material a public doorway

Choose what to share and make it accessible. That is an editorial decision, not just a technical one.

The first of Rick’s five steps is to make important material accessible. Valuable teaching cannot help an unfamiliar reader if the only public page offers a title and a dead end. He asks publishers to examine their strongest resources and decide which ideas should have a clear, reachable home on the web.

He also corrects an earlier explanation of his own: a PDF is not inherently a sealed container that machines cannot read. The more useful questions concern access and organization. Can a reader reach the document? Is it introduced clearly? Is a substantial subject buried inside a long, unstructured file without a useful way to navigate it?

Readable pages, descriptive headings, sensible sections, and links to fuller resources help people make their way through the material. The technical work matters, but choosing what to make available is an editorial responsibility as well.

A publisher might share a chapter, commission a careful summary, or answer a recurring question while continuing to sell the complete book. Rick is not asking every publisher to give away every title. He is asking them to choose intentionally rather than allowing inaccessible storage or an inherited website structure to make that decision for them.

The public doorway should contain something worth reading in its own right. It should not merely promise that a useful answer exists somewhere else.

04Make the work genuinely local

Local knowledge adds value when it serves readers and respects the author’s meaning and rights.

Rick’s second step is to publish work that reflects real human knowledge and judgment. For a translation publisher, that does not mean abandoning translation in favor of local authors. It means refusing to confuse transferred words with a book that genuinely serves its readers.

A faithful translation may need an illustration its audience understands, a foreword from a trusted local pastor, or an explanation of why the subject matters in that setting. Rick describes publishers seeking permission to adapt examples without changing an author’s meaning. That relationship with the author and rights holder matters: localization is careful editorial work, not permission to rewrite someone else’s argument freely.

He offers other practical examples. Identify the people responsible for the work. Use the Bible translation familiar to the intended readers where appropriate. Invite an editor to explain how an article addresses a question the local church actually faces. Material omitted from an English edition may sometimes be especially valuable in a regional edition, if the publisher can obtain it and secure permission to use it.

AI may assist a first pass, but it does not remove the need for these decisions. Rick argues that any time or money saved should create room for better localization and closer attention to readers. A higher output of awkward, impersonal books is not the same achievement as a smaller body of work that people trust, understand, and delight in reading.

05Let AI assist; let an editor answer

AI can assist the work. A qualified editor remains responsible for what is published.

Rick develops that editorial principle through questions and answers. A book may contain a careful treatment of a subject, while a pastor or church member first needs a concise explanation of one part of it. These are different forms serving different moments in the reader’s journey.

Start with questions people actually ask: at conferences, in pastoral conversations, among students, or through the publisher’s own channels. Then make the answer substantial enough to help someone who never buys the book. A purchase link can offer a next step without becoming the reason the answer exists.

AI can assist in identifying questions a text addresses or preparing material for an editor. But Rick places the decisive responsibility with a qualified human being. That person checks the biblical references, corrects oversimplification, considers doctrine and context, adds local application, and takes responsibility for the published answer.

Skipping that work changes the nature of the process. A large set of generated pages with a quick approval pass is not equivalent to a collection of carefully considered answers. The visible quantity may increase while the actual editorial care decreases.

The resulting page should make deeper study possible: a fuller article, the relevant chapter, another question, or the book itself. Rick also asks publishers to disclose AI assistance, identify the source, and name the person who reviewed and edited the answer. This workflow assumes permission to use the source material. As an additional safeguard, the tool receiving it must be appropriate for that material; access to a book alone does not settle those decisions.

06Carry one idea through several forms

Adapt an idea for different uses while preserving its meaning and a path to the fuller source.

The third step is familiar to publishers: one substantial idea can reach people in more than one form. A conference address becomes a transcript, an article, a chapter, or a book. Rick asks publishers to continue that movement into digital formats rather than stopping at the printed product.

A full video can sit alongside a few well-chosen clips. An article can introduce a question explored more fully in a book. A local pastor can explain why the subject matters to the people he serves. These forms do not all need to appear once, on launch day, and then disappear from the publisher’s attention.

What makes the approach worthwhile is not the number of pieces produced. Each should have a recognizable purpose and a relationship to the original material. A clip may invite attention; an article may develop the argument; a book may provide sustained treatment. Repeating a superficial answer under slightly different headings does not accomplish the same thing.

Rick’s emphasis on authentic local voices belongs here too. Expensive production is not the only way to communicate something useful. A pastor explaining a real concern in his own language can bring knowledge and credibility that a generic promotional asset cannot supply.

For the publisher, the task is to connect these forms so a reader can move between them. Distribution should extend the life of an idea without stripping away the context that made it worth sharing.

07Measure what helps you make decisions

Choose measurements that help a team act; do not confuse attention with spiritual fruit.

Rick’s fourth step is measurement. Busy publishers cannot attend to every dashboard, but someone needs to understand what the available information says about how people encounter the work. The aim is not to accumulate numbers without a question. It is to make decisions with a clearer view of what is happening.

The slides distinguish four kinds of progress: people reached, people known, people gathered, and people reproducing the work by sharing or using it with others. Rick encourages publishers to adapt their tactics quickly while allowing time to see the fruit. His suggested ninety-day exercise asks a consistent set of real reader questions across AI systems, checking whether the publisher is cited and whether its terminology remains intact.

Website visits, email responses, and engagement with a particular resource may help a team decide where to investigate or focus its attention. They do not, by themselves, demonstrate spiritual growth or the strength of a community. The measurements need to remain connected to the purpose they are meant to serve.

08Make the next step a person

Let digital resources lead toward a person, a church, and a continuing relationship.

The fifth step gives the others their direction: a handoff from digital discovery to human community. A person watches a clip, reads a helpful answer, or downloads a resource. What happens next? Rick challenges publishers to notice how often the honest answer is nothing.

He asks them to connect those encounters with relationships: a local church, a gathering, a cohort, or someone who can continue the conversation. A conference has a life before and after the people assemble in the room. A free resource can introduce a reader to a community rather than simply adding another download to a counter.

This is also where his framework differs from a journey designed only to end at checkout. A book purchase can help sustain a publisher, and selling books is a legitimate part of its work. But, in Rick’s account, the purchase is closer to the middle of the sequence than its final achievement. The Christian purpose includes disciples who grow and help others grow.

Readers who share, teach, and use the material are therefore potential partners, not merely an audience to retain. The publisher equips them to carry worthwhile ideas into real settings and relationships.

Technology can help make those connections possible. It cannot become the church, supply pastoral maturity, or replace the patient work of people investing in one another.