Carl Trueman, a theologian and pastor in Pennsylvania, started a podcast last year with a fellow pastor and an author friend. About 30,000 people now subscribe to The Mortification of Spin on iTunes. (The name tweaks a classic Puritan book title.) “I kind of do it for fun,” Trueman said. “And I hope we cover topics that are helpful to other Christians out there.” Although Trueman and his co-hosts generally maintain a light tone—one recent episode found them dissecting 50 Shades of Grey—they have also tackled child abuse and the “sinister” Christian patriarchy movement.
In 1921, Scientific American published a story titled “A New Era in Wireless,” reporting that radio was no longer just for experts and tinkerers, but had spread to the masses. In Pittsburgh, the magazine reported, Calvary Episcopal Church was broadcasting a full church service every Sunday. “Think what this means to many people: the invalid, unable to go to church can enjoy its benefits without leaving his bed or wheel chair; the farmer, too far from town to go to church has the service brought to him; and the sick in the hospital are encouraged to get well by the wonderful words of the preacher,” the reporter gushed. “One can almost imagine being in church.”
Today, Christians who want to “imagine being in church” have more options than ever. In particular, they have podcasts. Whatever your theology, your denomination, your interests, or your appetite for cursing, there’s a Christian podcast for you in 2014. There are programs for Christian leaders and Christian women, for Baptists and Lutherans and Catholics. For conservative culture warriors, there’s The Briefing, which tackles newsy topics like Tim Cook’s announcement that he’s gay. For self-consciously “edgy” believers, there’s Bad Christian, in which a pastor and two musicians razz each other and blast the fuddy-duddies who don’t get it.
It’s not surprising that Christian culture has produced such a rich variety of podcast programming. There have always been ambitious ministers eager to spread their messages beyond the four walls of their individual churches, and radio and television ministries have thrived since the beginning of those media.
Today, large churches are just as concerned with outreach—although now they use buzzwords like missional (and yes, branding). Compared with radio and television, however, podcasts are cheap to produce and disseminate. A pastor with a television ministry has to pay for airtime, and build a set that would attract channel-surfers; a pastor with a “tape ministry” had to record and mail actual cassettes. To produce a podcast, all he has to do is press a few buttons.
That helps explain why many of the most popular Christians podcasts, including those from Houston-based prosperity-gospel proponent Joel Osteen and respected New York pastor Tim Keller, are simply recordings of their Sunday morning sermons. If you’re already preparing a 45-minute speech every week, recording and uploading it online are not much extra work, especially if you have a support staff.
[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]
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