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Newsletter Articles

"Reaching an iPod World"

Volume 4 Issue 1    Spring , 2006

Minutes before I started writing this column I was responding to an atheist radio listener who emailed me about one of the shows. You might think that is not a very interesting way to start a newsletter, as I carry on email discussions all the time, but here is the neat part: he lives in Australia and he wrote me about a show we recorded almost a year ago. You see, this listener catches my show on his iPod.

   For those of you have not yet caught the wave, an iPod is a portable digital audio player. It downloads content from your computer so you can carry your songs (or whatever else you want to listen to) with you. It is quite simply one of the hottest electronic items in the world.

   Although it was originally intended primarily as an easy way to access all the songs in your CD collection, the iPod has opened up a whole new medium of broadcasting: the podcast.

   A podcast is a downloadable digital file of basically any type of broadcast you can think of. Some of the more popular include T.V. shows, talk radio broadcasts and niche audio presentations of all types, including, of course, sermons. Computer users are able to download these broadcasts off the internet directly to their iPods.

   Also (and this is just incredible), listeners have the ability to actually subscribe to a podcast.  As a subscriber, every time they plug in their iPod to their computer, any new episodes of a particular podcast (a new sermon or talk radio show, for instance) that have been posted will automatically download to their portable device. They don’t even have to check the host site.

   Obviously this presents an amazing way to disseminate God’s truth and I have tried to take full advantage of it. I posted my sermons, radio shows and apologetics presentations on iTunes (the most popular podcasting portal) in January and we are already averaging over 275 downloads a day.

   The benefits of podcasting are immense. For one, a listener can carry around a broadcast in their pocket and listen to it completely at their convenience. I’ve heard from truckers who listen to my sermons as they drive and from a Christian High School teacher who takes my radio shows into his classroom to help teach apologetics and comparative religions. The portability makes the possibilities endless.

   Speaking of endless possibilities, the virtually limitless range of the internet makes accessibility to broadcasts easier than ever. I have interacted with subscribers from all over the world, including Germany, England and, as I already mentioned, Australia.

   In the past, a sermon, radio broadcast or  apologetics presentation would have reached only the people in the room (or broadcast radius) at the time. Much of the work involved trying to get people to come to a building or tune it at the right time. With this new technology, those barriers have been broken down. Praise God!

   May He be glorified as His truth marches on!