Little white headphones that have revolutionized the way Americans listen to music may also revolutionize the way they learn about God.
Hundreds of churches and Christian institutions are using “podcasts” or other easily downloadable audio and video files to spread the good word around the globe with the simple click of a mouse.
Podcasts began as brief audio programs submitted by artists to Apple’s popular iTunes audio-file clearinghouse. People then downloaded them to their iPods, the portable digital-audio players that, in the past five years, have revolutionized the way many Americans listen to music.
Now the term refers to any audio or video program placed online and made available for customers to download automatically to their computers and iPods for later listening.
“A lot of our members don’t live in Alabama, so this is a way for them to get Jay’s message everywhere. And you can take it with you,” said Amanda Smith, communications director for First Baptist Church, Montgomery, in Montgomery Baptist Association.
The congregation began podcasting Senior Pastor Jay Wolf’s sermons in January. Smith said the feature has been very popular among students away at college or former members who have moved away.
She said podcasting only requires a minor investment of her time and church resources. She uses a “feeder program” to translate digital audio files of the sermons into the kind of computer code needed to distribute them on iTunes.
Members can then log on to iTunes, search for the church on the site’s podcast page and subscribe — for free.
The iTunes site automatically downloads new sermons to each subscriber’s computer as soon as they become available. Subscribers then can transfer those files to their iPods.
“It’s relatively easy to do, so it’s not anything — I mean, it’s cost-effective,” Smith said.
Cost-effective and far-reaching, said Gene Mason, communications minister at The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham, in Birmingham Baptist Association.
About 7,500 people subscribe to Brook Hills’ weekly podcast and an additional 10,000 or so download the sermons straight from the church’s Web site each week, Mason said. “We can’t track where exactly the podcast subscribers come from, but we know about 40 percent of our 125,000 monthly Web visitors are from overseas.”
Since so many who download the podcasts are from outside the United States, the church plans its services with its international audience in mind, he explained.
“We are sensitive to the Bible teaching at Brook Hills being cross-cultural. With so many listening online, it’s important that we not teach in a way that distances ourselves from other countries and contexts,” Mason said.
A sermon on how to be a Christian on the football field might not connect with believers in Venezuela or China but a message on how to glorify Christ through family relationships would, he explained.
“If the church is going to be a force on the World Wide Web, then we have to realize that first word — ‘world’ — is going to be important to consider as we determine how we minister online,” Mason said.
For those who are local and listen, Brook Hills’ leaders hope the message downloads are a supplement to their activity at the church, he said. Where that’s not the case, leaders are hoping to use the podcasts as a front door to get listeners involved in the church family.
“We know that many of our listeners only have a relationship with the church online, and we are prayerfully seeking better ways to transition them to experience the full depth of ministry and disciple-making within the body of Christ.”
To hear podcasts from First, Montgomery, or Brook Hills, visit www.montgomeryfbc.org or www.brookhills.org. (ABP, TAB)
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