Podcasting for Pastors

Most of my readers are aware of the myriad of helpful resources that the web offers. For Christian pastors and lay leaders this means classic Christian books and commentaries, whole Bibles with concordance/verse look up tools, Greek & Hebrew lexical helps, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and myriads of helpful Christian articles, not to mention the plethora of thoughtful and helpful blogs. [See my online study tools page, and recommended links.]

There are probably still some people out there, however, who have not yet realized the abundance of audio files available online. There are literally hundreds of thousands of sermons available for free download, with more and more each day.

And then there is the Ipod. I don’t have one yet, but I know how much this has revolutionized audio on the web. Largely due to the Ipod and other digital media devices which rely completely on digital files (i.e. they don’t play CDs or tapes, instead they play digital files you can get online), audio messages now come in podcasts which you can subscribe to. Much like subscribing to your favorite blogs, you subscribe to podcasts and receive the latest audio messages from various preachers, churches or groups.

So for pastors this means…

You have all kinds of access to great preaching which can help improve your own. And with an Ipod or just with your computer, you can easily subscribe to your favorite sources for good preaching. AND, you can create your own podcast! You can spread the influence of your church and your messages via the web. And Christian Podder is one site which will help you upload your own mp3 (audio) files and both host them and create a podcast for you—all for free.

Christian Podder also lets people easily manage subscriptions and synchronize their online list of messages they have favorited, with their computer’s software for easy access. So for pastors, this one site could host your own podcast and help you keep track of other great messages.

And what works for pastors can work for bloggers too of course. If you want to record some audio occasionally, you can then create a podcast to go with your blog. I’m sure there are other sites that do this for free, but Jason Skipper, a blogging friend of mine, recently pointed this particular site out to me.

For those looking for more info on podcasting, check out this helpful explanation from Christian Podder. And you can click here to learn how they can help you create your own podcast.

Recommended Sermon Audio

Before I go I should list some of the great sermons out there you can get for free. For a more complete (and long!) list of recommended online audio sermons and lectures check out the sidebar of Mathew Sims’ blog.

• John Piper
• Mark Dever
• C.J. Mahaney
• J. Ligon Duncan
• D.A. Carson
• Mark Driscoll
• Martyn Lloyd-Jones
• Phil Ryken
• Tim Keller
• The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
• Westminister Theological Seminary