Podcast

Below are some personal ramblings on my history with podcasting. To the point, the actual podcast episodes will be updated at the Podcast Feed page in the menu above.

Is it time to get the microphone back out? Perhaps so. You can follow my attempt to restart my podcast by using this Apple Podcast link or by pasting this link directly into your podcast app: https://preachertony.com/category/podcast/feed/

Why are podcasts (and technology in general) so special to me?

An excerpt from my paper, A Biblical Theology of Technology:

At the beginning of 2003, I used my new college student discount to buy an education bundle that included a laptop and something in a new category of devices called an iPod. In the slow and dead hours of third shift, I used my time to learn an entirely new operating system and work on college assignments. In the calmness of the midnight hours, I would listen to sermons on my iPod as I walked outside around the Ryobi property. At the beginning of 2004, some people in church donated some money so that I could start a 15-minute weekly program at our local AM radio station. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do: to give a new Christian attending a fundamentalist college a voice to say whatever was on his mind across the airwaves every Friday at 5pm. It wasn’t much, but it was what I had, and I wanted to give it to God. I read in a technology magazine about a new way people could download MP3 files on demand using RSS feeds called “podcasting.” The radio programs were already in MP3 format when I recorded them, so I used a template and taught myself the bare basics of writing an RSS file and creating a podcast in 2005. I was fascinated, absolutely filled with child-like wonder. 

So at the beginning of 2005, alone at work in the middle of the night, I could listen to sermons from a pastor in Florida while walking under the stars. I could read the Bible and search for words in MacSword. With a microphone and SoundStudio, this little kid on nightshift could talk about the Bible. And with an RSS file with MP3 attachments, people beyond the AM radio signal could listen if they wanted to—the family in Indiana who blessed us with a gift for our marriage, the mother who recently miscarried in Wisconsin, the mother raising three children in West Virginia, the man in Oregon who donated web server space, and a pastor in Fresno… maybe the format was so new that the options were pretty limited. But like the lad with the fish and the loaves, I gave to Jesus what I had—a love for him and a desire to use technology for him—and he blessed it. 

It was my feeble attempt to get in on what seemed to be a revolution in how digital media was being delivered and consumed. Life was simple, technology was changing, the spare room in our apartment was my computer room, and I had little knowledge of the Bible and little knowledge of how computers actually worked. Eventually, the local radio station closed, the podcast stopped, life got busy, and the handful of people who subscribed no longer heard me 15 minutes a week—the USB mic I bought for the radio program has been idly stashed in my desk drawer for nearly a decade. 

I obviously didn’t change the world, but a new love for Jesus and an interest in technologies for the new millennium changed me. And without even realizing it, I think it was Jesus teaching me that I can find his fingerprints everywhere—even in operating systems, beautifully designed electronics, RSS and XML feeds, website design software, MP3 sermons, and an email folder to keep correspondence with people who told me thank you and to keep going.