Podcasts, etc.
Today, I’m going to step back from the usual platter of praises for Firefox and Google stuff and talk about technology that can help encourage you in your walk with the Lord. In ministry, it’s is always important to make sure that you’re taking time away to learn lessons from the Lord and from others who are in a relationship with this same God that we’re following and serving.
I have found that listening to sermons and podcasts from different pastors, ministries and speakers has been one of the biggest encouragements to my ministry and my personal walk with Christ.
Like is says in the defenition podcasts are delivered via RSS which Rob Williams taught us about last spring in a 3 article series (1, 2, 3) which means they come to you when there are new ones, you don’t have to go out and get them – convenient!
So, the question now: How do you get them?
First you’ll need an audio player that is set up for to receive and deal with podcasts. If you are new to podcasts, I’ll reccomend Apple iTunes (don’t worry, it works with a Windows computer; you already have it if you have a Mac). You can get it from iTunes.com.
At the iTunes.com page, click the Download Now button at the top right of the page. On the next page, you don’t need to give your email address (so don’t) just pick your current operating system and download away. Don’t forget to install it.
After you download it and install it, open up iTunes and click on the “iTunes Store” link.
After the page loads you’ll have a lot of options in front of you, let’s start by searching for Cru’s podcast on reaching out to your friends, called the “Overflow Show”. To do that, go to the top right and type in “Campus Crusade for Christ” in the Search iTunes Store box and hit Enter.
It should bring up a page with a number of different options, including “Campus Crusade Today” as well as the “Overflow Show”, click the subscribe button next to the Overflow Show (or you can click on the logo for more information).
When you click the button it may or may not take you to your “Podcast” screen, if it does not click on Podcasts on the main menu underneath Music. It should now look something like this:
If it’s just showing the title Overflow Show click the gray arrow next to it to show all of the episodes. If you want to download all of them, click the Get All button. Notice the orange circling arrow, that means that it’s already downloading the newest episode! It should be ready listen to pretty soon (depending on your internet connection speed)! If you notice, there’s now also something on the menu to the right that says Downloads and has a similar spinning arrow from now on when you start iTunes up it will check to see if there are new episodes of your podcast and try to download them, this will let you know how many new episodes of podcasts it is currently downloading.
Now, if you want to try other podcasts that are listed in the iTunes program click on the iTunes Store button again and it will take you back to the last page you were at. You have a few options…
You can click the See All button and see other podcasts that were found under the “Campus Crusade for Christ” category (or you could look at the list on the bottom – for those of you in Central PA area, there are even some of the talks from Penn State’s Cru movement).
You could go back to the main page and browse through the podcasts and look for other ones you might like.
Sometimes you might run across a link for a podcast on a webpage, often when you click on it your iTunes will start up automatically and it will subscribe you to the podcast. Such was the case with the talks from RADIATE07, I took the audio from the talks and uploaded them as a podcast. With that site down and RADIATE08 just around the corner, let me suggest checking out RADIATE08.com in January for those!
If you have an iPod or another MP3 player you can now load them onto it (follow the instructions that came with your MP3 player) and listen to them wherever you go. You can also listen to them on your computer or burn them onto CDs to take with you in the car. Have fun with your new podcasts, and let me suggest some of the ones that encourage me (just for the record, I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the podcasts, but I find myself encouraged to seek God’s face because of them often); search for them in iTunes:
Campus Crusade Today
Desiring God Sermon Audio
Grove City Alliance Church
Mars Hill Church: Mark Driscoll Audio
McLane Church – Edinboro
National Community Church Audio Podcast
Overflow Show
SermonIndex.net Classics Podcast
Veritas Media
One note: another great site for Podcasts is Odeo.com, search by topic or speaker to find some great stuff there. Search for “Resonate Audio” and listen to anything from Mike Frost!
Another note, some seminaries (most notably Reformed Theological Seminary) have started offering audio recordings of some of their courses complete and completely free as podcasts. Last summer my wife and I listened to much of the “History of Philosophy and Christian Thought” class on the drive back from CSU.
