Discovering Podcasts
I love listening to other pastors, who are gifted speakers, teach God’s Word. In the good old days, when someone liked a sermon and waned to share it with someone else they would buy the tape. The tape would get passed around to dozens of other people until the tape wore out. Then came CD’s. You could purchase a CD of a great sermon at a church’s resource desk, or the whole series if it was really good, and then pass those around to friends and family. With the progression of the internet it became even easier to listen to and share sermons from great speakers.
This brings me to Podcasting. A podcast is where someone releases digital content (like a sermon or video) to the web and you can subscribe to it, download it, and enjoy it. Once someone posts their audio or video online you can subscribe to it and have it downloaded to your device of choice to watch or hear. It works like this: The podcast is like a newspaper, you can subscribe to it using a podcasting program which is like your home address to deliver the newspaper, and the device you listen to the podcast on is like the room in your house where you read the newspaper.
My favorite podcasts are sermons, but you can catch podcasts about nature, food, or even technology. I used to use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts and listen to them on my computer. However, recently I stumbled upon this sweet little application for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. It’s called Downcast (download here). It makes finding and downloading podcasts really easy. The app is $1.99 from the App Store and you can search all kinds of content. You can then download the content to your device and listen to it anywhere you want. The best part is that when your favorite pastor uploads a new sermon to their site you don’t have to go find it. Downcast will download it automatically and be ready for you.
Please keep in mind that you can download iTunes and subscribe to podcasts from your computer. You can then sync your phone to your computer and download the podcasts to your device, but I prefer Downcast since I’m treating my phone and iPad like standalone devices now. I try to never plug them into my computer…since I really don’t need to anymore.
