We make a podcast. Are podcasts actually good for the church?
Joel and Tim are joined by Ryan, a theology student whose college project has taken him and his peers inside Christian podcasts to ask exactly that. What they land on is a distinction that changes the whole conversation: there’s a difference between formation and discipleship. Podcasts can form you. They cannot disciple you. And if you’re not asking who you’re discipling, not just who’s forming you, you’re missing something essential about what it means to be a Christian.
Plus: the Reformation and the printing press, why Matt Chandler kept telling his online audience to go find a local church, parasocial relationships and the algorithms that cultivate them, and why Joel started talking like a Sopranos character during uni exam season.
Discussed on this episode
Timestamps00:00 Welcome. Ryan’s podcast history and the Ethical Leaders Club
04:00 How Ryan got onto this project and why street preaching didn’t work out
07:00 Ryan’s story of becoming a Christian
13:00 What led Ryan to Bible college
16:00 Podcast habits: Tim’s two dozen, Ryan’s lost headphones, Joel’s mostly football
21:00 Are podcasts good for the church? Ryan’s first observation (it’s costly)
24:00 Tim’s case for podcasting: more bites of the cherry, formation beyond the sermon
26:00 Ryan on universal literacy and the historical parallel
28:00 The Reformation and the printing press: not a coincidence
30:00 The two extremes: only one hour of church vs no need for incarnate community
33:00 Para-social relationships and the algorithms that cultivate them
36:00 Ryan’s two questions: who’s discipling you, and who are you discipling?
38:00 1 Timothy 4:16. Watching your life and your doctrine
41:00 Formation vs discipleship
43:00 Mark 3: to be with him and to send them
47:00 Unpacking Stu’s dishwasher: what life alongside life actually looks like
51:00 So are podcasts good for the church?