Today’s guest post is written by Rev. Jason B. Harrison, M.A. He shares his weekly sermons on his podcast, Let Your Light So Shine. He’s also using Podbean’s Patron Program as a fundraising tool for his ministry.
For those of you who may be thinking about starting a podcast:
Allow me to begin by suggesting that you choose podbean.com as your host site. I have not been disappointed in the least.
Some may wonder why I personally chose to create a podcast. The reason is fairly simple. As a Pastor from Southern Illinois, I am always looking for new ways to reach people with the Good News. I record the audio of my sermons and upload them as episodes for my podcast.
Our church is a small one. I can preach all year in our small church and reach a small amount of people. I can preach the same way, and upload the audio file to Podbean, and reach people worldwide. Since I began the podcast, it has reached nearly 1,300 downloads. That may not impress some podcasters who see those numbers in a couple days, but for a small church Pastor – it’s very encouraging.
I share every new sermon/episode on Facebook. That helps to let my people know that the sermon is available in case they missed the service that week. It also opens another door for spreading the word about the podcast itself. The same can be said for all social media.
The actual process of creating and maintaining my podcast is quite simple. Step one was to sign up on podbean.com. I then decided between the free service or unlimited service. I decided on the unlimited deal. It was quite affordable.
A great deal of my podcasting involves my phone. I have a smart phone – and I downloaded Voice Record Pro from the App Store for free. Before I begin my sermon, I open the app and begin recording. Later in the day, I open the app and edit that sermon. I have the options of trimming it and converting it to a mp3 file, and I typically do both.
I then email the file to myself and download it to my computer. The files all go into one certain folder created just for episodes. I log on to Podbean. I follow the instructions to upload the latest sermon, and it is ready to go. There are a few steps involved when it comes to putting my podcast together – but they are simple. It all becomes second nature after a couple podcasts.
Podbean.com has made podcasting simple and enjoyable. Check them out if you haven’t already. Happy Podcasting!
*You can also record and publish via Podbean’s app directly.
I truly agree that a church podcast is a powerful and needed tool for the Church to use in reaching more people! I hope more people will be able to hear about podcasts like this and Keion Henderson’s https://www.keionhenderson.com/church-podcast ! It’s really what we need nowadays!