THE SHOCK ABSORBER
We make a podcast. So we’re biased, but we had Ryan join us to discuss whether it’s worth doing.
The Cheap and Accessible Illusion
Ryan’s first observation from walking into Christian podcast studios is a simple one: it’s not cheap.
Because we consume podcasts so easily, in our ears on a run, through the car speakers, cleaning the kitchen, there’s an assumption that producing them must be equally frictionless. You hit record and publish. But most of the podcasts Ryan visited had full studio setups: cameras, lighting, dedicated rooms, staff time for recording and editing.
This matters because the question of stewardship applies. If a church is investing significantly in podcast production, they should be asking with some seriousness: what exactly is this serving? Is it worth it?
More Bites of the Cherry
Your 20 to 25-minute sermon is a very small proportion of the content a congregation will consume in any given week. Netflix, Spotify, the radio in the car, the podcast on the commute, the music through the earbuds on the walk; all of it is shaping the people you’re responsible for, probably more profoundly than your carefully crafted sermon.
The case for a church podcast, or for encouraging a congregation to consume Christian podcasts, is that it gives you more bites of the cherry. More moments where Christian content is in the ears, doing formational work, during the parts of the week when you’re not with your congregation. The 20-minute sermon is important. But if it’s competing against 30 hours of everything else, the arithmetic is not encouraging.
Before universal literacy, the church created multiple formation structures: morning prayer, evening prayer, daily services, regular gathering. The assumption was that Christian teaching needed to be constant, not weekly. The invention of printing gave individuals access to the Bible at home and arguably reduced the pressure to gather daily. But the question is whether people are actually reading? Which makes the audio medium particularly well-suited to the current moment.
The Reformation and the printing press is the obvious historical parallel. Luther and the other reformers translated Scripture into the vernacular at exactly the moment when cheap printing made widespread distribution possible. The two things fuelled each other. The technology didn’t create the theology, but it carried it in ways nothing else could have. Podcasting might be a similar inflection point.
The Two Extremes
The first failure is the congregation whose only Christian input for the week is their hour at church. Everything else, Netflix, Spotify, news podcasts, sport, is benignly or actively non-Christian. That one hour is competing against 30 or 40 hours of content that is shaping how they think about relationships, what they value, what their expectations are of life. The oversized formational influence on that person is not Christian.
The second failure is the reverse: so much great Christian content that incarnate community becomes optional. Tim Keller or whoever is preaching on the podcast this week is better than my local minister because they’re the top preachers in the world. The music on Spotify is better than what my local church does. If church is primarily a product I consume; a worship set plus a sermon, fill the car up for the week, then I can do that product better digitally, without the frustration of finding a park, navigating difficult relationships, enduring substandard coffee.
The problem with that logic is not that it’s wrong about the quality comparison. It’s that it fundamentally misunderstands what church is. If church is a product you consume, then yes, the digital version is often better. But church isn’t a product. It’s an incarnate community. And that’s not replicable digitally.
The Distinction That Changes Everything
There is however, a difference between formation and discipleship.
You’re being formed by everything. The advertising you pass on the commute forms you. The rom-coms shape your expectations of romantic relationships, the influencers shape your sense of what success looks like, the news podcast shapes your understanding of the world. Formation is happening all the time, by everything. The question is what’s doing most of it, and whether it’s pulling you toward Christ or away from him.
Discipleship is something more specific. In Mark 3, Jesus calls the twelve to be with him and to send them. Not primarily to lecture them. Not to give them a podcast to listen to. To be with them. They watched how he lived. They saw him go off to pray. They were there when he healed, when he argued with the Pharisees, when he crossed the lake in a storm. The teaching and the life were inseparable.
Paul articulates the same thing in 1 Timothy 4:16: watch your life and your doctrine closely. Timothy’s effectiveness as a pastor comes from the integration of those two things. His hearers aren’t just receiving information, they’re watching whether his life validates what he teaches.
The question is not just who’s discipling you. It’s who are you discipling?
When you’re sitting alone with your earbuds in, listening to the best preacher on the internet, you’re potentially being formed. But you’re discipling no one. And if you’re a Christian, being embedded in the process of helping others grow should be part of what your community life looks like. That reciprocal relationship; being formed and forming others, seeing life and being seen, is what the local incarnate church makes possible and what digital content cannot replicate.
Parasocial Relationships and the Algorithm
Content creators, particularly on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, but increasingly on podcasts, are rewarded for sounding like they genuinely care about you as an individual. The medium encourages a warmth, a directness, an intimacy that makes you feel known. But the content creator has no idea who you are. They would not recognise you in the street. The relationship is entirely one-directional.
This is how the platforms are designed. Parasocial attachment is what keeps you coming back, what drives engagement, what the algorithm rewards. Christian content creators are not immune to those incentives.
The best ones work actively against this. They redirect personal pastoral questions to local people the listener actually trusts. They tell their audience explicitly that they are not your pastor. Go find a local church. Go find a local person. I can offer broad wisdom on the category of thing you’re asking about, but the local relationship is the thing you actually need.
The best Christian podcasts know exactly what they are offering and what they aren’t. They were supplemental. They were adding something specific. They weren’t trying to be anyone’s local church.
Are Podcasts Good for the Church?
Yes, if they know what they’re doing and stay in their lane. When content creators are creating in the right spirit and recipients are receiving in the right spirit, yes — they can be helpfully formative and good for the church.
The caveat is the distinction. Formation, yes. Discipleship, no.
The podcast belongs in the supplemental category — more bites of the cherry, additional formation alongside the sermon, content that helps counteract the non-Christian messages your congregation is absorbing from everything else. But it cannot replace the local incarnate community where you are actually known, where your life and not just your doctrine is on display, where the person sitting across from you is doing the work of actually watching you grow and asking who you’re becoming.
Discussed on this episode
Lifeway — Five Reasons Your Church May Need a Podcast
The Holy Post
RebuildersTwo Ways News
The Pastor’s Heart
Cross Formed Kidmin
Listen to the full conversation on the Shock Absorber podcast.
The Shock Absorber is a podcast for church leaders doing church a little differently. Next episode: the tangibles of church project management. Subscribe so you don't miss it. Email Joel at joel@shockabsorber.com.au, and join the Shock Absorber Network at shockabsorber.com.au.
Soul Revival Church is an Anglican church in the Sutherland Shire and Ryde.