In 1728, John Wesley was ordained into the Anglican priesthood. People assumed preaching took place behind a pulpit inside the four walls of a church sanctuary. The hierarchy within the Church of England considered preaching outdoors a violation of canon law. John Wesley broke the law and broke the mold.

Wesley wasn't trying to be different for difference's sake. His unorthodox methodology of field preaching and circuit riding led to disenfranchisement and death threats. Wesley even admitted in 1772: "To this day, field preaching is a cross to me." So why did Wesley take his preaching off-road? Because he didn't believe the gospel should be quarantined to a church building. In his own words: "I look upon the world as my parish."

Wesley preached his first off-road sermon on April 2, 1739. His last outdoor sermon was delivered under an ash tree in the churchyard of Rye in Kent, England, on October 7, 1790. During that 50-year stretch, Wesley preached more than 40,000 sermons; traveled 250,000 miles on horseback; and saw 150,000 people convert to Christ.

What does that have to do with podcasting?

Podcasting is field preaching. It is circuit riding at the speed of light. Without having to saddle up, digital technology enables any preacher to travel 250,000 miles and preach 40,000 sermons with the click of a mouse.

Giddyup!

Walkaway content

So what is a podcast? Think of it as free radio. Think of it as an audio blog. Think of it as a sermon traveling faster than the speed of sound to anyone, anywhen, anywhere around the globe.

Podcasting is the democratization of broadcasting. With a modest investment in hardware and software, anybody can podcast. All you need is a microphone, a sound-recording program, and a free tutorial (www.apple.com/podcasting). Most churches are already equipped to podcast. All they need is a tech-savvy member who likes to plug-and-play.

Here in brief is how it works. You record a sermon and convert it to MP3 format. You upload it to a website. You get your podcast listed in a directory like iTunes. Anybody with a computer or MP3 player can subscribe to a podcast. iTunes 4.9 makes it easy to find, subscribe, and transfer podcasts to your iPod (www.Apple.com). And it's free! (Editor's note: Next week, watch for a detailed how-to article on creating a podcast.)

As of this writing, there are approximately 7,000 podcasts to choose from. If you want to take a test drive, visit www.theaterchurch.com to subscribe to our Theaterchurch podcast.

When you subscribe to a podcast, content is automatically delivered and downloaded onto your computer or MP3 player. No fuss. It's called walkaway content. You control what you listen to, when you listen to it, and where you listen to it.

You can download your favorite preachers and take their messages with you wherever you go. In fact, with a 60 gigabyte iPod, you can put a thousand preachers in your back pocket. You can even throw in all of your favorite bands.

That's how the podcasting bug bit me. I got tired of being a captive audience to whatever radio station my gym decided to tune in. I had dozens of sermon CDs gathering dust, so I got them ripped onto my iPod. And I started listening to sermons, worship CDs, and The Message while I worked out. I now subscribe to several Godcasts, and they have become a regular staple in my spiritual diet.

Podcasting is spiritual multitasking. It's feeding your spirit while you're commuting, relaxing, or working out. You can redeem the time and "have church" in the car, at the beach, or on the treadmill. Instead of mindlessly listening to talk radio or pop music, Godcasting facilitates digital or downloadable discipleship.

Download

The August 29, 2005, edition of the New York Times ran an article on preaching and podcasting: "Missed Church? No Worries. Download It to Your Ipod." This excerpt makes my point:

Kyle Lewis, 25, missed going to church one Sunday last month. But he did not miss the sermon. Mr. Lewis, who regularly attends services of the National Community Church (www.theaterchurch.com) in Washington, D.C., listened to the sermon while he was at the gym, through a recording he had downloaded to his iPod. Instead of listening to the rock music his gym usually plays, he heard his pastor's voice.

"Having an iPod is a guaranteed way to get the sermon if you're going to be out of town," Mr. Lewis said, adding that he listens to the pastor's podcast at least once more during the week, usually while driving to work, even during weeks he makes it to services.

Here's a sobering fact for anyone who is part of the preaching clan: 95 percent of what we say is forgotten within three days! But retention rates are more than doubled if we hear or read something twice. That's why I e-mail a written version of my weekend messages. That weekly evotional™ (www.evotional.com) gives NCCers a double dose of every message. Podcasting has the same effect. It's a spiritual supplement.

The iPod generation

MP3 players may be a novelty right now, but so was e-mail a decade ago. Less than 1 percent of Americans owned an MP3 player one year ago. But Apple sold 6.2 million iPods last quarter alone. Even my 9-year-old is asking for one.

My generation was the Internet generation. Exactly one week before I was born, October 29, 1969, the first e-mail message was sent on the precursor to the Internet, the ARPANET. A UCLA student named Charley Kline typed the word "LOGIN" and my generation never logged off.

The next generation is the iPod generation. MP3 players will do to CD players what DVD players are doing to VHS players. I can hardly find a VHS copy of a movie at my Blockbuster anymore! In the next decade, CDs will phase out, and MP3s will phase in.

A few years ago, our resource ministry stopped duplicating cassettes because cassette players are becoming obsolete. We shifted to a CD format for all messages. Podcasting is the next shift. We convert all of our messages to MP3 format and post them on our website for easy download. Podcasting is the logical next step for any church that wants its message to be heard beyond its four walls.

The podcasting revolution

The podcasting revolution has begun.

The question is this: Will the church idly sit by and watch others redeem that medium to spread their message? Or will the church lead the way?

Five hundred years ago, a new technology changed the course of history. Johann Gutenberg put a lot of scribes out of business. His printing press fueled the Protestant Reformation by aiding and abetting a German monk named Martin Luther to spread his God ideas farther and faster and cheaper.

Digital technology presents to the 21st-century church the same opportunity that Gutenberg's printing press presented to the 15th-century church. The church is in the redemption business. That includes technology. We're called to redeem technology to foster spirituality.

Carpe digital.

Mark Batterson is lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC, and author of Wild Goose Chase (Multnomah Books, 2008).