I was gratified this morning to find an article regarding podcasting on the website of one of my denomination’s primary publications: The Pentecostal Evangel.
In the article, Kirk Noonan gives a good overview of the advantages and challenges of podcasting for the church. He quotes Mark Batterson (pastor of National Community Church in Washington, D.C.), Mark Kellner (the author of God on the Internet), and Mark Hunt (Vice president and Publisher of New Media for Zondervan). All have interesting things to say.
I was especially heartened by Mark Batterson’s clear assertion of the purpose and proper use of podcasting in the church:
Podcasting is not a substitute for church, it’s a supplement. There never will be a substitute for the human touch or the corporate worship we experience together in church. Our goal is to evangelize people and get them to check out our church in a nonthreatening way, and podcasting allows us to do that.
It’s good to see the Assemblies of God recognizing the value of technology in reaching the lost.
I believe that the internet provides today's church with a historic opportunity .... to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love in ways which could only have been imagined in times past. The objective of this website is to explore the various ways in which today's technology can be used to spread the gospel around the world.
