A digitized Gutenberg

The New York Times today talks about "godcasting," which is basically Christian podcasting. For those of you disinclined to follow links, Wikipedia describes podcasting thus:

Podcasting is a method of publishing audio broadcasts via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). It became popular in late 2004, largely due to automatic downloading of audio onto portable players or personal computers.

While reading this article, I thought about how Christians used printing press technology to mass-produce Bibles. Eventually, this allowed the spread of knowledge and enabled normal Christians to own personal copies of the Bible in their own language. Today's digital technology is similiarly revolutionary. Our church publishes weekly sermons on our website. The guy in charge of our church's IT told me the online sermon was being downloaded 50 times per day--and our church has only 200 members! Honestly, we didn't really expect this.

The online sermons began a couple years ago so people like me could listen from other cities without having to be sent tapes. (I listened quite often to my pastor's sermons while in Washington, D.C.) I guess word-of-mouth spread, and eventually some people in Bangkok who had previously attended the church in Seattle, and had been faithfully listening online, decided to start a church in that city. (Two of my aunts' families have become Christian through that church.) Our church committed to supportting this new church.

Having grasped the importance of the word of God in digital form, the church in Bangkok copies and distributes sermon CDs for free, and people with CD burners at home copy them in turn and pass them to family and friends. In this way, entire families have been converted and young Christians strengthened in their faith. In Romans 10:17, the Bible states, "Faith comes by hearing the message." So the more people the can read or hear the message, the better.