Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central Podcast, making theology central. Good morning, everyone. Do you feel it? Do you sense it? It's that time of year where if you're on social media, you're seeing all the posts, one after another, after another, after another, because Spotify has released their 2025 Spotify wrapped And when people get that, they share it anywhere and everywhere with anyone and everyone they can. Everyone starts talking about what was on their Spotify rap. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm going to explain it. But what some people don't know. is if you use Spotify, you get your Spotify rap, and it shows you, you know, all the things that you've been listening to. But for those of us who are content creators or podcasters, whatever the exact term you want to call us, well, we get our own Spotify rap telling us how people engaged with our content. And the Theology Central podcast, we received our Spotify rap yesterday, and we're going to talk about it right after I say good morning, everyone. It is Thursday, December the 4th, 2025. It is currently 11.45 a.m. Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. All right. Spotify wrapped. Again, for some of you, you've never used Spotify. You have no idea what I'm talking about. Every year, it's a big deal for those who use Spotify. You're waiting, and you're waiting, and you're waiting, and finally you open up the Spotify app, and there it is, Spotify Rap, and it's this kind of presentation with all these different slides showing you who your top artist was, your top songs, and what you listen to compared to what other people listen to. It gives you all kinds of information, and it's easy to then share it on social media. You can share your entire story. on social media, or you can share individual slides. Here was my top songs for 2025. Here was my top artist, and whatever other, here are the podcasts I listen to, whatever the case may be. And people love it. For some weird reason, it really caught on. It's kind of a pop culture phenomenon. It really helped Spotify become what Spotify is because it's so easy to share it. And people are like, oh, that's really cool. I want to use a streaming service that will give me all of my information at the end of the year because I like to look back and see what I listened to and which month was I listening to this and this. And so it's really cool. It's a thing that gets a lot of buzz and a lot of attention. And everyone shares it and everyone talks about it. But if you are a podcaster on Spotify, the very same time everyone's getting their Spotify rap to look at what they listen to, I get a Spotify rap telling me all the people who listen to my podcast. It gives me a breakdown of how my year went as far as people listening to the Theology Central podcast on Spotify. Now Spotify has always been It's always been kind of interesting in trying to figure out exactly how well we're doing on Spotify or not doing. At different times, I've turned on the microphone saying, all right, everyone, if you listen to this podcast, download the Spotify app and subscribe to the Theology Central podcast. Make sure you give us a five-star rating. Let's see if we can get ourselves on the Spotify podcasting charts. Go! most of the time that hasn't accomplished too much. Okay, most of the time that has been a complete and total failure. It really, it really has. It hasn't really gone very well. But it appears that this year something Something significant happened because the numbers were pretty shocking and pretty surprising for what happened in 2025 on Spotify as far as the Theology Central podcast is concerned. Now, I'm going to look something up here because I do have some detailed information from our podcast hosting site. Give me a second here. Let me open up, let me open up Spreaker. Let me log in really quick. Okay, give me a second. I thought I was already logged in. I don't know why I'm logged out, but that's okay. It'll take just a second to log in, because this will give me some detailed information where I'm not giving you my speculation or guessing. I can give you, you know, accurate information. Let me see where Spotify is currently ranking. Where is Spotify currently ranking? If I go to podcast, hang on, give me one second. All right, here's Theology Central. me open that up let's look at statistics let's see more details let's go to hang on here let's go to sources all right as of right now this is Well, okay, this is the number one location people listen to the Theology Central podcast as of today, all right? Now this changes basically every 24 hours, but as of right now, December the 4th, 2025, the number one location people are listening to me on is the Apple Podcast app. By far, they dominate as of today. The second place is Sirius XM Satellite Radio or the Sirius XM app. That's the second place people listen to us. Number three is Pandora, the Pandora music app. Number four is Spreaker. Number five is Podbean. And number six is Spotify. Now, the fact that Spotify is number six is pretty amazing because typically Spotify is further down. There are times it's been up there like number three or number four. It has never been number one, never. So typically, I mean, since we were added to the SiriusXM app, that's really been the number one place for us. I never would have guessed that, but SiriusXM app, that's where most of my listeners listen to me from. I know it's crazy, but people download the SiriusXM app, they use it for all the other music, sports, whatever, and they subscribe to the Theology Central podcast. That's pretty amazing. Never thought that would be our number one source, but it is by far. Spotify, we've put a concerted effort to try to get to a prominent place on that app, and here's the reason why. Spotify has been one of the most popular podcast apps out there. It has been over and over and over and over again. And Spotify has the podcasting charts. If you can manage to get yourself on the Spotify charts, Well then your visibility of your program just goes up by like 5,000%, right? Now you're possibly going to grow your audience because you have greater visibility. But I haven't been able to do that. Now I did a secular podcast. You know, for a short amount of time, on a dare, someone said, hey, you do really well in the theology world. Do a secular one and see how well you do. And I did, and we ended up number one on the Spotify podcasting charts. It was absolutely amazing. We were beating out some very big names, and then finally Michelle Obama, I think, knocked us down. At some point I had to make a decision. Either I continue to do that, and that's the end of Theology Central, or go back to Theology Central, which is where I would prefer to be. So that's what I've done. But I know, I at least know how important those charts can be. I know. And so I've wanted to accomplish that for Theology Central, mainly because if I go to the Spotify charts for religion and spirituality, the thing is filled with just total and utter heresy and chaos. So I thought, well, wouldn't it be great to have an alternative voice in the midst of all of that, right? I mean, there's just some crazy stuff on there. We have reviewed the charts and reviewed some of the content on the charts many times on this podcast. And it's just, what is that? So I'm like, okay, come on. Let's get us on Spotify. Come on, everyone. We can work together. But most of the listeners have been like, no, I'm happy with where I listen. I'm not going to go to Spotify. Leave me alone. I don't care. And I understand that. For you, you don't care. For me, I'm like, man, That chart is a train wreck of theology. Even if it's not me, we got to get someone else on that chart so that there's something reasonable. And there are some things on there that are far more reasonable, but there's some really bad stuff on there. So I'm like, okay, well, I tried. I mean, you know, you can say, well, it was stupid to try. Maybe it was, but I always try different things. In many cases, they're stupid, but that's all right. You know, You either try or you don't try. I'd rather try and fail than never try. At least that's kind of my mentality. I say that, but then sometimes I'm like, you know, it was stupid to even try. I don't know. I don't know what I actually feel. It can change every 24 hours. But yesterday, I think it was yesterday, I got the Spotify rap for 2025. Are you ready to hear some of the information that I received? I'm just gonna go through some of the slides, okay? Here's the first one. First, it told me that you had quite a year. All right, so I was already excited that very first slide said you had quite a year in 2025. And I'm like, I did? Oh, what was the big deal in 2025? Total new audience, are you ready? Total new audience for the Theology Central podcast on Spotify was up 999% increase in audience from last year. For 2025, on the Spotify app, we had a 999% increase in new audience from last year. Now, that sounds much bigger than it probably is. It just means that the year before, we didn't really have many people listening or joining in to listen on Spotify. And this year, we had an increase, and it probably didn't take a lot to get to 999%. But I'm still happy with it, right? That's still like, hey, I'd rather see the arrow going up than the arrow going down or not showing any change. So 999%, I will take it. That's awesome. The next slide said this. We had for total audience, a 125% increase. So for the total audience, we had an increase of 125%. Again, it's not 999%, but it's still over 100% and still the arrow is going up. And I'm like, whoa, all right. So we're at least increasing on Spotify. We're moving up. Then the next slide. was we were voted a 2025 fan favorite on Spotify, a 2025 fan favorite. Our average rating was higher than 63% of all other shows. Our average rating was 63% above all other shows. So we were voted a 2025 fan favorite. So that's... I'll take that. That's a positive thing. Then we were told... that we were voted a 2025 marathon show. A 2025 marathon show. What does that mean? Fans listen to my show, Theology Central, longer than 82% of other shows. Which means that when people tune in, they actually listen. They don't just jump out. They actually listen. 82% longer than other shows. That's pretty amazing. So it means more people are listening to us on Spotify than ever before, more people are giving us higher ratings than ever before, and more people are listening longer than ever before. Those are all good signs. I don't know what it means in 2026, who knows. The way it works on podcasting apps and podcasting charts, One day everything seems to be going well, you think you're gaining momentum, everything's going great, and then all of a sudden you wake up the next day and the bottom has fallen out and everyone has stopped listening and they walked away and they went and found something else. And you can't blame people, right? They have a million things to choose from. Millions upon millions of things to listen to. So you start doing something that they don't like, you're doing a series that they're not interested in, or you take a position that they don't like, they will just click off you and go click on another thing within five seconds. Nobody really ultimately cares. Because you're disposable, right? You're just a voice on their phone, and as soon as they don't like your voice for whatever reason, they just go find another one. And it makes perfect sense. Very few people are going to be loyal to a specific show or to a podcast host. Sometimes you will find those who will be, those are typically what is referred to as super fans. And those are the ones you build your show around, right? Because they listen all the time. In many cases, they send encouragement. In many cases, they will financially support. And those are the ones you don't ultimately want to lose because that's like your foundation. You got those people who stick with you, but you don't have a lot of those. Everyone else is very transient. They can stop by. They do drive-bys. They drive by. What are you talking about? Oh, no, never mind. Move right along down the road. And you can't blame them. I mean, we talk about just on Sermon Audio. Look at how much content, 7,000, 5,000, 7,000, 8,000 new episodes uploaded every week on Sermon Audio. I mean, you tune in for five seconds. If you don't like it, you just move on to the next thing. Now, at the same time, you do have a large percentage of the audience who will only choose, especially on Sermon Audio, a few speakers, and that's all they will listen to. They won't venture out. They're not explorers. They're like, here are my favorite pastors, the end. I'm not gonna go look for anybody else. And you see that on Sermon Audio on their top sermon chart. It's the same people over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It's like, come on, there's other people on there. Try something different. So sometimes you get people who are very transient and they're trying everything, but then you have others who will only stick with a small audience. It's very difficult to predict podcasting listener behavior. Sometimes you can predict it. There are some things you're like, okay, like on Sermon Audio, clearly that audience only wants to listen to like five preachers and that's all they want to listen to. They don't care. I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, you can almost rename Sermon Audio after the name of about five or six preachers because that's all Sermon Audio is. That's all people listen to. And that's kind of discouraging considering how many millions of sermons is on there from how many different broadcasters. And you would think that there would be more room for that. So the Sermon Audio audience... I don't get it. I don't really understand. And when you try to give them new things to listen to, they seem very resistant or hesitant to even try. So I don't get that. On podcasting apps, yeah, you have those people who reach Great Heights and They Can't Be Touched, the Joe Rogans, you get the idea. Typically political talk. They kind of dominate everything. But I do think on maybe some of the other podcasting apps, people are a little bit more transient and a little bit more adventurous and a little bit more willing to explore. So I don't know what it means for 2026. On Spotify, I don't know. Maybe we'll have another good year in 2026. I don't know. Sometimes people will say, so where do you want me to listen? Look, there are times I'm thinking, man, if I could get everyone to listen to us on Spotify, boom, we would be on the chart. That would be great. But then that would just take away people from listening on other platforms. So I don't really know anymore. I think what I want you to do is listen wherever it's easiest for you and you like the platform you're using, right? Like there's a part of me like, well, we've got this momentum going. Let me try to get everyone to go to Spotify. I'm not going to do that. Because Ultimately, you want people to listen on the platform and using the app that they feel most comfortable with and they like for whatever, due to whatever features it has. I don't know what features people want, but if the app gives you good notifications, letting you know when I upload new content, whatever else you want it to do. Downloads, maybe speed up the audio, slow down the audio, show you where you are when you go back, it picks up right where you left off. I don't know which features you want, but pick the app that works best for you. One of the things I've tried to do with the Theology Central podcast is I've tried to place this on every platform imaginable. That's why we're on SiriusXM. That's why we're on Pandora. That's why we're on Spotify. That's why we're on Deezer. That's why we're, you know, you name the platform, we're there. Amazon Music, you name it, we are there. I have been committed to ensuring that this podcast is anywhere and everywhere. I tend to tell people the Church One app is where I prefer people to listen to, not because it's going to help us. In fact, the more people who listen to us via Sermon Audio or the Church One app, those numbers do not go to our podcasting numbers. Sermon Audio numbers are not reported on any of the podcasting platforms. Right? So any of the platforms that track my podcasting numbers, Spotify, Sermon Audio numbers don't show up. They don't. That's very discouraging because you want those numbers to be reflected so that you get an idea of the total number of people listening to you, right? So I'll get my report from Sermon Audio and let me, let's say, hey, you've had 5,000 people listen to you. Great. That's wonderful. If those numbers went to my podcasting numbers, that would have a major impact on where we are from a podcasting platform. But none of those sermon audio numbers count. And because of the way sermon audio is designed with those very popular preachers, 5,000 is not even going to make a mark in the top sermon charts. So we're not going to make it on the sermon audio charts. And because you take those 5,000 out of my podcasting numbers, sometimes that can impact me not getting on certain podcasting charts. So the only way to try to manage all of it is pick one platform and then put all your eggs in that basket, and you have a greater chance of possibly impacting that particular chart. But then you limit how people can listen. So I tell people to go to the Church One app, and mainly for this reason. The Church One app, here are the benefits. One, you get notifications when I go live. Two, you get notifications when I upload anything. Three, I can send out a push notification letting you know any information, send out a quote, whatever. Four, if I need to include a PDF file or attach something to any of the messages or episodes I do, you can access that through the ChurchOne app. Another benefit of the ChurchOne app is all of my content is put in series. So it's easy for you to go, oh, here's that series, here's that series. It's easy for you to find everything. So I think Church One app proves to be far far more user-friendly in finding things, getting notifications, keeping up with everything. A lot of people don't like the Church One app for whatever reason. It's typically Android users. They don't like it for countless reasons. There's been lots of updates to the Church One app. I think it should be somewhat more user-friendly. I'm hoping more updates are to come because I want everyone who uses Android or Apple to be happy with it. I think some Apple users have reported not getting notifications, which is very—I'm hoping that that gets resolved. But I still think that that's the best, and just trying to find content. A lot of times people will contact me and say, I can't—did you—have you ever done a message on this or ever done a message on that? I'm like, there's an entire series labeled that on the ChurchOne app, but see, they're using a podcast app. So all you do on a podcast app, you just scroll and scroll and go until you try to find something. I mean, with over 4,000 episodes, those apps are not very good in keeping up with all of my content. or organizing it in a more accessible kind of way. So I typically say that. But if you're just trying to keep up with the stuff I'm doing now, the new stuff, and you're not trying to dive into the vast library of the Theology Central podcast, then any podcast app works pretty well. I would say pick the ones that have the best notification system. because I love notifications on all my podcast apps. I wanna know when an episode drops. I want it first. I don't want there to be any delay, because I wanna see when all the podcasts I subscribe to, I wanna know when that episode drops the second it drops. So, and I have multiple podcasting apps on my device, and I know that the notification system, they're not all equal. Some seem way delayed. I'm like, they dropped that episode eight hours ago, and I'm just getting a notification? Others are really, really fast. So, you know, if you subscribe to Theology Central Podcast, try a number of apps and see which one gives you the notification quickest when I upload something. But if you want to know when I'm live, You're going to need the Church One app for that. The Sermon Audio app is another great way to follow me because all my new content will be uploaded to your feed. The only problem with the Sermon Audio app, and I keep saying this, Sermon Audio, Give us notifications on the Sermon Audio app. Come on. It's 2025. All podcasting apps have notifications now. Okay, come on. Sermon Audio. You have live webcast. Well, it's no good to open up the app and go, oh, that's my favorite broadcaster. They're doing a live webcast and it started 55 minutes ago. Well, okay, I missed it. Give me notifications when they upload new content. And I love the feed tab because whenever stuff is uploaded, I don't get a notification, but my feed tab will update. So on the Sermon Audio app, make sure you follow us. But if you use Spotify, if you use Spotify, Consider adding the Theology Central podcast. Consider giving us five stars, because that is very beneficial. We have, it's funny, Pandora is up there in the top three or four. as people listening to us on Pandora, but we have more thumbs down on Pandora than any, probably, podcast in the history of mankind. People hate us on Pandora. They despise us on Pandora. I'll get the messages and I'll be like, for crying out loud. It's almost depressing. It's like, well, you've received 300 thumbs downs today. You're doing horrible. You should probably quit. So yeah, I, for some reason, Pandora audience. hate me. They loathe me. I do not know what I've ticked them all off. But yet they're listening. So I don't know. They listen just to give me a thumbs down. I don't know. But that's what's going on over in Pandora. Spotify, we have our highest ratings on Spotify. Apple Podcasts, Our numbers are dropping dramatically. I think we're down to three, three and a half stars. I mean, we're nowhere. Oh, man. We ticked off some people on Apple as well. But that's what happens when you're doing a theology podcast. In some ways, it's like, well, the more thumbs down you get, you're at least showing the algorithm that people are interacting with your show. Sometimes it's still beneficial. Yeah, keep clicking the thumbs down. Keep telling that algorithm that this podcast at least elicits a response, even if it's negative, all right? A negative response or a positive response, as long as you get a response. It's better than no response, right? A lot of times people don't realize that. Oh, I'm going to leave a big comment on YouTube letting you know that you are trash. And part of me just kind of smiles and go, well, thank you very much. Because then if I respond to that, and you respond to me, and then I respond back, and we keep a response going back and forth. that tells the algorithm that there's something going on with that podcast. Ooh, okay. Come on, tell me I'm trash. Come on, come on. And then if I can give you a little sarcastic response back, and then you get mad, and then you're like, and you leave me five comments. Ooh, yeah, let that algorithm know. Some people don't realize they're getting played by podcasters, right? Yeah, come on, get mad at me. Yeah. Why do you think some podcasters respond the way they do? Because they know more response leads to the algorithm going, Hmm, something's going on here. There's a lot of comments going back and forth. It doesn't care what the comments are. It just sees traffic. And it's like, well, let's push this out and recommend this to more people since obviously there's a lot of conversation going on right here. Sometimes the negative, all you're doing is helping the podcaster. So, hey, if you hate me, keep telling everyone you hate me, because ultimately the algorithm just says, hmm, they like to talk about this person. So it can be a beneficial thing. So I just wanted to do a quick episode, kind of tell you what's going on, but that's what's happening. 2025 on Spotify has been our best year ever on Spotify app. That's not saying a lot. Let me make that very clear. And one way that's not saying much, because Spotify is barely in the top 10 of where people listen to us from, right? I mean, again, SiriusXM, that's where everyone listens to us. That's our number one place. I mean, today Apple has passed it up, but trust me, within 24 hours, Sirius XM will be right back at the top, right? Right back at the top. I don't get it. I don't understand it. If you try to ask me why, I don't know. I never dreamed once we got added to the Sirius XM app that it would increase our numbers. I didn't. I was like, okay, well, this'll be interesting. I can tell everyone, look, I'm on SiriusXM. Ha ha, that's cool, right? And everybody'd be like, ah, boring, shut up. But then next thing you know, that's where everyone's listening to us from. Isn't that weird? That just makes no sense to me. But Spotify is at least moving up, so that's great. And so if you use Spotify, all means consider us. If you use the Apple podcast app, hey, consider giving us five stars just to try to counteract all the negative ones. That would be possible. If you listen to us on Pandora, a thumbs up would be nice. That would be nice. And some of you, some of you leave comments on some of the weirdest podcasting apps I've never heard from, and I will log in and I'll be like, whoa, That person just went way off on me. And I'm like, I don't even know how to respond to this. Like, I don't even have a way to respond to that. So sometimes when you're posting a comment, just realize you could be posting a comment on some platform that I may not see. Because some of them, they don't even send me a notification letting me know that someone posted a comment. And I cannot spend all day going to every platform going, oh wait, someone left a comment. So I try to check where I can. But I mean, if you really hate me that much, just know I may not get to see your hatred. You may be disappointed. I may not get a chance to see it. All right, so. There we go. I wanted to do a quick podcast episode because I didn't want to do this as an intro for something else. And also you can probably tell from the sound of my voice. I, what, about 24 hours ago, I was not doing so well. I was in bad, bad, bad, bad shape. And so today I wanted to see, hmm, how will broadcasting go, right? So I'm like, I'll do the Spotify update because that's just easy and simple. See how my voice holds up and then we'll determine how the rest of the day goes. I'm not completely happy with it, but maybe it's good enough. Maybe sermon reviews would be good today, right? Maybe today is a sermon review day. And you say, why sermon reviews? Because I play, I turn off my microphone. I can speak correctly. I turn off my microphone. We listen to part of the sermon. That gives my voice a chance to rest. I can cough, whatever. Come back, give my commentary, my analysis, my critique. Go back and listen. And that kind of back and forth, back and forth, I think my voice can hold up much better in that situation. So maybe today, we'll turn into at least doing one sermon review. What do you think? Maybe? I wanna do Luke 17 verse, is it 29? Because man, is it, hang on, is it 29? I gotta look. I hate when I give, it's a number. Me and numbers. Telling you, I can't get numbers right ever. Verse 19, Luke 17, verse 19. I see, I got the nine, right? And so I want, we need to do that episode today, but I want to make sure my voice is ready to go. Cause that's, I mean, that's the dramatic conclusion. So we need to get to that. So maybe I can force myself to do that today. We will see, but thank you for listening. No matter which platform you're using. Thank you. I appreciate it. For those who support the podcast, thank you, greatly appreciate that. And we, 2026, we're going to see what the, what, how, I don't even know what the future is for this podcast. I don't know what 2026 is even going to look like for the Theology Central podcast, but we'll find out together. Thank you for listening. Everyone have a great day and hopefully we'll do another broadcast here soon. God bless.