Looking at our world from a theological perspective, this is the Theology Central Podcast, making theology central. A lot of the time I turn on this microphone and I share with you my frustration, my discouragement, my depression, my irritation. A lot of times I turn on the microphone and I express a lot of negative emotions. I think I do that probably more than I want to, but I also try to be very transparent. I try my best to be like, hey, I'm just a sinner with a microphone. I'm still trying to figure all of this out. And you get to hear me try to figure things out. And I express all of the negative emotions that can come with trying to figure things out. All right. So I try my best to be transparent. So I thought maybe today I would turn on the microphone And I would share maybe some good news, maybe something that's encouraging, maybe something that should, maybe it should make me happy, but will the fact that I'm so jaded and skeptical, am I going to just then explain this away? Possibly, but we're going to talk about all of that. But first, let me say good afternoon, everyone. It is Friday, March the 28th, 2025. It is currently 2 12 p.m. Central Time and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, I have spent a large portion of my adult life in front of microphones, right? either wearing a lapel microphone or sitting in a chair in front of a microphone talking about anything and everything and doing broadcasting. I had a program on Christian Radio, then I got kicked off Christian Radio. I've done kind of a, well, podcasting before it was really called podcasting, dealing with news. I now do this podcast about, you know, called Theology Central, talking about theology. I've been broadcasting for a very, very long time. And you go through different seasons I think in broadcasting right and there's lots of reasons why you go through these different seasons I think you have that initial excitement right oh I'm gonna broadcast I'm gonna create a podcast okay this is gonna be fun and it's interesting and you can't wait to just get something done and then you get it uploaded and then you get the excitement oh look it showed up on Spotify it's on Apple podcast yeah and and you get to see what it looks like when you open the app and it's just like there's all the excitement and fun and you don't even really necessarily have a plan you're just enjoying broadcasting and you're being a part of this entire podcasting broadcasting world and your your content is here your content is there it's just kind of fun and exciting And then you may enter into a stage where now you're kind of committed. You're going to change the world. You're going to do this. You're going to accomplish this. You're going to do this. You're going to do this. Maybe you're looking at it as, oh, okay, I'm a pastor of this church. I serve this church in this capacity. I'm going to use this broadcast as an extension of the ministry of the church, and people will really appreciate what I'm doing because I'm trying to expand the ministry. Yeah, we may be a little church in the middle of nowhere, but now I'm broadcasting around the world, and people will see that. Oh, that's a great thing that the church's ministry is reaching And you can be like, okay, work hard, work hard. This is for the church. This is for the church. This is for the church. Now, sometimes you don't know if your motives are pure or not, because it may be, is it really about the church or is it really about me? But you feel like mission. You feel like there's a mission. You feel like there's a purpose. And so you work and you work and you work and you work and you work and you work. And then sometimes you may kind of transition out of that to more of a, well, I still think it's necessary, but am I really, you start, maybe you start kind of going through a season of doubt or question. Am I really accomplishing anything? Is it really worth my time? How much time do I put into this? How much effort? And then you start kind of questioning yourself. Because what people don't know, when you sit in an empty room talking into a microphone for an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, no matter, depending on how many, how you're measuring the hours, hours per day, hours per week, hours per month, how many hours you spent in a year. I mean, when you look at how many episodes, let's say I do in a year, That's a lot of my life sitting in front of a microphone. And so sometimes you start asking, maybe some people will say as a fleshly question, but you're kind of like, what am I really accomplishing? I mean, that's a lot of hours because I know this is hard for people to understand. You're just sitting in a room talking into a microphone and then you upload. And so you have to look for some kind of like, am I really doing something? So sometimes you look. You look for emails. Am I going to get an encouraging email? Am I going to get something that's supportive? I'm going to get someone like, Hey, thank you so very much. Am I going to get a report on how you help someone, encourage someone, challenge someone, change someone's thinking. Okay. Sometimes you get those, but those are far fewer than, than people would probably imagine the The positive ones are much fewer in number than the negative ones. The negative ones are, you said this incorrectly, you did this incorrectly, you should try this, you should change this, you should do this, stop doing this, you're an idiot, you're a moron, whatever the case may be. So sometimes that's hard to get any kind of clear measurement because either your email box is empty or it's filled with more negative and then every once in a while you get that very encouraging one. But it's hard to measure because again, you can do, you could do 40 broadcasts and not hear from anybody. So you never really know, like, how do I measure it? And then you're like, well, am I looking for some kind of praise? Is it because I'm, is it my own need for approval or for, well, okay, that's a wrong attitude. So then you kind of feel bad that you're thinking that way, but then you keep looking at your email going, man, I don't see anything. Well, okay, maybe people don't like that. Maybe I'm wasting my time. So, It's hard to figure out. So then you start looking at numbers. Because as a podcaster, you have all kinds of analytics, right? So you get like how many downloads, how many streams, how many downloads per episode. Okay, well, what does that look like? Okay, that's not looking really good. Oh, wait, we've had an increase. Oh, that's really good. But why do we have the increase? Wait, now we have a decrease. Why do we have a decrease? And then you look on all of the different platforms, YouTube, you know, sermon audio, just you're looking at all your different analytics and you're just like, what do I do with all of this? I got this many numbers here, this many numbers here, this many numbers here, but wait, we don't show up on the Spotify podcasting chart. Okay. We show up on, sometimes we show up on Apple charts sometimes, but, you know, it's hard sometimes to know what that even means. And then other places we don't show up anywhere. And you're kind of like, well, that's not very that so you look to emails you look to analytics sometimes you look and i know this is going to sound very materialistic you look when you get that paypal notification someone just gave you ten dollars someone just sent in twenty dollars someone just in sent in fifty dollars someone just sent in a hundred dollars and that really obviously has a very big impact because that's someone who thinks that what you're doing is actually worth their hard-earned money. And so that can go like, whoa, okay. Now that usually what it does to me is it almost, it almost, it has such an impact on me because I'm like, oh my goodness, they just gave that much money. All right, I better do 50 broadcasts. I better do a hundred. I better do more because they got to get their money's worth. So a lot of times, it's very encouraging, but it almost makes me then feel like I need to do more. So no matter what you get, it has this kind of like, If you have good numbers, well, you're trying to figure out why. If you have bad numbers, you're trying to figure out why. If you get a good email, then you kind of ask yourself, well, why don't you get more good emails, right? If you get negative emails, you start thinking, well, maybe I do everything wrong. It plays on your mind and it can be just, it can just be like, oh, what do I do? And not only that. You just have the never-ending stress of produce more content, produce more content, produce more content, produce more content. Sit down, record more, do more, do more. How many do you need to do? And then sometimes you feel like you're always... chasing, like, well, that episode wasn't good. Maybe I'll do another one and then it'll be bad. It'll be better. Oh, well, that we're maybe if I do another one, maybe if I and you're always thinking if you do one more, you're going to finally feel like this was the perfect one. Well, is that perfect one make up for the three bad ones? And there's just so much happens behind the microphone that people just don't know. All you see is, oh, I got a notification. New content. Oh, new content. Oh, new content. Or, well, I wonder why he hasn't produced anything today. Like, I don't know what. Or you may not even think at all. You may not even care. But from this side, there's a lot going on. And sometimes it can lead to just questioning, doubting, frustration, you know, what am I doing? Why am I even doing this? Does anyone even care? And you start having a pity party, you feel sorry for yourself, you get discouraged, you get depressed. It can all be a lot when it comes to broadcasting. And then you can start questioning, you know, a lot of other, you can just start questioning everything. So a lot of times I turn on the microphone, try to be very honest with you, try to be very transparent, but I can turn on the microphone today to say, well, I at least got one of those positive emails because at 1.49 p.m. Central Time, 1.49 p.m. Central Time, I received an email with this as the subject line, Theology Central, featured in Feedspot Top 40 Theology Podcast." And I'm like, wait, what? Okay, that sounds good. Now, at first, I'm going to—so at first, I'm like, what? Then immediately, I'm like, oh, wait, I bet you this is—what is this? Someone messing with me, right? Because I'm typically kind of jaded at this point. But again, here is the subject line, Theology Central. Theology Central featured in Feedspot Top 40 Theology Podcast. And so it says, hi, then it gives me, it's from the founder of FeedSpot. I'm not going to try to pronounce his name because I would probably do it horribly. But it's from the founder of FeedSpot, and it says this, I would like to personally congratulate you as your podcast, Theology Central, has been selected by our panelists as one of the top 40 theology podcasts on the web. And it gives me a link, and I will include the link so that you can see the entire list of the top 40 podcast, top 40 theology podcast. I'll put a link here under the description and the show notes, as some people would say, and you can look at all the top 40. We'll look at them here in a minute. It goes on to say, this is the most comprehensive list of Top 40 Theology podcasts on the internet, and I'm honored to have you as a part of this. You can also add your website link, and it gives me all the things I can do. We've created a badge for you to share with your audience. We'd be grateful if you can help spread the word by briefly mentioning about the Top 40 Theology podcast list in any of your upcoming posts. please feel free to reach out with any questions. So I clicked on the link. I'm going to click on it again. And here it is, Feedspot, 40 Best Theology Podcasts. Looking for theology podcasters to listen to or for your outreach campaign to promote your brand or product? Our theology podcasters list is what you need, right? So basically, this is telling people out there who are looking to sponsor something or maybe for some kind of place advertisement, well, they can contact the people on this list because this is the best theology podcast on the internet, all right? So, here are the 40 best theology podcasts worth listening to in 2025. Are you ready? Number one, Lisa Harper's Back Porch Theology. I have no idea who that is, but she's number one. So Lisa Harper is number one. Number two is Reformed Form. Reformed Form supports the church and presenting every person mature in Christ, providing reform, theological resources to pastors, scholars, and it has more, all right? And then a people's theology, exploring theologies that inspire and liberate for a formerly known as religionless church. Okay, that's the name of them. That's number three. And then number four, number four, Theology Central. Theology Central. Now our rating is not great. We have a 3.9 rating. The other ones above me have a 4.7 and a 4.7 out of five. So they have a 4.7 out of five. We have a 3.9. Our rating is not good. It never is. Other people, the number five is Deep Talks. They have a 4.9 rating. Reclaiming My Theology has a 4.9. Theology Mom has a 4.9. Her Theologies Podcast, number 8, has a 5 out of 5. So, I mean, almost everyone has better ratings than we do. So it's pretty awesome that I've made it to number four, even though more people dislike me than other podcasts that are on the list. On the other list, everyone seems to love them. I don't tend to be loved, and that's okay. I know I'm polarizing. I know I'm divisive. I know I am controversial, not because that's what I set out to do. It's just because I don't I don't play along very well with people's theological systems. I don't care to adhere to someone's theological system. I don't care to be a part of someone's theological team. And I tend to challenge what a lot of mainstream Christianity says. I kind of challenge it. Some people don't necessarily like my approach. You go listen to any of these other podcasts. I guarantee you they probably have a host and a co-host. They probably do interviews. So I don't follow this conversational kind of format where there's two people or three people. I don't do any of that. I don't follow a Mine is not overly produced. Mine is recorded live. It's not recorded and then edited. It's recorded live. What you hear is what you get. There's no stopping, editing, removing this, fixing this. It's just whatever happens, happens. So I tend to tick everyone off because I don't play nicely with someone's theological teams. Mine is not overly produced. It's just recorded. Live, no second takes. And I don't do the, you know, hey, I'm so-and-so, and here's my co-host so-and-so. And you kind of do the little back and forth. I don't follow any of the scripts. I don't. So it's pretty amazing that we made it to number four. I don't know how we made it to number four. I don't know. Now, there's things I can do with Feedspot. Like I can sign up for their, I don't want that. If I can get to this. Okay. I don't want to export that. I don't know if I can get to it here. So, um, yeah, there's different things you can do. You can sign up for different things. Um, you can sign in. I don't know if I can even sign in. Maybe I'll have to try to sign in at some point. I will sign in and see if I can, what I can, uh, there's some things I can control. So like the description on here is a little out of date. Um, The artwork is up today and maybe I can update. I think that's the newest artwork. But the description is a little outdated because it was kind of promoting the church. And so it's not really, I mean, even though it's still connected to the church for the most part, you know, it's kind of become its own thing. So I probably need to see if I can update that. I don't even know if I have access to update it. You can subscribe. I can subscribe like $19 a month to be able to have, be able to do more things, but I don't, you know, I don't have the money to do that. So, but that's okay. That's, that's neither here nor there. The point is we made it to number four. I don't know if that means anything of significance. I never know. If you look on ListenNotes, we are in the top 5% of all podcasts in the world. What does that mean? I mean, it sounds good, right? It sounds like, yay! I don't know what that actually means, right? We're number four on FeedSpot. I don't know what that actually means when it comes to actual numbers, because the way you're supposed to, how do you determine what you're accomplishing? Is it based on how many people? A lot of times, if you look on how to determine the success of a podcast, it comes down to the number of downloads and streams per episode. Well, if you look at our numbers, we're not successful. by almost any metric. Listener engagement, that would be the number of emails. The ratings, how many people have rated the podcast? And is it five stars? How many people give it thumbs up? How many people leave positive comments on YouTube or anywhere? How many people even leave comments on YouTube? And you look at some of those numbers. We're not successful. We're not. Let's just be honest. We're not successful. And You know, in some ways, that's a good thing. In some ways, I don't want to be. I know this is like the only thing I've ever wanted to do is be successful. And I wish I could just be successful enough in order to just say, hey, good, I can do this. This could pay my bills if I needed it to. This can support not only what it costs to be out there, but it gives me extra money to do things like book giveaways or do this or to promote it here or to do this. It would be great if I could just bring in... I don't want to get too popular and I'm not designed to get too popular because I'm going to offend people. Obviously, I'm going to offend all the charismatics, obviously. And I typically end up offending everyone else. Reformed people don't like me because I'm not reformed enough, or I'm too reformed, or I'm not reformed enough. And then for the non-reformed people, I'm too reformed. So I take off everyone there. I'm too dispensational. I'm not dispensational enough. I'm too this. I'm too that. Because everybody wants to put me in a box. And I'm like, I don't care about your box. And so then I end up offending everyone. I definitely hate the politicizing of the American church. I go against Christian nationalism. That gets me in trouble. I don't bow the knee to Donald Trump and kiss the ring of MAGA. I criticize. Oh, that gets me in trouble with the Trump supporters. And then, oh, and then I'm not, I'm not liberal enough, but I'm not conservative enough. I'm not this. I'm not, I, I, I'm never going to be designed to be popular. that. And again, in some ways, I love that. You just wish you could reach enough, a certain level where you're like, okay, this is good. You've got enough people supporting you so that you could pay the bills, and have a little extra where you could do things that are fun and helpful, like giveaways or give people access to digital curriculums or the different things that we've done in the past. I do miss being able to do more and give people things, but again, I'm not going to create, I mean, most of the podcasts have, they sell merch, they have, know, they have their own, you know, t-shirts and their own hats. I'm not going to have Theology Central shirts and Theology Central hats. I'm not going to turn it into merchandise. To me, the way it should work is, if people like it, they will support it. And, you know, and in many cases, it doesn't work. It doesn't really—and so then you—but at the same time, you don't want to have to In some ways, you don't want to be beholden to support, right? Because if the minute you have to rely on people's support, you're kind of owned, right? Because you got to keep doing, you got to keep making those people happy. And one thing I know about me is I never make anyone happy. I never do. My personality is not good at making people happy. I make enemies before I make friends. Okay. I, I don't, I irritate people before I, you know, I don't create fans. I create critics. It's just my personality. So I don't want to be beholden to that anyway. Right. That's one of the things about being a podcaster is I'm free from all of those, you know, restrictions and constraints. I'm not bound by that, right? I'm not being restrained. I don't have that. I can turn on the microphone and say whatever I want. Whoever gets offended gets offended, and it ultimately doesn't matter, right? But if you start getting too popular, Well, then you start worrying about your popularity. That's bad. Or you get to you get a certain level of popularity that typically brings in money or opportunities, which now you're going to have to you're going to be beholden to. And none of that is good. None of that is good. All of that is negative, I think. So I'm just grateful that we made it to number four. That's pretty amazing. I don't think we could ever make it to number one. I don't know. I don't know, if you look on some of these, you can see that the reason they're so popular is like this one, Lisa Harper's Back Porch Theology, 307,000 followers on Facebook. Twitter, over 46,000. Reform Forum, over 11,000 Facebook followers. Twitter, over 17,000. Instagram, over 4,000. People's Theology, over 3,000 on Twitter. Deep Talks, over 3,000 on Twitter. Reclaiming My Theology, over 9,000 on Twitter, over 13,000 on Instagram. Theology Mom, over 10,000 on Facebook. Her Theology Podcast, well they're over 1,000 on Instagram, only 641 on Facebook. But you see, many of these have a big social media presence. a big social media presence. So typically in the podcasting world, you have to really, you have to really maximize and utilize social media. But I don't want to be a part of all of that. I don't. You get there and then people, and I know that's the way to play the game, right? See, you build a social media presence and then what are you supposed to do? You release episodes that are going to be somewhat controversial, that's going to create backlash a little bit, right? Create a little anger. Then everyone starts posting comments. then they post comments and they post comments and then other people and then you get you get you get you're caught up in a firestorm right and so then algorithm starts picking up oh everyone's talking about this and then your stuff starts getting picked up and found and suggested and recommended and then the next thing you know you start growing in numbers but i don't want to be in the firestorm i don't want to be in the controversy i don't want any of that There's nothing valuable about that. It's just arguing and griping. I try to be very careful even when people post negative comments on YouTube. Like, how much do I even engage it? Because I may spark, I may be able to spark a little fight, and maybe that just will bring more people to the comment section, which then the algorithm will pick up. Then people will recommend Theology Central. But do I have to do that on the back of controversy? Do I have to do that to be in the middle of some never-ending fight with people? No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not worth—I would rather—I just want to find a group of people who approve with what—who are—they benefit to such a level from what I do that they're willing to support it. and a group of people who are willing to go to Apple podcast and give me a five-star rating or on Spotify give us a five-star rating. I'm just looking for people to do that. So that's where we are today. I thought it's some good news. But yeah, we made it to number four. We made it to number four. So I'm very grateful for that. I think that's a positive thing. Someone emailed me at 2 21 p.m.. He said congrats and number four 2. Top 10. And it says, Theology Central, this is what he says, Theology Central makes me think about different sides of an issue or passage, even if I don't agree, which is what I like. Well, first of all, hey now, who could disagree with anything I have to say? Okay, no. And it says, you were selected by our panelists. I wonder who that is and what theological background the person has. It says, No. 1 is Lisa Harper's—someone already looked this up, obviously—No. 1 is Lisa Harper's Back Porch Theology. You ought to review whatever that is. At least it says the Center's Dialogue on Teaching has a dignified name. The rest are mostly generic. That's true. The list goes on for 1,106 items. Wow, who would have ever have time to listen to all of that, right? And then someone said, I started listening to the Paula White episode. Haven't gotten far, but oh my goodness, I may have a brain aneurysm. That's really good. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. So they also connect my journey, my episode I did on journey. So, okay. All right. So they did some, a lot of other things, but thank you to him for taking the time to email and say, congratulations. But that is funny. Yes. The Paula White almost gave me an aneurysm too. I don't even need an aneurysm. I got enough neurological problems. Okay. Yeah, so there we go. That's what's going on. I do appreciate that. And again, I don't know what it actually means. I don't know. I really don't know what it means. I mean, I can tell everyone, look, we made it to number four. Yay. Does it really mean anything? I have no idea, but I will see if I can log in and change this description. and see what else I can do here to clean this up a little bit. See if I can add, oh, I got the, see, does the website, where's the website go? It goes to a Theology Central. Okay. Okay, yeah, all right, so that's good. All right, so it goes to Theology Central, theologycentral.net. So that's good. It goes to Apple, hang on. It goes to Apple, all right, and then it goes to Spotify, hang on. It goes to Spotify. Hang on, no, Spotify is opening. All right, hang on, go to the top here. All right, yeah, all right, so everything, oh, we're at 4.5 stars on Spotify. Wow, 15 people have given us a star rating on Spotify. We're at 15, ladies and gentlemen. We keep that up, we'll break 100, never. Okay, no, but 15 is still good. So thank you very much for doing that. So yeah, there you have it. I'll see if I can do any work on it today. And well, thank you to those who listened. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Those who download and stream, thank you very much. And yeah, all. That gives me a little bit more encouragement to do something else. So we'll keep working at it and we'll just see. I don't know. Again, I don't know what it means. That's the thing with doing broadcasting. You don't know what it means. I guess the main way you can find out is by being all over social media. Then you'll get that feedback. But you know what you're gonna get? You're gonna get a lot of people who hate you. So even as encouraging as it could be, it typically becomes more discouraging. And if you've noticed, I've stopped giving out email, I've stopped all of that just because I just want to be able to broadcast and hopefully stay out of controversy and just hopefully produce content that will do, I guess, you know, that email. I mean, maybe he said it best. If I can find the email, where is it? Maybe he said it best. Theology Central makes me think about different sides of an issue or passage, even if I don't agree, which is what I like. I do try to make people think, so. Yeah, I guess if that's what I accomplished, then so be it. I don't know if I accomplished anything else, but thank you so very much to everyone who listens, everyone who financially supports, thank you so very much. To everyone who encourages, thank you so very much. Most importantly, for every listen, every stream, every download, thank you so very much. To anyone who's gone to Spotify or Apple Podcasts, anywhere, gave us a five-star rating, Thank you so very much. We greatly appreciate it. When I say we, who's the we? There's no one else here. It's just me. There's no way to... Hello? Hello? There's no one else in the room. There's no one. There's no one. Just a bunch of empty Coke cans, books. It's a total disaster area, right? Okay. Thank you for listening. Everyone have a great day. We'll get back to regular scheduled programming in our very next episode. Hopefully we'll do something more than just talk about this, but that gives you a little insight what's going on behind the scenes. Thanks for listening. Everyone have a great Friday, a great weekend. God bless.