One of the things that I look forward to as I take the DC Metro System (buses and subway) to get to campus is the time to learn, both from reading and by listening to “podcasts”. For those who don’t know, podcasts are syndicated shows that you can download and listen to on an MP3 player… they’re like radio shows that you can listen to any time. There are a lot of them that I like to listen to from news and politics to sermons and Christian radio shows… even talks from conferences!
Today, as I was listening to a podcast that Campus Crusade for Christ puts out to encourage and empower people to share their faith with their friends and neighbors, I decided that I would share how to take advantage of this with all of you!
First off, you’re going to need a music player on your computer that can download podcasts… my suggestion is a program from Apple called iTunes (don’t worry, it works with a Windows computer). You can get it from iTunes.com.
After you download it and install it, open up iTunes and click on the “iTunes Store” link.
After the page loads you’ll have a lot of options in front of you, let’s start by searching for Cru’s podcast on reaching out to your friends, called the “Overflow Show”. To do that, go to the top right and type in “Campus Crusade for Christ” in the Search iTunes Store box and hit Enter.
It should bring up a page with a number of different options, including “Campus Crusade Today” as well as the “Overflow Show”, click the subscribe button next to the Overflow Show (or you can click on the logo for more information).
When you click the button it may or may not take you to your “Podcast” screen, if it does not click on Podcasts on the main menu underneath Music. It should now look something like this:
If it’s just showing the title Overflow Show click the gray arrow next to it to show all of the episodes. If you want to download all of them, click the Get All button. Notice the orange circling arrow, that means that it’s already downloading the newest episode! It should be ready listen to pretty soon (depending on your internet connection speed)! If you notice, there’s now also something on the menu to the right that says Downloads and has a similar spinning arrow from now on when you start iTunes up it will check to see if there are new episodes of your podcast and try to download them, this will let you know how many new episodes of podcasts it is currently downloading.
Now, if you want to try other podcasts that are listed in the iTunes program click on the iTunes Store button again and it will take you back to the last page you were at. You have a few options…
You can click the See All button and see other podcasts that were found under the “Campus Crusade for Christ” category (or you could look at the list on the bottom – for those of you in Central PA area, there are even some of the talks from Penn State’s Cru movement).
You could go back to the main page and browse through the podcasts and look for other ones you might like.
Sometimes you might run across a link for a podcast on a webpage, often when you click on it your iTunes will start up automatically and it will subscribe you to the podcast. Such is the case with the talks from our recent RADIATE07 (formerly known as Christmas Conference), I took the audio from the talks and uploaded them as a podcast and you can subscribe to them using this link:
RADIATE07 Podcast
If you have an iPod or another MP3 player you can now load them onto it (follow the instructions that came with your MP3 player) and listen to them wherever you go. You can also listen to them on your computer or burn them onto CDs to take with you in the car. Have fun with your new podcasts, and let me suggest some of the ones that encourage me (just for the record, I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the podcasts, but I find myself encouraged to seek God’s face because of them often); search for them in iTunes:
Campus Crusade Today
Grove City Alliance Church
Mars Hill Bible Church
McLane Church – Edinboro
National Community Church Audio Podcast
Overflow Show
SermonIndex.net Classics Podcast
Veritas Media
I hope this encourages you and gives you a new way to learn and grow in your walk with Christ!
Grace & Peace,
Jayson
