Losing the Signal: What the Death of AM Radio Means for Christian Witness in a Digital Age

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm joined by Nate. And today, what we're going to be talking about a little bit is radio. And we're going to talk a little bit about AM radio, FM radio, Christian broadcasting, those kind of ideas. And it's all really prompted by this story that I came across about the elimination of AM radios in cars that car manufacturers are beginning to sort of phase out AM radio in the cars for a variety of different reasons. But that definitely leaves a lot of Christian broadcasting without a key vehicle, a key delivery system for the programming that they're doing. And so we're just going to discuss this today, the changing technologies. What do we do with some of these analog technologies like Christian radio that really do serve a purpose and I don't think can be replicated or aren't necessarily replicated within a digital realm. So that's kind of what we're going to be talking about a little bit today. And Nate, always a pleasure. Nate knows the radio industry better than I do, probably. And so I'm interested to hear your take on this, brother. How are you doing? I'm doing good, man. It's always good to be here. Great to have this conversation with you. I'm excited to kind of dive into this because it was already on my radar. You know this. I've told you this before. And for the listeners that don't know, I have always loved and had a certain just passion and excitement for radio just because, like, I've heard the listener stories over the years. You know, like when I was doing stuff nationally with K-Love, we got to hear from a lot more people at big events, you know, like thousands and thousands of people. And everyone will wait in line or wait for their turn on the mic just to say, hey, you know, after my dad died or, you know, when I my marriage was falling apart or whatever, like the right song and the right amount of encouragement hit me like right when I needed it. And it felt like it was tailor-made just for me. Like the power of encouragement that God uses, like you said earlier, as a vehicle, I think AM as well as FM, it's a it's a major tool that God uses. And so to be able to have this conversation about possibly changing that and taking away, which, you know, it's been in question for a long time. Like a lot of younger generation, we were talking about a little bit before here. A lot of younger kids these days don't listen to the radio. Like my son, for instance, he gets, doesn't even listen to the news. He gets his news from social media or whatever. So I know that that side of things is changing, but there's a lot of people out there that don't turn to social media. Some people aren't able to go to church. They get their encouragement from a talk show. It's kind of like their church. It's their source of of bread, you know, encouragement for their daily lives. And so I think it's a conversation definitely worth having. Well, the general idea here is that, you know, like I said, the car makers are phasing out AM radio in cars. Part of what the articles I read at least said is that the AM signals tend to conflict with some of the new electronic gadgets that are being put in cars. And and so it's becoming in part like this is a phase out due to some problems with new technology merging with the old. But I think also there's an impression that this is just sort of a dying medium and that part of what people are pressing toward is, hey, let's just move past this. Let's let's set this all aside. AM's been waiting for years. Right. And and that may be true. I I'm kind of with your kids. I don't really listen to the radio anymore. I've got my podcast that I do. I've got my my own music that I listen to that I get off, you know, iTunes or wherever I get them. And so I get the idea that I get how people would have the impression that these things are waning, that they're obsolete, that they're not necessary. But then when you look at the data, you're still seeing, you know, 37 percent, somewhere between 30 and 37 percent of people getting their Christian content via AM broadcast. A lot of people switched over to apps. A lot of people switched over to, you know, there's obviously FM that you can listen to. But it isn't as if the digital takeover has been so unbelievably sort of total that AM has shrunk to like sort of one percent of your audience so that nobody even really cares anymore. I think it's just a very interesting time we're living in right now where what do we do with these old technologies and how do we think about the benefits that they bring that really are difficult to replicate with the digital side? So I'll give you an example. I know that, you know, on the radio, there's a finite number of signals, especially within a given area. Right. I've always been sort of fascinated as somebody who knows nothing about how radio works. Like when I was living up in Chicago, 106.5 was one station. When I moved down to St. Louis, 106.5 was a different station. But they were both 106.5. And so you have these interesting regional signals. But the span of those signals is pretty finite, you know, relative to what we have in the digital age where this podcast doesn't run on a signal. It's an RSS feed and you can have basically, from what I understand, infinite RSS feeds. And so, you know, you do have a more constrained selection on AM and FM, which I think is important because what it does is it allows for a more regionalized broadcast where people can coordinate around content that they actually care about. And so you can think of all, you know, some significant proportion of Christians within a region now listening to an AM broadcast and hearing the same thing. There's far more likelihood of that happening through radio than there is through digital mechanisms. Right, because digital mechanisms are so diverse and so spread out. And so I think that radio, unlike, it has some advantages for coordinating people over what we see on digital platforms right now. Does that make sense, Nate? Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. And I think we're seeing that shift. A few months ago, I went to a concert that was like at college campuses around the country. It was a tour. It was called Campus Nights, and it was it sold out weeks in advance. If I wouldn't have known the promoter, I wouldn't have been able to go because I didn't know about it before. And when I clicked on it, it was already sold out. But backstage, he was telling me, he's like, there's a major shift happening right now. He goes, this is the first thing I've ever done in however many 20 years of doing. He's my favorite promoter in the U.S. and worked with him a lot over the years. And, you know, so I really trust what he is saying. And he was scratching his head. He's like, we don't know this shift that's happening. But like this was zero radio advertising. It was all digital. And I was like, man, I know so many tours that are struggling to, you know, get half capacity and they're running ads like crazy. So I know that there's a shift happening there and maybe that's part of it. I don't know. But I think, too, on the AM side, you know, you got the NPR and like the emergency broadcasts, things that have to happen. I think there's some things that are going to protect this. We'll have to kind of just watch and see where it lands. But it is interesting that it's there. I'm actually kind of surprised it hasn't happened sooner because I feel like this conversation has kind of been happening in the background for a while. I think it has been. I mean, I can remember being at Moody Bible Institute. And of course, you had Moody Radio there. And this was a topic of conversation there as well. You know, what do we do with our AM stations? How do we upgrade into like HD radio is what they refer to. And I have no idea what that is, by the way. But, you know, how do we upgrade our radio? How do we how do we build this up so that it can be sustainable? Because it was such a strong ministry and it did have a really strong impact in a way that at the time podcasting just wasn't. Now, I think, you know, there's some sense in which people think there's a logical move from radio to podcasting. I would just say, you know, somebody who did radio on an AM station not too, too long ago. We had Useful to God running on an AM station in Colorado. It was difficult and it was different. You're having to drive people to one place on the dial and you're having to try to figure out how to get listeners to tune in at a very particular time. And so unless you just had people who have their AM radio set to that station or picking you up, it was extremely difficult to understand how to drive people to that. Still, anybody who was happened to be on at that time would have heard the program and they would have all heard the same thing versus a podcast where even if people find Thinking Christian in iTunes or Spotify or wherever, they could be listening to any number of our episodes at any given time and not necessarily coordinating around the same thing. And

with, is that the podcasting seems to approximate something of what you got in a radio sort of broadcast. The the blocking and tackling of doing a podcast isn't that different from doing a radio show. I mean, this I use the same setup to do radio as I did to do podcasting. But the distribution method and the consumption methods are completely different. And so I, I just I kind of when I read the story about, you know, AM being taken out of cars, I sort of sit back and wonder whether that's the right move here. Whether, you know, Bluetooth-enabled, you know, phones or, you know, CarPlay with Apple and turning on a podcast, you know, is it really the right way to limit consumption within a given time and space, or how we might go about, you know, sort of helping people find that regional or local podcasting content that would allow them to sort of coordinate with others in their local and regional area, because I think that's the other danger here. While I know that AM, you know, again, I was on in Colorado. I'm not in Colorado, right? So I know there's a lot of programs on the radio that do this too, but there's also the newsy portion of AM radio, FM radio that focuses in, tends to focus in on a region. Yeah, truly. Yeah. And I know radio stations do a lot of ministry. I mean, we've had folks on and talk about the ministry they have in a particular local area. And so I don't think we can really discount those, that there is something to be kept about radio that we shouldn't just automatically assume that it's obsolete because podcasts are growing and radio, it maybe isn't. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think it's also kind of grandfathered in. Like, you know, even just 10 years ago, nobody could just go out and do what we do now. Like everyone could podcast now. So we're being bombarded with options. You know, then you got satellite radio, but like during 2020 or whenever this happened, like anyone and everyone, and they do, can have a podcast and you know, try their hand at it and see how it does. It's open and it's accessible. Whereas before AM specifically, like you had to have that signal. You had to own it. You had to be in compliance with the FCC and you had to do certain requirements each year. You had to pay taxes. You had to, you know, do all these things and it's a lot different. But I beg the question, would we have podcasts and things like we have now without that? Radio was for sure the pioneer of, you know, doing it. And if you look at the old footage, like I have some DJ friends that, you know, show National DJ Day or whatever, like the disc jockey day, they'll they'll show a throwback and it's like, you look at how it was 30 years ago and how it is now. I mean, people can do it in their kitchen now and do the same thing. And sometimes they're reaching more people than some of these AM stations are. So it is, it is interesting. We can't completely throw it out. Like you're saying, I don't know if that's the move either because we've got to kind of respect. We wouldn't be where we are today without that. I don't think satellite radio would be where it is or anything without that. Then blazing the trail. And I think, you know, when I, when I think about not throwing it out, it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to sustain a model that isn't working anymore. Right? So if the next generation just doesn't ever turn the radio on, obviously it's not having the coordinating effect that it once had. And that's due to a competition of digital resources that are out there and available. I think what we ought to be thinking through is what function did radio have in its heyday? What did it do? And how did it work? What, you know, what effect did it have on American culture? What, what were its unique features that allowed it to do that? And what are we losing as we transition to a different style of digital broadcasting, essentially with podcasts, with YouTube videos, with those kinds of things? Because I do think that's really what's going to end up happening. I have difficulty believing that you can lose an entire generation of listeners, which, you know, boomers, I'm an Xer, I think you're an Xer, right? So, you know, we're the smaller generation between boomers and millennials, but let's say, you know, in theory that boomers are still listening to the radio. Millennials, maybe are listening to it less. I don't know whether that's the case. I'm just sort of doing a thought experiment, right? But let's say millennials are listening to it less. Your kids, millennial and Gen Z, I'm assuming, right? My kids, Gen Z, they never listened to the radio. I don't, I mean, yeah, they just don't turn that function on. They, they don't, they don't do it at all unless I'm in the car and I happen to have radio on. And so they, you know, I've gotten to the point, even if I can't connect my phone for some reason, I usually just drive silently. Right. Like, because I don't have my presets in. It's not easy to work the radio. Like, you know, I don't know what stations really to listen to. And so I just don't have that sort of cadence that I used to when you'd hop in the car and pop on the radio because sometimes putting CDs in and out of your CD player, right, or cassettes just was nothing convenient that you'd be like, I'm just going to flip the radio on and see what's, see what's hot right now. See what music's playing, listen to something, whatever. Right. That competition from digital is, is surely going to, I think, change the game for radio. I'm not sure how it'll change it exactly, but I can't imagine radio is going to gain share given what we're seeing in the digital side. Right. So I, I do think we need to start considering, okay, what is radio? What has it done? What are its features that we don't want to lose and how do we build that back into podcasting and other digital type platforms that will allow it to have that same sort of effect and, and accomplish what we've been accomplishing with radio just in a new medium. Yeah, totally. And you know, I think of 1 Corinthians, uh, when it talks about the different parts of the body, I don't think it's fair or okay for this new side of things, podcasts, for instance, to say to the people doing the AM morning show for the last several decades that, you know, you're not as needed because the truth of the matter is there's people that are going to be reached on an AM broadcast that are never going to ever listen to podcasts. I don't think my parents listen to podcasts. They're just not savvy. And I feel like I'm still kind of savvy at 45, but my kids are constantly reminding me like, oh no, we don't use Instagram anymore. That's for you older people. And I just was told that the other day and I'm like, Oh man, am I, am I there? Like I, and I don't have anything to relate it to because in the mid nineties, early nineties, like we didn't have social media. So I, I had to relate that to with my parents trying to think what, what would best translate with that. I, I mean, the best one that I can come up with is the discontinuation of eight tracks. And I can remember digging around in my, you know, in my house, you know, my parents' old stuff or my grandparents' old stuff and finding eight tracks and being like, what the heck is this thing? Right. And, but I mean, that was what they listened to in the car. Now those got phased out. Um, I actually had a stereo. My first stereo had an eight track player on it. My dad bought it sort of second hand. And so it had this old eight track player and I just didn't have any eight tracks. But if you think about the transitions we've gone through from like cassette to CD and then into digital, each one of those, I mean, you can't, I don't even know why somebody would buy a CD. Right. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. There is a cool part of it, like the vintage part that when it comes back and it's cool again, like there's been a resurgence in vinyl and everyone wants to collect vinyl like there's shops dedicated just to that. Like in, I, I got a radio turntable a few years ago and it's like, oh man, I can listen to music that's not on streaming stuff that I had in high school. And so, you know, you got to wonder that too. Like, is this going to kind of come back

Limiting my own selections. You know, we're talking about radio, but I think there's analogs here in other mediums. And so, if you think about the difference between trying to find something to watch on Amazon or Netflix or Hulu or whatever streaming service versus going to your local Blockbuster and browsing the aisles, there's a massive difference between trying to search for a movie, right, something to watch, and going and walking up and down the aisles of Blockbuster. There just is. Oh, totally. And I think that what I've found is that as I'm kind of trying to figure out, okay, what do I want to listen to, who do I want to listen to, what kind of topics do I want to address, occasionally I'll search for something. If I have a very specific topic that I think will pull up in a search, I'll search for it. Otherwise, I listen to three, maybe four podcasts on a regular, you know, sort of recurring basis. I've kind of found what I like and what I'm interested in, and I'll listen to those. I do the same thing with shows. I just can't handle all the selection. It drives me crazy how much selection there is. I get fatigued sometimes, yeah. For sure. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, with the, one of the things we probably end up having with the loss of radio is that more constrained set of programs that we could potentially listen to. I mean, you knew if you tuned into, you know, a Christian radio station, you kind of knew what you were going to get, right? You didn't have to search that out. You just went there on your dial. You found it. There was a billboard and you tuned to it, right? And it was easy, quick, and it didn't matter who was on, right? It's not like I could, you know, turn over two stations and get another preacher. Like they were, you're going to listen to what they had regardless of what was on, right? You didn't control what the next song was. And so it, it sort of forced you into a almost like a, a discomfort where I'm not getting to choose exactly what I want at this exact moment. I'm, I'm getting, you know, I'm, I'm sort of putting up with some of the things that maybe I don't like quite as much because this is the style I like, or this is the, this is the content that I'm interested in or what have you versus now we pick exactly what we want. You know, you can even scroll to the part of the movie that you want to see and skip over the rest of it if you, if you're right. You can do all that stuff now. And I do think that that, those are aspects of radio that probably are going to end up coming back in some way, shape, or form, whether we create them ourselves, artificial boundaries, like I said, I only listened to about four podcasts and then occasionally search out something else. That's an artificial boundary. I could not do that. I could subscribe to every podcast on the planet and just have them all running through my feed. But we're attending, I, my guess is we tend to limit that. And that, that starts to feel a little bit more like a personalized, customized radio. And on my phone, I have four talk stations and then I have music. Well, what does that sound like? Yeah. It sounds like my own curated radio. And, and so I just think it's very interesting when we watch those dynamics. We're seeing the same thing sort of in publishing, the odd part will be what artificial intelligence does with all this because it tends to be moving in the opposite direction as opposed to expanding our options, it's consolidating our options, which I, I find sort of fascinating as well. Yeah, totally. And I don't know if you remember this, but I think TiVo is the first one, but when DVR first came around, it was like, dude, we don't have to watch commercials anymore. It's amazing. Because when we were kids, like you had very limited options for TV. And, you know, if a movie come on on Disney or whatever on Sunday night, you're just like, oh, I got to be in front of the TV at 8 o'clock or else I'm going to miss the first part of the movie. It's a totally different feeling than now, like, and we're being just constantly bombarded. That's why with social media, we were just talking about this last night at escape ministry. You've got to grab someone's attention, like in the first six or seven seconds. Whereas when we were growing up, you were forced to watch the whole thing because you didn't want the one thing you wanted to see. And so I, I totally agree with that. It's definitely interesting though. The change has taken place. So are we about to have another shift like that when DVR kind of came out and everybody had it? Because I remember too, like I'm like, I'm not paying for streaming. I'm already paying for cable. Like I'm not going to have all these streaming platforms. And then five years later, you keep up with the Joneses or whatever. I have like almost all of them. Yeah, right. Like, man, like be so anti and now you eventually cave. So it makes you wonder if being so immersed in this culture and it changing constantly around us and us not knowing it are these changes happening with or without our consent. You know, it's just, you kind of just have to go with the flow of the water, I think. It's a really good point, Nate. And I think that when I read the article initially, the coordination comments that have already made sort of came out to me. Like, how do we, how do we capture that aspect of radio that we seem to be losing in a digital age? But then the other side of it is, um, if we think about the progress of technology and the way that it squeezes out how we interact with the world. So let's say AM radio stations could keep their programming going, right? Let's say that, you know, uh, let's just run the, run the thought experiment. So car manufacturers decide to take AM radios out of their cars, which ultimately is going to limit the number of people who are listening to AM radio by some degree. Let's say it's half, right? Just to have a nice, even number. So let's say half of the listeners who previously listened to AM radio did that in their car and now they're no longer listening to AM radio. That's going to have an effect on AM radio stations, probably a detrimental one, right? Unless you just happened to hit the 15 million people who weren't giving to your AM radio station anyway, um, it's going to be problematic, right? So, so you've got that dynamic. Well, once that goes away, what's the choice? What's the option for people if they still want to listen to that type of programming? Well, they could get the radio station's app and now instead of tuning in in their car, they're connecting via Bluetooth. They're hopping on their phones. They're pulling up an app and they're listening via an app. And you might sit back and say, well, that's just, you know, sort of a different vehicle for the same thing. But I would argue it's actually not, you know, in a world where we're constantly driven to our phones anyway, having yet one more thing where we're driven to a phone is not necessarily good. Right. And so it's not that it eliminates the content. Yes, I think it would have a detrimental impact on radio stations, but I also think that for consumers thinking about how we interact with this content is just as important as what the content actually is. Totally. And so there's a big difference, especially if AM radio stations decided that their apps wouldn't just be live, that they would sort of, you'd be able to pick what program you heard. You can start to start to see how the digital world would, could potentially impact some of these Christian broadcasters, not just in, hey, my, I can't support my radio station anymore. We're going to have to shut it down. That's problematic, obviously, but also pivoting towards something that may lose the character of that sort of radio broadcast in a way that it eliminates some of the benefits of that broadcast. Yeah. And I think that that's sort of where we are now. You see this a lot with, you know, when we were kids again, if I wanted to know something, where did I go? I had an encyclopedia Britannica at the library that I could go look something up in, right? Like it was old school, baby. I had a whole set and I thought I was rich. Like, right. Right, exactly. I do remember a guy coming and selling them door to door. Like, I don't know whether you remember that, but I mean, we had truly encyclopedia salesmen coming to our door trying to sell us encyclopedias. Yep. Crazy. It's insane. Right. And so, you know, you're, you're getting these sort of reference tools, but they're all paper-based. You go to the library. You're not using a complex search engine, right? You're searching through a card catalog, literally just sort of sifting it. Well, those do have some sort of a formative effect. They really do. Oh, totally. And, and it's not that they're without their flaws. But the, the difference is that, you know, the, you're trusting that the people who wrote the encyclopedia Britannica knew what they were doing. You're, you're pretty sure that anybody who reads the encyclopedia Britannica in the same entry you're reading is reading the same thing. Versus if I were to say, hey, let's go out and research a topic, Nate, on the internet. You found stuff on this topic that I didn't find. Right. Now that, that's a good thing, but it can

Yeah, totally. When you brought up Encyclopedia Britannica, it made me think before that, I am old enough, and I'm sure you remember this too, to be at school and use the fish. I think it was called fish tape, where it was a big projector type thing. And you have to scroll through the film. Yeah, the microfiche. Dude, this is pretty cool. Like it's different than our textbooks. And then I feel like I only used it a handful of times, and then it was obsolete. And then it was like, oh, if you're fortunate enough to have one of those salesmen come to your house and your parents buy it. And I think my parents spent like $1,200 on like, we had three shelves full. I think it was like 30 volumes or something like that. And if you, but if you ask our kids today if they've ever seen Encyclopedia Britannica, they'd be like, what? Like they have no clue. You mean like the online website? It's a very, and like I said, it's positive as the negative, right? Like I don't have any problem with the internet and the way it's expanded information. But I also think that even as we're designing, you know, sort of educational systems or doing things where we're trying to educate people in the scriptures, my advocacy is always have a paper Bible handy, be reading a paper Bible. There's something about the feel of it that allows you to interact with it differently. And this is where, you know, we could get into media ecology and Marshall McLuhan and the medium is the message and all those kind of ideas. But I think he was onto something. So there's these theories in media ecology that basically say that the way a message is delivered is as important as the message itself. And so there's a big difference between, and I would say a limitation on what could be done through the medium of a podcast, right, versus an actual face-to-face encounter with someone, right? It's just different. There's a different specificity you can get to, especially when you're, you know, local with someone and you actually can dig into their specific situation. You don't have to always speak in generalities. So I think that's crucial. I also think that generally, you know, what we see in, you know, sort of these digital conversations, a lot of speculation. It's a lot of first impressions. And, you know, we're kind of falling into that today, right? I don't know that much about radio. You're more familiar with it than I am. But we have some impressions we thought we'd share. Yeah, definitely. Well, it's also too interesting because beyond just even radio, it gets me thinking about, like, I don't know when it came out, but the last several years, when it's convenient, I'm on a road trip or something, I'll listen to a whole book on a road trip through Audible, but it's definitely a different experience than reading the book myself. You get something different out of it. And my mind doesn't tend to wander as much when I'm reading a book and when I'm holding a book and actually going back and looking at the footnotes and things like that. It's a little different. And I don't, my mind doesn't wander as much as when I'm in the car, I could think about something. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm listening to an audio book. I need to get back to thinking about that. Yeah. And I think that's interesting. So if we think about radio, broadcast television prior to TiVo, podcasting, YouTube videos, and Marshall McLuhan didn't deal with this because he wasn't seeing this expansion of technology. But one of his theories was that different media encourage you to engage in different ways. And so when you're reading a book or a magazine or a newspaper, that's a deeper sort of engagement because you're actually touching the paper. You're reading the book. You have to think and synthesize. It's harder to space out when you read a book if you're really going to get the content. But when you're watching TV or listening to the radio, then it's easier to space out. And I would argue, and I think it would really be interesting to see how this plays itself out, but it seems logical, I should say, that medium that you know you can reverse or forward, you can play it back, I would guess we automatically pay less attention to. Yep, it's easier to tune out for sure. Right, because if you know I got one shot at this, it's a 30-minute program, and I'm not going to be able to rewind it, I kind of want to catch it. Versus a podcast where, you know, in the middle of it, you know, my wife and I can have a conversation in the car, and I just like back it up, you know, or pause it or whatever I want to do. It's a very different sort of way that we engage with that medium. And so I think those are other considerations. We're thinking about getting rid of AM radio, for instance. How is it that we engage differently with AM radio than we might with a podcast? And what is all of that doing to the way we think about ourselves, the world, about God, about, you know, all these different aspects? How is it sort of changing our behavior in good and bad ways? Yeah. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Totally. I imagine there's definitely been board meetings happening all over the country of these people that, you know, have AM stations or that's the bulk of their ministry. And they're probably like, okay, we got to prepare here so we don't get left behind in the dust. You know, we've always heard it with different industry. Excuse me. Sorry about that. Different industry things. If you don't adapt, you could die, you know, basically. And if you look at most of the AM stations, it's not like a lot of younger generation people. It's mostly boomers or older. And I could be wrong there, but I think that's the general consensus. Most people think of AM as like older way of media, older, you know, older people that are doing it. But if you look at most of their websites, I think it's interesting. A lot of them look like they're made in 96, 97, you know. And it's like, so are they all looking that way? And like we talked about earlier about doing an app. Some people are overwhelmed with that, don't know how to do it or, you know, how to make it work. And then the people that listen to AM stations mostly aren't probably going to download an app. So it's kind of a, it's a tricky situation for sure. And it's a place. I mean, I think this transition, you know, what this story speaks to beyond radio is really the transitions from what we've traditionally done to what is also possible. And, you know, we're involved in this space. You know, we're starting AI seminary. So theoremseminary.ai is actually up online. And people can enroll in the seminary, interact with artificial intelligence, learn seminary level, learn about seminary level topics, right, through this AI system. And it's really interesting and it's really compelling. But I think part of what we have the responsibility then to do as we do that is to recognize, number one, that we're not doing the same thing that previous seminaries did. We're doing something different than they did just with the same content delivery and very similar learning outcomes and those kind of things. But, you know, I would say I would not be where I am today without a physical seminary, without being able to meet face-to-face with a faculty member. I just wouldn't be where I am. It wasn't about the learning necessarily for me. Now, maybe God would have done something else in my life. He would have brought in different sort of influence in my life. But I guess my point is we have to recognize the shifts that we're making and encourage people not to overthink what they're getting from us. Right. What I believe people are getting is a good primer, a good biblical education, a better way to read the scriptures and think theologically. But what they're definitely missing is an embodied experience with an experienced faculty member who can mentor them and move them through a program. Now, seminaries have notoriously marketed that. And my experience with seminaries, I went to three, right. I went to Moody, Wheaton, and Trinity. I had really strong faculty mentors at one of those places. And then you sort of get lost in a sea of people because faculty members are outnumbered by students. Right. And so what I quickly learned was you have to find this elsewhere if you're going to get it. And that's OK. But my point is that that sort of embodied aspect is not something that we are capable of providing through the digital platforms that we have right now. And so we build in some things that will buffer it. But I think it's the responsibility of the people who are progressing the technology

Admitting those and then trying to sort of provide a different style, maybe, of interaction that isn't the same as the previous generations, but that approximates it sufficient that you're not losing all the benefit. Totally. I just don't see technology moving in a strictly progressive fashion. It's always a change that comes with loss. And so whatever we get isn't just an automatic net gain. We've also lost something along the way. Sure. It's interesting. In my mind, a few weeks ago on a call, like Eileen was saying, we're like the first credited online AI seminary. And so I've been sharing that with some folks. And in my mind, I think, dude, this is awesome. We're like the first ones to actually do this, like officially, and we're going to be maybe working with some other larger universities, the people from Grand Canyon and all these different stuff. So I'm excited about that and I'm starting to tell that story. And it's been interesting, especially people in radio, they look at me like scratching their head, like AI seminary, like it's so out of the scope. But that's where we are. We're at this place where we're at a crossroads where things are rapidly changing. And again, like I said earlier, you have to adapt and move with the times, move with the culture and still try to stay relevant so that we can reach people with the gospel as many as possible. But it's interesting. I was always thinking everyone was going to be excited. And I think it's been more kind of like they're surprised or kind of like confused by that. But I mean, that's the direction we're going. So yeah. And it's you know, I've been through this before. So I started an online program largely. I was on the front end of the online education revolution, let's say. Right. And so at my institution, I got the same kind of looks about online as I get with AI. And so I think it's important that we recognize that this isn't just a slam dunk. Everybody's going to think this is the greatest thing since slice bread. But I guess that's my point. That's on us. Right. And what I often hear from people who are sort of espousing these technologies is not a balanced and even understanding of what it is that's going on here. Right. I think that if we're going to move, and I've always felt this way, any sort of online education, AI or otherwise, any sort of online education requires a stronger church because there's only so much relationship you can build. There's only so much transparency you can have. There's only so much actual building into someone's life you can do online. And so I don't want to be sort of sentimental or nostalgic or exaggerated about the way I think about the local church. But the reality is that the local church is the authority we're to be sitting under. And so online education, AI-enabled online education, whichever way you go, it is abstracted from that context. And so people, we need a stronger local church. I think the peril of the traditional seminary has always been that the traditional seminary tends to take on more than it should. It tends to take on some of the operations the church should really be focusing on. And in that sense, then, it becomes sort of bloated and starts to pull resources away from where they could go. I think those are real problems with traditional seminaries. Not to say that I think traditional seminaries are all problematic. Right. But that there are these problems. There's an overreach, right? Because I think the faculty are always well-meaning, the administrators are always well-meaning, want to form students. But I think at the end of the day, the church outsourcing all of that to the seminaries has never been a good idea. No. And so there is a sense in which I look at it and I say, okay, whether it's Christian radio, whether it's what we traditionally think of as parachurch ministries, whether it's campus ministries, radio ministries, what have you, right, we need to have a stronger linkage and gesturing toward, hey, your local church is actually really crucial to who you become in Christ. You need to have a good one. Right. And we need to stop trying to take away the agency of the local church, the responsibility of the local church to do some of these things. And we just need to focus on filling in gaps that the local church can't really fill. It's not suited to fill them. And that's easy to say, really difficult to do. You know, it's sort of a moving target and you're always missing one side or the other. And so it's not meant to be a condemnation. It's meant to be a frame of mind as we move into this, into any sort of shift and change that at the end of the day, Christian radio, Christian education, seminaries, AI seminaries, online seminars, you know, Christian podcasts, these are not what is going to endure. The church is what endures. And so we need to be thinking in terms of the body of Christ, both global and local, not these other intervening structures that we're using for a time that may end up needing to shift, change, die, whatever. Yeah. And, you know, we've talked about this before in other topics and other realms of conversation on the show here, but if every church was doing what God's called us to do, I really don't feel like there would be a church at every corner in America. I mean, I could throw a rock right now and hit like three churches right here by my house. But like, I don't see those churches really like expanding, outgrowing their space, you know, moving. I think there's a lot of people that are okay with just like doing this and just kind of coasting and staying similar. But like you hit the nail on the head earlier when you said your experience, one out of the three was connecting with the right people. I think we all need that. Like God put that in us, like from the time we were born, like we all crave and need human interaction. That's why discipleship is so crucial and it's always going to be a challenge. I think the church as a whole doesn't always get that right. And so we need to go back to the base of some of these questions to answer some of these more complex ones when we're looking at a landscape that's constantly changing and we don't really know where it's going to end up. I think we need to make sure that we are investing in people and discipling one another. We're making sure we're getting discipled. I have mentors in my life and that's something I was lacking for a while, but it's so incredibly important, you know, borrowing from experience and wisdom and life that people older than you have. I think that's something that's really missed by a lot of young Christians. And, you know, I've even been mentored and discipled a lot by you with certain things in scripture and I've learned a ton the last couple of years that maybe I hadn't had conversations about and stuff, but we've got to, to get back to that. And I think we have to look at that if we're going to try to attack some of these complex issues that we're facing now. When I, I remember our conversations about, you know, there wouldn't be a church on every corner. And as I've thought back on that and sort of my thinking has shifted a little bit, I'm wondering if we're right about that or not. I'm wondering if we weren't, if we were involved, if the church was really deeply involved in discipleship, whether or not we'd have more churches, not less. You know, if you think about what we have and I think this is right. I didn't check this before the podcast, so folks can fact check me if they'd like. I think the sweet spot for actually having a strong sustainable discipleship oriented church is somewhere around 150. And so if you think about the number of churches that you'd need to have 150 people sort of being discipled and have a sustainable model of the way that would work, right, within the American context is really where I'm speaking from. We might actually have more churches. I think what we're seeing and what we're sort of, as I reflect back on those conversations we've had, I think some of what we're sort of knocking around is, isn't it unfortunate that there's zero coordination often, not always, but often, zero coordination between the churches in a given area, so that we feel like we're going to a different organization as opposed to being part of the same organism. Right. And I think that's part of the tension we're feeling as we see all these little churches pop up. But I think discipleship is the great coordinating mechanism for the church. Once we understand that everybody is working to conform to the image of Christ and we have a shared vision of what that is, living under the authority of Jesus, we can get our head around an awful lot. And it may be that we're responding a little differently to God within a given environment, but it won't be that we are responding so differently that it's unintelligible how that response is Christian. And so it's sort of this fascinating web of thinking through if we really re-centered and we really said discipleship is what we care about. Now, how do we get that done? We might find that we're making decisions in a completely different way than we are right now. We might find that we're all flocking back to an AM radio station, as opposed to, you know, listening to the random,

of our curated iTunes list, which can be very isolating. So it's just an interesting sort of conversation to have and to think through. And without beating a dead horse, I really do find that losing radio could be more detrimental than we're thinking it than it is. And so we just need to really analyze what it is that we're losing, how it is that it benefited us, and whether or not we have anything to replace that benefit. Right. And if we're controlling everything ourselves, like you just said with iTunes, if you're clicking exactly what you want, it kind of negates and takes away the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to do something in your life that's different and that's new and it's timely and that, like you're not prepared for, you don't plan for on the show. And it's like God can use something. You're like, man, I wasn't even thinking about that today, but I need to think about that. Whereas staying in your own lane and you're doing your own thing, the devil can kind of keep you isolated in your own things, you know? And it just, it takes away another, I think, valuable vehicle that the Holy Spirit and that God could use to invade and kind of disrupt your day-to-day and kind of get you to think about the things you're supposed to. So that's what I love with radio. When I put something out there on the weekends when I'm talking, I always ask God a real simple prayer right before. I'm like, let me encourage the right people. Let this be, let people hear the things that you give me to say or that you prompt me to say and let it be impacting and life-changing for somebody. You know, even if it's one person, that's the power of radio. And I've been on both sides of that. And to just be willing to start taking it out of cars, I think, is a little hasty. Yeah, hopefully the folks will kind of rally around it and get involved and get it taken care of. I'm hoping that's what will happen. But, you know, also at the end of the day, it's not the end of the world to lose Christian radio. It wouldn't be the end of the world to lose Christian podcasting. It wouldn't be the end of the world to lose Christian YouTubing, any of those things, right? But I think that sometimes we need to take a step back and realize that it won't be the end of the world and start acknowledging that the body of Christ that we're a part of globally and that is manifested locally really needs to be more of a priority in our lives than I think oftentimes I know I give it. And so I know we've taken a circuitous route from AM radio station to the local church, but hopefully the conversation was, hopefully people followed it and drew some good points. Another thing I will say, I think it is worth saying that we have an abundance of options and freedom. Like if you look at us compared to like a place like North Korea, like I don't think you realize how good we have it with the options we have. And still we don't sometimes choose to let that small voice or that, you know, that part to invade our lives in a good way when we have all these options. Then you look at people in China that are, you know, just trying to find a Bible. Yeah, that blows my mind. Like we have it so, so good. We have such an abundance here. Well, and this is where we need, again, I'll go back and say, you know, this is where we really need the local church. This is where we really need to sit under the authority of Christ, because just like we're able to have this conversation now and understand each other, we're able to do that because we're following the rules of grammar that are set out. We're obeying the constraints of the English language in order to have this conversation. And so freedom is a good thing. You know, the ability to be able to choose multiple options isn't necessarily bad, but it's not necessarily good either. Right. It's good when we can do it within a set of constraints that are enabling us to conform to the image of Christ. It's bad when we do it without those constraints, because when we are unconstrained by the word of God, we make our own choices, we decide our own fates, and we always make the wrong choice. And so those constraints sort of help us, those rules of the game, they enable us to play the game well. They enable us to move toward the intended trajectory, which is conformity to the image of Christ, following his way. And so, yeah, I think it's a good point about freedom. And Christians just need to realize that we're exercising our freedoms within the constraints that the Bible sets forth for us. We'll let's end it there. That seems like a good point to end on. And we'll call it a day. But thanks for having this conversation, Nate. We'll be praying for the folks who are involved in this and just asking God to resolve the matter in the way that he deems appropriate and making sure that obviously all glory goes to him, but also that his body is built up in a in an appropriate manner through the teachers that he has involved in the body of Christ today. So thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks, Nate, for having the conversation. And we'll catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to LifeAudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. I'm Mark Vinet, host of the Historical Jesus podcast, which presents the new series, Miracles, focusing on biblical miracles from the Old and New Testament. Join me on the Historical Jesus podcast as I explore the interesting, compelling, intriguing, and wonderful miracle stories of the Bible and the many great miraculous events inspired by the words and deeds of Jesus Christ.