Announcing the Vintage Sermons Podcast!

(You can also hear a podcast version of this blog!)

I am so excited to announce a new resource coming from us here at Reimagine Faith: the Vintage Sermons Podcast! I have been thinking about this idea for a long time, and now it is finally here!

I was inspired by the fact that I, like I am sure so many of you, have greatly benefited from subscribing to a variety of sermon podcasts, whether that is from prominent and popular preachers like Tim Keller or to keep up with the preaching of a small church pastor I respected when he went to a new church. I listen to sermons during my commute to work. They have nourished my faith as I listen to a variety of people preach God's Word during the week in addition to hearing from my own pastor each Sunday.

While many preachers today have sermon podcasts and come from a variety of backgrounds, they all have something in common: they are formed by living in and reacting to 21st-century Western culture. They live in the same world as I do, which means I can relate to them, but also means they have the same cultural blindspots I do. To correct for this, for years, I have read writings from Christians over the course of Church history whose wisdom is time-tested and long-lasting and, because they come from a different culture and historical moment than I do, read Scripture with a different set of assumptions, so they show me things God is communicating that I might have missed because of my cultural blindspots.

I got to thinking, what if these two worlds could come together: the benefits of learning from the historic church and the convenience of listening to preaching through podcasts? What if these sermons from preachers before the age of audio recording, before only accessible through reading, could be recorded and put on a podcast feed right next to our favorite contemporary preachers? And so, the Vintage Sermons Podcast series was born. The idea is simple: each week I will record a sermon from the historic church and release it as a podcast episode each Sunday at 6 PM. We'll listen together to Church Fathers, Medievals, Reformers, and the early modern era, all translated into English and made as accessible as any podcast subscription. I hope you will join me, as I am excited to share these sermons that mean so much to me.

We will begin on September 27th. For this first year of the series, we will begin with a collection of 9 sermons by the late 4th-century preacher, St. John Chrysostom, that cover the major feast days celebrating the most significant events in Jesus' life. We will then spend Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with sermons for those respective seasons by the German Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther. In the spring, we will listen to a set of sermons on Old Testament passages by the 4th-century theologian, St. Augustine of Hippo. In the future, I'm hoping to include sermons by St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the Venerable Bede, John Calvin, Karl Barth, and hopefully many others we discover along the way!

I am excited to have you join me as we bring the preaching of the historic church to the contemporary church, to give us fresh insight into Scripture and see Jesus more clearly with the help of the many wise, but imperfect preachers of the Bible who have gone before us. You can find the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart Radio, Pandora, Stitcher, Tune In, Deezer, RSS, and wherever you get your podcasts, beginning September 27th! Head over and subscribe to stay up to date with every episode!