Embracing technology as the pastor: Podcasting your church sermons

Many churches record their sermons.  Many churches also put their sermons on their church website for free download.

But I'm surprised at how few churches podcast their sermons and thereby make it easier for people to subscribe to their sermons and listen to them every week.

So how can you podcast your sermon?
I've found that one of the easiest ways is using the blogging software WordPress.

Basically you start a sermon blog and then attach the sermon each week to a blog post.  The blog feed therefore becomes the podcast feed which is then imported into people's podcasting software.

The feed can also be submitted to iTunes to show up in the podcast section of their store.

So how do you go about using WordPress on your church website? 
Firstly, follow the official WordPress installation instructions.

Then once you have your blog/podcast set up, you need to install a WordPress podcasting plugin. 

I use the Podcasting Plugin.  If you want to do the same, then follow their instructions on how to make a podcast post.

How do you get your podcast on iTunes?
A fairly large proportion of the population will want to use iTunes to subscribe to your podcast.  So to make it easier for people, submit it to iTunes using their instructions. 

Should I burn my feed?
You can burn your feed at the Google owned FeedBurner site.  Burning your feed gives you the benefit of seeing statistics about your subscribers and also presents your feed on a webpage that offers many useful links for different podcasting software.  For an example of a burnt feed, check out our church podcast's feed at FeedBurner.

If you do burn your feed, make sure the feed you submit to iTunes is the FeedBurner feed, not your site's original rss feed.  Otherwise you'll miss out on valuable statistics.