Season Five marks not just the close of a season, but the close of the podcast itself, at least for now.
In this Article:
Context on the Change
Over the years, the podcast reached thousands of individuals across 50 countries, including seven on the world watch list of persecuted countries, utilized internationally by pastors, congregations, individuals outside of congregational settings, with encouraging testimonies about its impact. The materials were even translated into Spanish, Hindi, Thai, Korean, Japanese, etc. It was a labor of love and one that required funding for upkeep, storage, hosting, time spent in research, prep, and production. Despite the podcast’s wide reach and impact, sustaining it proved increasingly difficult.
For years, CITC has been crowdfunded (with minimal promotion because I just don’t like fundraising). However, during the most recent fundraising run, we were unable to meet the financial goal to keep the podcast segment of CITC running. We ran fundraising campaigns on the social media pages (though our primary platform, Instagram, has had horrific reach with its algorithm changes), and an announcement was made in a special episode on the podcast itself. Despite the effort, the campaign didn’t gain traction. While CITC gained 55 new free patrons, the number of paid supporters actually declined, resulting in a 20% drop in overall support. Our goal was modest, just 45-50 people at the $5/month level to reach a sustainable baseline, but unfortunately, we weren’t able to get there this time.
With all that said, I’m optimistic about what is to come. For starters, my goal has been to step away from crowdfunding in the next couple of years as I work through a career change and enter a field that can better support personal and CITC life. This means that (ideally) the show will come back at some point regardless of its current state. Secondly, this isn’t the end of CITC but just the end of an era and segment of CITC. With this change, the focus will shift to something that requires less audio production efforts and time (especially since my house has to plan around recording sessions without a ‘studio’). So what is that focus?
What’s next and why we can be optimistic
Written materials. While the primary focus was the podcast, CITC has also put out PDFs, articles, graphics, and things of that nature, usually on an “able-to” basis, given podcast priority. These too have been used and in a much more accessible manner in congregations globally. With the podcast shutting down, my focus will move over to putting the same quality of work that is found in the podcast into written materials. While individuals may be likelier to listen to audio than read on the web, I think this could actually be better for a) longevity of materials, b) organization of materials, and c) utilization and accessibility of materials.
When a podcast episode airs it begins to get buried under other episodes and as time goes on knowledge of that episode and thus its reception deteriorates. With written materials, they can be more easily found (tied in with point b) and are easier to pull up in the majority of cases, especially given their source is usually one point (a link) rather than a podcast, which can be found on multiple platforms. Closely related is point b. While the podcast is broken up into seasons, not many podcast platforms organize seasons and episodes in a way that is helpful (as far as I’m concerned). And of course, to point c: the utilization of materials (being able to print, access them on your device, distribute, etc) becomes easier with written materials. Sharing audio with a congregation, for example, while it has been done with CITC materials, is more difficult. The accessibility of written materials is much better than audio-only content.
So, what will CITC materials look like? Part of the written materials will be going back to PDFs, such as those found on the PDFs and Graphics page. Not only this, but I want to provide more in-depth PDFs in epub/book formats for reference elsewhere (If you are a patron, you have already seen these types of PDFs in your exclusive shownotes). In summary: I am hoping to do the following: a) more written articles on the website, b) a recap “CITC in Review” (title suggestions for this welcome!) PDF comprised of articles in a period (think magazine but in a book format), and c) stand alone PDFs (more to come on those later). While graphics were a large part of CITC early on, I don’t foresee too many graphics being produced as the main medium wherein those graphics were useful (Instagram) has been yielding less for the effort it takes to produce said graphics. However, where a PDF or article could use or inspires a graphic, I’ll be sure to make one up.
In addition, and related to the concept of organization and utilization of materials, finding posts on social media pages can be as painful as finding a podcast episode at times. With this, then, I am going to move some of the content from social media, format it into articles (sometimes expanding it when I’m able), and put it into the formats mentioned above.
This all means that the content, long and short, will ultimately remain the same, and quality will remain unaffected, but it will be able to be ‘produced’ more effectively and at times more frequently. It will take time to organize the website, produce these materials, format them, and make them easily distributable, but I think it is very promising. At this time, I’d highly recommend readers subscribe directly to the website as well to ensure you don’t miss anything that pops up on the website!
Subscriber Supported and Perks
With all this said, while the podcast is ‘closed,’ CITC is still patron/subscriber-supported. While the CITC patron page isn’t booming with exclusive content (as one of the primary points of CITC is to keep materials accessible to people for free), there are patron-exclusive materials you get access to when you join the support team.
Available for all paid patrons is access to a patron’s Google Drive folder, which includes the following:
- Access to full show notes, formatted as a mini-book for Kindle, electronic readers, and print. Including:
- A Crash Course in Denominations (158 pages)
- Do We Get Rewards in Heaven? (40 pages)
- Halloween and the Reformation (76 pages)
- Zoroastrianism and Christianity (58 pages)
- Nicaea and Constantine (34 pages)
- Access to general show notes formatted in word:
- The Apocrypha (25 pages)
- The Historical Evidence for Jesus (24 pages)
- Access to some exclusive PDFs made for the Through Nicaea Series:
- Ante-Nicene Heresies and Arianism
- Ante-Nicene Defenders of the Faith
- Nicea, Aftermath, and Athanasius
- The Cappadocians and Constantinople
- Exclusive deals on CITC books:
- Free digital copy of Holidays and the Feasts (both 2nd and 3rd editions)
- Exclusive discount on Holidays and the Feasts in print (50% off)
- Exclusive discount on Tiptoeing Through TULIP in print (50% off)
- Courses (with video, audio, notes, slides, and resources):
- The Seven Ecumenical Councils
- Bare Bones of Biblical Greek
- Crash Course Theology
- How We Got the Bible
- All of these can be used to jump into more complicated materials on a given subject.
- Episode Access:
- Access to Archived Episodes (42-175)
- Seasons 3, 4, and 5 are available for download:
- Including:
- Through Nicea
- TULIP
- Denomination
- Back to Basics
- Including:
You can learn more at patreon.com/christisthecure. NOTE if you’re an APPLE user: Do NOT sign up through the app. Instead, sign up through the web version (mobile or desktop) and then use your login through the app. The reason why is that Apple will charge you more because of their fees if you subscribe through the Apple App.
All in all, I hope this gets you pumped for CITC’s future despite the big change. God bless you all and thank you for being a part of CITC.
-Nick
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