Podcast Changes in 2025
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone, and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our executive director. Mark, anybody who checked out the podcast last week knows and is now aware that we have been working behind the scenes in smoke-filled back rooms, seeking to figure out how to utilize this podcast more effectively to serve the folks in Sovereign Grace and anyone else who wants to check it out as well for that matter. And those who have been waiting with bated breath since last week, wondering what are these new changes? They're about to be happily surprised by what you're going to share because we have some new changes coming to the podcast that you want to talk about.
Mark Prater:
Well, I hope they're happily surprised. We'll see. Yeah. We met last week, Ben and I, the week before Christmas. We're recording this on December 26th. We met last week, as I mentioned last time in Denver, Pennsylvania at a diner there. Had lunch together and talked through just all options. In fact, in that conversation, Ben and I, we just threw everything on the table. Do we just end the podcast? Do we cancel ourselves? And by the way, we have chosen not to do that, which is why we're recording this. We just said, should we continue to publish 'em at the same frequency, produce 'em at the same frequency, which is weekly, and try to do that in the 10 to 15 minute range. And we talked through that and thought, let's just keep that same frequency for now. We talked about changing the name of the podcast, and I think we decided not to, just to prevent confusion and probably because we couldn't come up with much better, actually, as we sat there and had lunch, was the main reason why. So we just started by just throwing everything on the table. I think we came up with some good changes though that I'm eager to announce.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. So changes are coming. This is the last podcast of 2024. We're getting ready next week when we record to do our first podcast of 2025. So what are the changes that we can anticipate heading into a new year?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, we've got five of them that we sort of, I think it's best to put 'em in categories. So five new changes that we are eager to announce. First of all, we want to devote an episode somewhat regularly to answering questions. Followers of this podcast have pastors and members of our churches, even those outside of Sovereign Grace. And so you can do that by submitting a question on the markkprater.com website. Right on the homepage (under the contact tab), Erin's got a form in the middle of that page called "Submit a Question (or a Topic) for the Podcast". It's just put your name and your email and your question and submit it. And we would just love to hear what questions that you have. We're eager to take several of those and devote an episode to it. Now, how frequently we do that will depend upon the number of questions we get, but we want to spend some time answering your questions. So it's a bit of a mailbag sort of approach that we're adding into our podcast in 2025.
The second change is we would like to hear what topics you would like us to address. So you can use that same form on the contact page where you submit a question, just put in there your topic and submit that to us and Ben and I will review it. And we want to do that because as Ben mentioned last week, this podcast exists to serve the members and pastors of Sovereign Grace churches. And if it ever stops doing that, we'll cancel it. We'll shut this thing down because that's our desire to serve you.
So tell us what topics you want us to speak into, which leads to the third new change. We've decided to choose some topics that might require a little bit more time and be more conversation between Ben and myself in format. So we've been trying to get into that 10 to 15 minute range in terms of length of time. We're not going to go much longer than that, but depending upon the topic, we might inch up above 15 minutes just so we can treat it fairly again, depending on what topic we do address. And I think on some of those topics, we want to be more conversational, meaning that I'm talking less than I normally do because Ben is talking as well. We're just having a conversation about the topic. So that's the third change that will be coming in 2025.
Number four, we're going to continue to look for guests to join us. We've done that occasionally. I've had Jeff Purswell on this podcast. I've had Steve Whitacre on this podcast, but you and I just kind of listed a whole list of names that of folks we'd like to reach out to and join us now and then, so I'll be looking for guests to join us in the future and in 2025 in particular.
Fiftth and lastly, we are going to give occasional giveaways. Let's go. And we're going to approach that in some different ways. We might make it a competition. We might make it a first responder by using the form on the markkprater.com website. We're not sure yet, but we're going to do some giveaways throughout the year, so be listening for that. And we'll try to make 'em not lame giveaways. Right Ben? We'll make them really good giveaways so that you actually would like to receive what we sent you. That's right.
Thank you for listening to this podcast. It is an honor and a joy for Ben and myself to serve you, the members and pastors of Sovereign Grace Churches. And I've been thinking a lot about that as 2024 begins to just close. I was just thinking about this morning how much I thank God for each of you, and thank you for listening to our podcast.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yes, well, hopefully that is a belated Christmas gift to our tens and tens of followers of this podcast. But seriously, we do hope that going into the new year that these changes will serve to help us be able to do more effective podcasts that really do serve the folks in Sovereign Grace because we love you.
And Mark, I'm so grateful to be a part of Sovereign Grace and grateful for everybody who checks out the podcast. So thank you, Mark, for another year of the podcast. We're a few years in now. Let's do another one by God's grace and for his glory, and we'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.