What is a Podcast? Podcasts (as in “iPod Broadcast” or “Portable On-Demand Broadcast”) are like free newspaper subscriptions, but instead of a physical paper being delivered to your door, audio files are delivered to your computer (or portable audio device) via the Internet on a regular basis. Since there is a new sermon each week, this means that people subscribed to the Grace Community Church Podcast (for free) will receive the latest sermon audio file to their computer automatically on a weekly basis. If you’d like to learn more about Podcasts, you can click here.   What About the Sermons Already on the Web Site?   For a while now, we have offered the sermon audio on our web site for people to download in MP3 format. In addition, we have a sermon web player on our site that will play a weekly sermon without requiring a download of any kind (for those wanting to listen while they surf the Internet). These offerings will continue for those who prefer to download files or listen while they are online. However, we feel that the new Podcast offering will make listing to the weekly sermons even easier as they will be delivered to your computer automatically as they become available, ready and waiting for you whenever (and wherever) you want to listen to them.   What is iTunes?   The primary method people will sign up for our Podcast is within a program by the Apple corporation called “iTunes”, which is free to download. iTunes is a music and video player program for your computer, as well as a very popular online store for purchasing/downloading new music and videos. Since a music CD in a store costs around $12 and may include songs you don’t like, many people purchase new music through the iTunes program since they can buy individual songs for around $1 each. Once purchased, those songs are downloaded to the person’s computer where they can be played in the iTunes program, or copied to a portable audio device, such as an iPod. Recently, iTunes also started selling movies and episodes of television shows for those wanting to watch them on their computer and iPod. If you’d like to learn more about iTunes, you can click here.   Why Offer a Podcast on iTunes?   iTunes is the most popular software program for Podcasts anywhere in the world, since the software is already used by so many people for music and videos. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to reach at least a small fraction of the estimated 100 million users of iTunes. There are many audio and video Podcasts available in many different categories including Christianity, which is where our Podcast is located. In fact, we are in good company here in Clermont, as both Open Door Baptist Church and Real Life Christian Center offer Podcasts in iTunes as well. As a rule by Apple, all Podcasts in iTunes are free. In our case, users can choose to download one of the individual sermons or subscribe to the Podcast itself and have new sermons downloaded to their computer automatically, all at no cost. Once the sermon(s) are on their computer, they can be played there or moved to a portable audio device (such as an iPod) and played anywhere on the go. The ease and widespread use of iTunes makes it a great addition to the methods we use to spread our message in the digital age.   How Do I Sign Up for Our Podcast?   While there are other programs that can be used to subscribe to our Podcast, iTunes is the most popular and one of the easiest. To see our Podcast page in iTunes and to sign up for a free subscription, simply click on the link above. If you do not already have iTunes installed on your computer, the link above will guide you to a page on Apple’s web site where you can download the program for free.   Another way to find our Podcast page in iTunes is to simply search for “Clermont” from within the program. Since there are a lot of results for “Grace Community Church” in iTunes, “Clermont” is the best term to use if you can’t remember the link above. Alternatively, there are free Podcast programs (also called RSS Readers) which can be used to subscribe to our Podcast. For those programs, you will need to know the Internet location (URL) of our “feed”, which is listed above as well. If you are using iTunes, you do not need to worry about this.   We are excited about this offering from our church, and pray that we may touch those who would normally be out of our physical reach.