(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. Today's episode will be less humorous than the last one and a little different. It's just me this time, Tony, your host. And this time we'll take a look behind the scenes of the podcast and answer some of your frequently asked questions.

We'll talk about different listening options and how to ask good questions and things like that. All the ins and outs of this podcast. But I wanna just start with a thank you to everyone who listens. In the little over one year time span, this podcast has existed. The listenership has grown exponentially and it continues to grow every day.

Of course, there are many ways to listen to the podcast every day and you'll hear more of those options in a moment. But just counting those of you who listen through social media, through Twitter and Facebook, and those of you who listen through the Ask Pastor John apps for the iPhone and Android, just through those channels alone, we're now approaching the five million play mark in a little over a year.

Five million episodes played. It's an amazing work of God and very encouraging and humbling too. To date, we have just over 300 episodes in the archive, which translates to over 30 hours of audio from Pastor John in his study, answering your very good questions. And there's no end in sight to this project, either to the topics we can cover or to the questions that are coming in from you.

This podcast reminds me of the promise in Proverbs 2, verses six and seven, which says that God's store of wisdom is infinite for his children. And that's a sweet promise. It's a promise that we bank on in this podcast. And in light of the success of Ask Pastor John over the past year, someone on Twitter once called Pastor John, quote, "The Yoda of New Calvinism." And while I think that's meant to be funny and flattering, it kind of is.

There's something inherently disturbing about this too, and it's not because Yoda is like 900 years old. As I was preparing for this episode, I was reminded of a question I've been wanting to ask Pastor John. So I emailed him to ask it. Here it is. How does he want listeners to think of these podcasts?

Here's what he wrote back to me, quote, "The way I would like listeners to receive my counsel "in these podcasts is in the spirit "of 1 Thessalonians 5, 21, "test everything, hold fast to what is good. "And the test I hope they use is first, the Bible. "That's where I try to find all my responses "to people's questions.

"And secondly, I hope they esteem the spiritual leaders "of their own churches highly "and talk to them about the issues they face, "which is also 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 13. "There is one final authority, "and it's God's word, not mine. "I want to exalt God's word over and over "as true and wise and sweet." End quote.

So take that to heart when listening to the podcast. Listen to all of Pastor John's counsel through that grid, which means whether you agree with Pastor John or whether you disagree with Pastor John, you'll have to engage the text of scripture. That's the inescapable goal of this podcast. With that said, on to some details.

First of all, how can you listen to this podcast? Clearly you figured this out, but here are the four best listening options. First, you can listen through your computer. You can go directly to the newly redesigned DesiringGod.org homepage every weekday, and you'll find the most recent episode playable from the homepage.

Just click the play button, you'll see it there. This feature will soon be added to the homepage of our mobile version of our website as well. Second, you can listen to the episodes directly through social media on Facebook and Twitter each day. Each episode is spread through Desiring God's Facebook and Twitter feeds at 7 a.m.

and noon each weekday central time, and Pastor John follows these with a tweet on the episodes in the evenings. Third, you can also subscribe to the podcast feed through iTunes and play it through a chosen podcast app. This requires a little more web skill, but those of you who listen to a lot of podcasts will find this helpful, and you probably know what you're doing already.

Fourth and finally, and maybe most significantly, for those of you on the go, we have a specially designed app for the Apple and Android devices, including smartphones, iPhones, iPads, et cetera, and this has proven to be the most convenient option for many of our listeners. The Ask Pastor John app is free of charge, and it can be downloaded from the Apple and Android stores right now.

Again, it works both on smartphones and tablets, and a host of Apple and Android devices. Not only do you get the latest episodes, but you also get access to the archive through the app. Currently in the Android version, you can listen to the last eight or so episodes, and there's a link to the web to find the full archive.

The iPhone and iPad app had these same features until recently when the app was completely revamped. Using the free Ask Pastor John app on the iPhone and iPad now, listeners can scroll through the entire archive of 300 plus episodes from within the app itself. And not only that, we've added a search bar at the top of the screen, making it easy for you to search all of the episode titles in a jiffy.

This iPhone iPad app is now the best and most convenient way to navigate the entire podcast archive, and all this functionality will soon be coming to the Android app as well. So stay tuned for that update in the very near future. Well, with all the listeners, it's fun to see what have become your favorite episodes.

Here are some of the most played episodes in the archive. At the very top, it's been at the top for a while now, is the John MacArthur and Strange Fire episode, episode number 214, which is followed by the Santa Claus episode, Santa Claus Harmless Fun or Christmas Disruption, episode 235, followed by Is Drinking Alcohol a Sin, episode 200, and a very recent episode broke into the top five list in its first week online, Pastor of World's Largest Church Convicted of Embezzlement.

That was episode number 290. Then two related episodes on cussing, episode 97, and the follow-up episode, Can Christians Cuss to Prove a Point, episode 260. These are followed by Tattoos and Biblical Perspective, episode 240, and Six Reasons to Skip Tattoos, episode 241, back-to-back episodes on tattoos making it in the top 10 list.

What is the Purpose of Fasting, episode 72, made the list. Would You Attend a Gay Wedding, episode 191. Can a White Woman Marry a Black Man, episode number 98, which was for a long time the most played episode in the podcast series. And then episode number 122, Is My Boyfriend's Porn a Marriage Deal Breaker, followed by episode 273, Is Porn the Unforgivable Sin.

As you can see, we have a lot of serious episodes and some fun ones mixed in there too, like yesterday's March Madness episode, which we do have some fun every once in a while, but by far the most popular categories are questions related to sex, marriage, and dating. Contemporary issues within the church, like the Strange Fire Conference, are popular, as are questions on Reformed theology and Calvinism.

Questions about alcohol, cussing, tattoos, and Santa Claus are also very popular too. And of course, no topic has been covered more than the topic of joy. About a dozen episodes directly on that subject. You can type joy in the app search bar and you'll see what I mean. Striking to me about these popular episodes is how many of them were developed interactively with you, our listeners.

Your excellent questions help generate many of these most popular episodes. As many of you know, in the Ask Pastor John app, you can send us email questions with the touch of a button, or of course you can send us an email to askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. We receive over 400 emails per week and they pile up very fast in the inbox, but we do read them all, and all of them are very valuable to us, but there's simply no possible way that we can respond to any of those emails personally, so I apologize for that.

But this leads me finally to spend a moment talking about something essential to our success, and that's helping you ask us really great questions. So let me close with three tips for asking good Ask Pastor John questions. Tip number one, check the archive first. About one third of the questions coming in now have already been addressed in previous episodes of the podcast, so start there.

Tip number two, send follow-up questions. If you hear an episode and it raises another question in your mind, send us an email with the episode number and with your follow-up question. The episodes in this podcast series are in many ways interconnected to one another, and follow-up questions help us to fill out this web, so follow-up questions are greatly appreciated.

Tip number three, keep it precise and brief. If your question requires paragraphs of background detail, it's probably a situation too detailed and delicate for us to tackle on the podcast. We're really looking for specific questions that appeal to many listeners, and this is a big challenge for us. So maybe the best tip I can offer you is to encourage you to simplify your question into one or two sentences.

Think about your question for a while, give it time to soak and time to sharpen. But please, keep the questions coming into us. So as I wrap up this solo episode, let me say again, thank you for listening to this podcast. We are humbled that so many of you make time every day to listen in.

You listen in the car on your way to work, or while cleaning the house, or while crafting, or walking, or jogging, or biking. I know there's even one listener who plays the episodes every morning during their morning shower before work. And while it's a little awkward to be told that in person, it's also an encouragement, and we're certainly not afraid of awkward here.

So thank you for listening. And so many of you listen with an ear to serve others in your life, and we appreciate your labors in helping spread the Ask Pastor John app and specific episodes to people in your families and churches to bless and care for them in their time of need.

So thank you for this valuable partnership of content sharing. Please continue to help us to spread God's word to those who need it. And of course, for those of you who financially support Desiring God, your funding and prayers are crucial to this podcast. This podcast and the free Ask Pastor John apps would not exist without you.

So thank you for your sacrifices and support. We are deeply grateful to God for you and for your giving. - Well, goodness, that's enough of me. We'll be back tomorrow with a new episode featuring Pastor John and addressing these back from heaven stories. Books like "Heaven is for Real," a little boy's astounding story of his trip to heaven and back.

What are we to make of this story and others like it? Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)