10 Years and 500 Episodes: The Story of BibleProject Podcast

Hey, this is John and before we get started on today's episode, I wanted to let you know about our new expanded show notes. These are really cool show notes. Now have chapter by chapter summaries, reflection questions for you to dig deeper. Every time we reference scripture or look at a biblical word, that's all going to be referenced in the show notes. And you can find a link in our episode description. You could also find them in the Bible Project app. All right, here's the show. Okay, so I don't need to be looking at anything. Well, is there a coaster? There is. It's fun to be like what we're going to talk about. Rollin'. Okay. Hey Tim. Hey John, hello. There was no plan to start a podcast, but we started having these conversations as a part of making the videos. We're starting the new theme. Yeah, these are good days. I'm really excited about this new series. Me too. These are really fun conversations. I was enjoying these conversations so much. I thought it would be great to record them, so other people can enjoy them too. We are starting a new conversation. What are we talking about? You know, I have all this stuff in my head right now. Yeah, there was no other strategy than that, and I didn't have a plan for it becoming anything more. As we wrap up 2025, the Bible Project podcast is celebrating two big milestones, 10 years, and 500 episodes of exploring the Bible together. To mark the occasion, we're taking a little stroll down memory lane to see how it all began. How does a side project, recorded in a closet, turn into a decade-long global conversation? This was a new paradigm for me. The series will be exploring Genesis chapters 1, 2, 3. It has become the favorite chapters for me to read in the Bible. Over the past 10 years, this podcast has reached hundreds of thousands of listeners who've joined us in discovering the Bible as one unified story that leads to Jesus. On today's episode, we're sharing how this project continues to shape us and this community of Bible readers that's grown over the past decade. I'm Lindsay Ponder, the producer for the podcast, and your host for today. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Before there was a podcast, before they animated videos, before there was even an organization called Bible Project, there were two friends just having a conversation. It all started there. Tim and John met in Bible College and for years would process what they were learning about the Bible together. In 2012, they decided to combine Tim's biblical expertise and John's experience making explainer videos to create videos about the Bible. By the time they decided to start a podcast, they had already been having the conversations that became the podcast for three years. We would sit in this room with no windows with plywood walls. Yep. And this is one of my first memories of sitting in there. We sat in there for like three hours talking and writing and making notes and maybe there was a whiteboard. I was really stimulating. It was super fun. I think we were both like, well, this is cool. We just burned three hours. And then we sat on this couch that was like this metal box frame with cushions made of military uniforms. It's a Stephen Ken couch. Okay. There you go. Which is very special. And when I walked into the office that day, there was this jar full of chocolate lollipops, like a ball of chocolate on the end of a little stick. And I was like, let's go. Starbucks has now made famous. You could go to a Starbucks and get a cake pop. Cake pop. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But this was pre Starbucks cake pops. Okay. Apparently this was 2013. So, somewhere on the course of us talking, I had that lollipop and I must have put it down because I wanted to start typing, you know, some ideas on my computer. I thought I'd maybe put it on the wrapper next to me. But I looked down 45 minutes later and it was like this half melted chocolate pop on this really nice designer couch in your office. And I felt so bad. And I was like, I'm sorry, man, I'm so sorry. And that couch has moved with us now. It's still here. Still here. And just for the record, that couch really is still around. It's made the rounds over the years and now lives in our classroom soundstage. And if you ever visit the office, you can have a seat on it if you dare. Chocolate stain and all. And the stain. The stains there. It is. Yes. So somehow that memory is locked into my mind about the beginning of how we started to talk about videos and make scripts. We had a half day. I think it was Wednesday mornings. Wednesday mornings. Because your job at the local church, basically we negotiated a half day of your time. Yeah. Or they just kind of generously gave it. Yeah, I forget maybe asked for it, but the elder team at door folk church said, go for it. So you would ride your bike downtown to my office. And then we would have basically three hours and then lunch. So most of that time was just talking through the ideas that we wanted to turn into scripts. And my experience up to that point writing explainer videos, a large part of that was interviewing an expert to understand what it is we're going to write. And so I just really enjoy that part of the process. Yeah. And we just would talk. Yeah. It was so fun. Despite the fun Tim and John were having, these weren't just casual chats. They were working sessions. Deep dives into themes, stories and words. The goal was to get on the same page before they could ever write a video script. The process was imperfect. It was slow. And it was also transformative. I remember specifically feeling free to ask certain questions that I wouldn't dare ask. You wouldn't have asked maybe growing up in your church community. Yeah. And I would kind of start to broach a question. And I just remember you giving me permission through the way you'd answer the question because you'd push it further. Yeah. For example, you know, I had a big question about heaven in relation to Jesus saying there's not going to be marriage in heaven. And so for me, that feels really uncomfortable to talk about. And I kind of was tiptoeing around it. And I think you just plunged in. In a way that for me was really startling at first. But then I was like, oh, cool, we get to just do this. We get to just have this conversation. And that was really exhilarating. Yeah. I can't remember a lot of those details. Yeah. No. I wonder what my 12 year ago self said about that. Yeah. From the very beginning, this whole project was built on trust. The kind of trust between two friends who could ask hard questions about God and the Bible without fear of judgment. That trust became the foundation for everything that followed. If I feel censored and what I'm worried about is am I going too far? Am I going to make Tim uncomfortable? Am I going to broach a subject that is off limits? Off limits. Then I'll start to feel like I have to tiptoe around. And most of my energy now is in tiptoeing around versus just trying to understand. And I think it just for me, signified like, cool. I think this is going to work. But then a couple of years, Tim and John's Bible project had gathered enough momentum for them to bring in a few trusted others. So we moved across the river and we were in the basement. Just remember the cement floors. Yeah. The East Bank Exchange Building. Yeah. We started to bring animators, illustrators to come work with us in that space. And so we started just building out desks and we kind of had our first office there. Yeah, we didn't. Neither the space nor the team was big, but it buzzed with creative energy and a shared vision. Our art director, Robert Perez remembers it like this. As an artist, you really want to commit yourself to something that you believe in and to do something fun. And this project, obviously being about project. I'm hugely passionate about the message and the mission and the ability to start at the ground floor if something was also really exciting. And so there wasn't a ton of rules already set in place. It was like you get to help craft something. You get to help build something that could be really awesome or it could go nowhere. But that potential was enough for me to be like, okay, I really want to at least try. And it's so important to at least try and go after things that you feel are really important in your life. The team was coming together literally and figuratively, but it didn't happen overnight. You know, we had been prototyping a few videos for like two years. Yeah. I think to the point where you started to wonder, are we actually going to make a video? I did wonder that at some point. Yeah. Because I didn't fully understand what we were making. Some of our early scripts were like 10 pages long. And it's kind of all over the place. And I don't fully remember that journey. But at some point, we got to our first two videos. Heaven and Earth and Genesis 1 through 11. And we released those. And then we immediately started working on the next set of videos, which was Genesis 12 through 50. And the Messiah. So we were working on Messiah. So that script was written. And it was at that point, I thought, let's record these conversations. And I could edit those down and put them on this slick technology called podcasting, which I was a pretty early adopter of podcasts. When did you start listening to podcasts? Probably around then. Maybe because you were like, hey, we should do one. Oh, you're like, what are they really? Okay. Oh, actually, no, I remember this. Yeah. It was around the same time. Because I was looking for podcasts that were about stuff that I thought was interesting and cool about Bible and biblical theology. And I couldn't find anything that I was interested in. And I was like, man, it would be so cool if there was a podcast that worked through ideas from one into the Bible to the other. Oh, that would just be rad if that existed. While I'm telling you, that's what I wanted to do. Well, I just remember there was a feeling. Yeah. And I was equating myself with the podcast app and how it worked and was searching and found all kinds of religion podcasts, but nothing that I- That's right. Yeah. We're monologue. So yeah, ended up being that we created the thing that I wish existed. Thus, the Bible project podcast was born. Things were scrappy in those days to put it lightly. When John first suggested recording their conversations, there was no studio, no gear closet, no soundproofing, just a tiny storage space tucked under the stairs of Bible projects first Portland office. The first podcast series Tim and John recorded was about the law. My name is John Collins and this is the first episode of the Bible project podcast on the law. The law was recorded in that storage space under the stairs. It was quite literally a closet thing Harry Potter, but with microphones instead of magic. And you go down these stairs and it was more spare dongeness. And underneath them was this closet door closet, a tiny room when you'd go into at the slanted wall and that's where you set up recording equipment. It's the only place that had like a room in the whole space and enclosed room. Yeah. But yeah, we just sit side by side and I would just start recording. Yeah. Without a true recording studio, John and Tim had the option to record just about anywhere and sometimes they did. And we had some friends and patrons of the project and they had offered a house that they have kind of in a rural suburb of Portland if we ever wanted to go there and do some concentrated work time. So that's what we did. I think it was just one night two full days. Yeah, sounds right. But we wanted to work out the wisdom series. I think it was just the job conversations we had there. Yeah. There was this window overlooking a field and we got these lav mics and cool evening beverages and puffs up in the window. And we recorded the job conversations that way. Cool. So this job does that name have a meaning in Hebrew? It was a small look. Yeah, exactly. And what I remember was that was awesome. And that was so fun. I can't believe that this is what we get to do. Talk about the Bible at a cabin with my friend with a mic. And I think why the audio for the job conversations is so poor. Markedly worse than the others. I should go back and just listen to that to sample. I haven't listened to those in years. In those early days, John did it all. Recording, editing, learning the software as he went. He was a one man audio department. I had to learn pro tools. I had to learn how to do audio editing. Yeah, I'm not like a, I'm not an audio guy. So I didn't even recognize how bad the audio was to even like think about I got to do something to make it better. To me, it was it's the content there is the idea there. And does it flow? And am I getting bored or am I getting frustrated? I would just edit for that. And as long as it was loud enough, I remember at one point, pretty early in, I got an email that was like, hey, I listen to the podcast and I love it. The audio is horrible. And that was the first time I was like, oh, audio is horrible. That's something to pay attention to. Yeah, right. I remember you edited those first conversations and you sent them to me. And I listened to them and I was so surprised at how on point and smart we sounded. Taking out all the pauses and coughs and ums and and then also that was like, wait, remember that one thing that we talked about and you're like, oh, yeah, I just took that out. Okay. It truly is a distillation and a re-presentation. And at the real dialogue, it's not scripted. You know, we're out reading anything. Yeah, because it sounds so refined. Like we know where we're going. And it's not because it's scripted. It's because it's edited. Yeah, it's good editing. Yeah. It's like, wow, this makes us sound like we have the next cool, interesting thing to say, like right on the tip of our tongue all the time. Right. Right around the time John realized he might need some help with audio production, help arrived from a listener who happened to be a professional audio producer, talk about perfect timing, enter Dan Gummel, who eventually became the podcast first dedicated audio editor. I sat down with both Dan and John separately to hear their various sides of what they remember about their first time working together. Here's that story. I was pretty early on Dan emailed me and said, I really like what you're doing with podcasts. I was working out of an MPR station in Ohio and I just emailed, hey, I'm a public radio producer. Here's a couple of resources that we use. And I linked them to some workshops and some different types of materials that they could find. And this is like 2015. So not a lot of podcasting was being done outside of radio. Dan told me that he'd loved to help. And I think I'd just say thanks and I filed that away. And then I thought it would be cool to interview Greg Bommer and John Cortinas about their story that turned into a book called Got a Money. I then decided I was going to go to Nashville where they were and interview them. And a few days later, I looked down on my phone and was reading and it was from a Portland area code. I didn't know anybody in Portland. I thought it was fam. I almost didn't answer it and I picked it up and it was like, hey, this is John a Bible project. And I said, oh, it's great to hear from you, dude. So he started asking me questions about the podcast and he was like, hey, I want to try and make these kind of cool stories on the podcast and they could use them help. This is like early in the year of February. He's like, I'll be in Nashville in the fall. Would you like to come to Nashville with me? I was like, check with that in my calendar. I just pulled up the email. He said September 25th and 26th. Like it's in this email. And months go by and it's getting closer and closer to the date. Dan might have been better than me. I think it's like a few days before. And then I get a couple of like quick emails and texts in succession like, hey, Dan, just checking in. Like, I'm going to be there. Haven't heard from you. I'm still playing in a company in Nashville. It turns out I'd give Dan the wrong dates. And I was like, oh, shoot. And I really want to work with John. And so I'll just figure it out. So I changed my schedule. Dan dropped everything, got in his car and just started driving. I drove down to Nashville. That's for the time I met Dan and he helped me do the field recordings. And I had a great time. After the Nashville trip and the production of the now classic God and Money episode, still one of our most listened to episodes of all time. Dan quickly became essential to the Bible project podcast. I started having him edit episodes of the podcast. And then at some point, it was enough work and he was interested in moving out here. That was like, cool. We could hire you to do this. So I was Dan. But the addition of Dan, there was now an official team supporting the podcast. Still, podcasting can feel like talking into the void. There's no faces to observe, no follow-up conversations, no instant feedback. There was no simple way for John and Tim to know how the podcast was landing for listeners. But one day, John had an experience that made him realize their conversations were having a greater impact than he had imagined. We had just finished the overview videos and we were celebrating. At 2016, just night and Gail came and recited the revelation. And then we played the video and then he performed the second half. Then we played the final video. It was kind of our first event we ever did. And a friend of ours from college, right, and seen in years, came up and she said, with kind of this look of joy and sadness together, came and with so much sincerity. He was like, thank you for the podcast. I love it. And I'm listening to it. And it's helping me so much. And that really shook me because one, it was the first time I like ran into someone who was like, I listened to the podcast. But I could tell it was so meaningful to her. It shook me too because she came out of the same educational environment that I came out of. And I think I felt kind of alone a little bit. And like, I didn't learn the things I was supposed to learn during that time. It just felt like, yeah, that's right. We're all figuring this out. And that moment really left the mark on me thinking, okay, this is significant. Bible Project podcast was growing on two fronts at once. On the outside, more and more listeners from across the globe were joining the conversation. And on the inside, the show that was produced by John, and then later with Dan's help, expanded to include even more team members. I remember going through COVID, realizing that essentially like if I were to have gotten sick or something, nobody knew where anything was half of the stuff was still sitting on my external hard drive. So John and Dan decided to hire more help. Over time, the team came to include a day-to-day producer. That's me, a managing producer, and a full-time audio engineer and editor Tyler. The process to produce a podcast episode has increased in complexity too. The first person to touch a podcast episode is typically Tyler, who hits record. Here's Tyler and his own words. I'm right there with everybody in hearing, listening, being impacted. And the only difference is, and it's a really privileged position, is I get to hear it first and he experience it in real time. We're in a room, I don't know about the size of a studio bedroom. And then there's another room on the other side of a double wall with speakers and a computer. And that's where I sit and watch the meters, make sure everything's recording, sometimes I respond to things. I experience the version of the conversation, which is full of ums, us, coughs, sneezes, stomach growling. And like, man, you sound so hungry. But here's the thing that I do get to experience that's really precious, is the journey that John and Tim go through. And the real hang-ups that you feel John has, I experience myself. Actually, if you're to look at me sometimes, I'm just like, please ask this question and then he asks it. And I just like, with them, what everyone's probably doing on the receiving end. The only difference is, I'm doing a real time. Gone are the days when the podcast was managed by just one or two people. We've made some changes that we believe improved the content and its presentation, which means behind the scenes, there's a lot that happens. And it goes a little something like this. Once an episode is recorded, John performs a high level content edit of the audio, where he cuts down and rearranges his conversation with Tim for greater clarity. Then, a script is written and recorded for the episode's opening summary and closing credits. After that, Tyler just a fine tune edit and mix of the audio. And then the episode moves down the production pipeline. Show notes are written, episode is titled, and additional editorial content is created for the app. Audio gets transcribed, and that transcript gets edited and proofread. And all of this has to happen before the episode gets scheduled for release every single week. And that's just the version in English. From day one, Bible project has cared deeply about making our content accessible and as many languages as possible. We've been localizing our videos for years, but in 2021, a new idea surfaced. What if we tried to do that with the podcast too? Localizing a long, unscripted conversation is no small task, but our global team decided to give it a shot, starting with Spanish. I sat down with Anna and Angela from our global team to interview them about our efforts to localize the Bible project podcast into other languages. So Anna and Angela, I know who you are, but why don't you introduce yourself so our listeners can know who you are too? I'm Anna and I oversee all the content that we localize into Spanish. I am Angela and I help lead a handful of our localization projects. Right now, that's primarily Portuguese and French, and then helping wind down a few other projects currently. Great. So can one of you explain to me what localization is exactly and why we prefer that term at Bible project over a word like translation. So translation is simply when you're taking content from one language into another. Why we use localization is because it goes beyond translation. We're not just looking for word-for-word direct translation. We want to consider the cultures, the regions, and all the contexts and so they could be changing colors or visuals because we truly wanted to feel native to each language. So we were already doing this with our videos. Can you give me kind of the back story on how the global team decided, okay, we're going to try this with the podcast now. I think something we had discussed as a team was the abundance of resources that we have in English. That is not the case for lots of other languages. There is a great need for high quality biblical resources and I think we were curious to see if the podcast could fit that need. But we weren't even sure if we could localize it. So we decided, hey, let's just do a pilot, podcast episode, and let's see how it goes. We chose to do it in Spanish because Spanish is our second biggest audience behind our English audience. So how did that go? So there was a podcast studio down in California. They had worked on localization projects before. We also had another lead. This guy in Argentina, one of our co-workers knew we would potentially be his first client. We're thinking, okay, the professional studio is probably going to work out, but it's nice that we also have another lead somewhere else. So we worked with the professional studio and we tried to get some samples from them and it just wasn't happening. So we were kind of like, is this even possible? But that little studio in Argentina who had zero clients sent us in a sample and we were like, whoa, they kind of nailed it. And we felt like this is possible. And I actually told me a really cool story a while ago about Brian who was the owner of that studio in Argentina and then became one of the hosts of the Spanish podcast. Yeah, I found out later that Brian, a few months before we had reached out to him, had decided to quit all the work that he was doing and he really felt like the Lord was calling him to create the studio. And there were a few months where he didn't have any work and he was kind of frustrated. He was like, God, what am I doing? I feel like you've called me to do this. But he was praying faithfully every single day that the Lord would just bring work to the studio that would expand the kingdom. And now it's been four years and that studio has been the site of over 80 Spanish podcasts episodes. That's so awesome. Why did you decide to get voice actors to kind of reenact him and John's conversations instead of, I don't know, just sharing the information in some other way? I think while a lot of people enjoy listening to the podcast is kind of like the dynamic between Tim and John. And I think we were trying to capture that as much as possible. And Lucas is there in the second list. So I think we liked the idea that there was a little bit of personality that people could latch on to. Well, it sounds like it's been really impactful to do it that way. Angela, at what point did we decide it's time to localize the podcast beyond just Spanish? Okay, so last year, Global decided this is working really well with Spanish. And we have some really incredible and motivated teams, one of those being our Japanese team. And they came to us in 2023 and said, Hey, we see what Spanish is doing with the podcast. And we don't really have Christian podcasts in Japan. There's a huge need. We see people asking for it. Can we please go ahead and do this? And we said, Yeah, we trust you. And so we shared scripts with them, gave them a little bit of an overview of what Spanish was doing and said, run with it. Really interesting it to our coordinator there, he show. And they have created eight to 12 episodes over the last year and a half with plans to produce another eight over the next year. And they're going to continue to keep going. YouTube channel, you can't change the two or five minutes of the video. But our project podcast was number one on Japanese Spotify upon release. And there's just a hunger for the word of God in Japan. So the Spanish and Japanese podcasts are currently airing. Brazilian Portuguese is underway. But it sounds like it's a really challenging process. Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges with the podcast in terms of localization is so many of the stories that Tim and John tell are unique to Portland, Oregon, Pacific Northwest. Which doesn't always translate well to other cultures. And so a lot of times we have to get creative with how should we localize that so that it resonates for a Latin American audience or a Japanese audience. Yeah, it even goes beyond the stories they tell to different American idioms or taglines. For example, in Evan and Earth episode, there was like a United Airlines tagline. Yeah, this through the skies. Where do I feel like the skies appears in plural? Is that in the is it the friendly skies? The friendly skies. That's what I'm thinking of. Who's that? Who's the friendly skies? I don't know. And our Brazilian Portuguese translators were like united as in a big airline here. That's not what we're using. And they had to adapt it to a different airline so that it was really. Yeah, there's also was an interesting one where they spend a really long time talking about the can be a meant do not murder and how the actual translation should be do not kill. And in Spanish, they primarily have do not kill in their translations. And so it's like, yeah, what do we do with that? Keeps you on your toes? Do you never know what things are going to come out? Totally. How much do you guys get to witness the impact of this amount of effort on people? Yeah, it has given us a lot. And I feel like learning more about the Bible through translation of these scripts has been so impactful on my walk with the Lord. And I think that there's a really cool impact it's having on the people who are creating the work. Yeah, it's kind of fun to say part of my job is to listen to Bible project podcast episodes. Yeah, which is cool. Hearing in an angel, a talk about the podcast being localized into other languages is a powerful reminder that this community of people reading the Bible together stretches far beyond this room where we record. We've talked a lot about what goes into making the podcast. But honestly, the best part has always been hearing what it means to you. When I listen to the podcast, I'm usually walking the dog or in the car on long journeys. I listen to it when I'm walking, sometimes when cooking. I listen to the podcast, mowing my lawn, and I go to sleep by it. I drop my daughter off at high school and the minute she gets out of the car and we turn off her music, I turn on the podcast and I drive home and then once I get home, I hop on the treadmill and I walk and listen to the podcast. From kitchen tables to morning commutes to background banter while you go about your routine, you've allowed us to be a small part of your days and we couldn't be more honored. Your stories remind us of the very thing we've been talking about all along, how the Bible keeps shaping real lives. My wife and I, we have eight kids and 16 grandkits. Get into the Bible, it was always be a better person than I think. What really happened to the Bible project is that it was more defined of what a being an image of God would be and how we can get deeper into the Bible and find out that wisdom underneath. I've been a Christian my whole life and went to Bible school and I love it but I realized that I don't know how to go tell someone on a street why they should follow Jesus and so it just led me into this really cool two years of being like what is the gospel and that led me to understanding Genesis 1 through 11. I didn't grow up Christian so a lot of it was new to me and I can now listen to the sermons that are dense. It's like a door that opens another door into more abundance of resources. Stories like these are humbling. They remind us we're not just dealing with ideas here. As a community, we get to participate in how the story of the Bible keeps transforming people right in the middle of their own stories. So 10 years and 500 episodes later, here we are. The closet under the stairs has been replaced by a fully outfitted studio. John's one man show has grown into a full production team and every Wednesday morning just like in the early days. The mics turn on and the conversation continues. Some things never change. So John and Tim, what does it like for you to think about how the podcast has grown in the last 10 years and how many people are listening now? I think that as a matter of principle, it's not something I focus on. I think one because I would get nervous and start to feel overwhelmed and pressure or something. It's just better not to. And then I can shift into a posture of just pure delight and surprise where it's just like what a gift of God that this thing that we would do even if a microphone wasn't on. We would want to be doing this to make the stuff we want to make in the world and it ends up being really helpful for other people, which is astounding to me. But how cool is that? That's how I feel. Yeah. In some sense, the thing that I notice change is just how our equipment's gotten better and we have more help. That's the thing I've noticed. Yeah. But from the beginning till now, it's just sitting down and talking to each other. And that hasn't changed. And we don't see how many people are going to listen. So it is only time that we feel that as if we ever have gone somewhere and decided, let's do a live podcast. What have we done that like three times? Two live podcasts that I remember. Yeah. One down in our office. Oh, for the hundredth episode. Oh, yeah. We did a gathering and a live conversation. Okay. Yeah. And then after that, we did it in Dallas. And that was fun. That was super fun. Yeah. That's it. But at that moment, you see people out there and they're responding to real time. They're like, Oh, this is a thing. People are listening. To be clear, you're not saying that you don't care that people are listening. You're saying you'd be having these conversations the same way whether anyone was listening or not. Yes. If the mic wasn't on, we would have to have these conversations. And we do have more conversations without the mic on. We often go out to lunch after a morning of podcasting. And we just keep talking. Yeah. When I try and process the amount of people I'm astounded, I'd still am astounded. Do you know the numbers right now? Nope. Or would you guess? I have no idea. I always forget when people ask me, oh gosh, I forget. And then I feel weird because I'll take a stab and I'd be like, okay, that could be off by 10 X. I don't know. I can't remember. But, um, yeah, that's my experience, too. Yeah. So on one level, the experience of making the podcast from what we contribute is the same, yeah, except at cool room and great mics. You know, I really love that it's never been about the numbers for you guys. It makes me think of something that our CEO Steve says a lot, which is every number is a person and every person has a story. And it's those stories that keep us coming back to these conversations over and over again. Yeah. Well, one thing we've talked more and more about is the goal of all of this media is to help people feel comfortable enough to just read the Bible in community with others. And so I get excited about staying in a passage and working maybe even through a scroll passage by passage and giving example what it looks like to read the Bible in community. But then that can be then a launching point for people to go, cool, I'm going to take these ideas this dialogue and I'm going to continue it with whoever my family, my group of friends. And for it to become more normal for people to open up a passage, have a dialogue, meditate on it, find hyperlinks, experience God's wisdom in it, and to feel afterwards like charged like, whoa, we just encountered something really cool. Yeah. I still remember vividly the first time after skateboarding with the group of friends one night, we went to this late night coffee shop. We were all in Bible college together. And so somebody had an assignment or something about Galatians. So we're just like, oh, sweet, let's get out and just all read it together. So we did. And then we have this fantastic conversation. And that was my first experience of like a communal reading that had all of this cool conversation afterwards. And I was like, that would not have happened if I just sat down to read it by myself. So I definitely feel like that's what we are, we're a small Bible reading community. And if we can model that and then invite people along, that's for the win. I also feel like if that is something that can help people learn how to read the Bible on its own terms, get produces humans who are encountering God's wisdom through Scripture in community. And that it actually makes people in the more faithful images of God. And I hope it produces good in the world through people loving their neighbor. But the way that I get there is talking about the Bible with John Collins for 500 hours. Yeah. Which now, cool is that that gets to be the way that we make that kind of contribution. So what's next for the podcast? Yeah. Mostly what we've done is explored big ideas through the storyline of the Bible themes. We did the How to Read the Bible series that we broke up into like mini series scattered throughout the years. Yeah. We did almost a year's worth of walking through the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. We also did a year of Cermin on the Mount. Other than that, we've just traced themes throughout the Bible. So I love tracing themes through the Bible. But the way that I actually do my work in studying the Bible is to just pick a certain scroll or a book and just read and reread and reread and get it all uploaded in my mind and see how all the parts fixed together. And we haven't really walked through a book of the Bible like that in long form detail. I'd like to experiment with that in the future of the podcast with you. Yeah. So I share that with you and you were excited about that. I think it'd be really fun. We won't finish the whole Bible before we die or retire, but we could get through a lot of it. Yeah. So I not try. Guys, as we wrap up, I have just one more question for you and it's this. What continues to inspire you about these conversations? There's one podcast in particular. Remember finding about five years ago and it was a guy who was an Evangelical Christian who became an atheist and then kind of found his way back to Jesus. And there was something about his podcast. When I started listening to it, I was like, you made this for me. And some degree, that's why I'm doing this is because I'm trying to create the thing I want. And when I think of someone out there that I don't know spinning this up for the first time and then having that feeling like, oh, they're having that conversation I wanted. They made this for me. That just gives me so much joy to think that there's people having that experience that I've had. Yeah. I think for me, what I experience in making the podcast is somehow these conversations are unique for me. And I regularly am forced to reach a level of clarity of things that I think, but I rarely have a chance to say it out loud and wordsmith it. So a couple times I've gone back and listened to series from like four or five years ago that I've forgotten most of it. Like I'm learning from our past. So as if it's not ourselves, it's really strange. I've had that too. So I have that experience a lot now. And I'm just so grateful. And I don't have another venue in my life where I'm being forced to be in the moment, talking, working it out real time without a script. Somehow us doing that is beneficial to other people. And I just can't believe that. I'm still astounded. But I'm grateful for it. And cheers. Cheers to that. God's very generous to have given us the chance to do this. The conversation Jon and Tim started in a closet under the stairs never ended. It just grew. Hey, we're starting a new theme study. What adventure awaits us? Yeah, we've been learning rigorously about these texts for two decades now. And we are still able to have this robust conversation. Yeah. Ten years, 500 episodes, and an ever-expanding community of voices and languages that have drawn us deeper into the story of scripture. Hi, my name is Victoria and I'm from Israel. Hi, my name is Sean and I'm from Austin, Texas. Hi, my name is Ramon and I'm from Ukraine. Hi, my name is Alva and I'm from Romania. Thank you for listening, for learning, and for being part of this journey. This conversation has grown because of you. I first heard about the Bible project when I just came to Christ. I use Bible project for podcasts, videos, and the classroom. My favorite thing about the Bible project is it slowly explains Bible stories to my grandchildren. And as we look ahead, our hope is the same as it's always been. That together, we'd keep discovering the Bible as one unified story that leads to Jesus. We believe the Bible is the unified story that leads to Jesus. That leads to Jesus. That leads to Jesus. Here's to the next 10 years and the story's still unfolding. Thank you for being a part of this with us. Production of today's episode is by producer John Collins. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer who edited today's episode and provided the sound design and mix. Our managing producer is Cooper Peltz. J.B. Whitty does our show notes and I served as the creative producer and host. The Bible project theme song is by Tents, special links to all those interviewed, John Collins, Tim McE, Robert Perez, Dan Gummel, Tyler Bailey, Anna Whitech, Angela Kider, and our audience members Matthew, David, Emily, and Aasha. Bible project is a crowd-funded project and we exist to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. You can find all 500 plus Bible project podcast episodes on all streaming platforms as well as on our website alongside tons of other resources that are all free for you to use because they've been paid for by generous people just like you. Thanks for joining us today. See you next time.