I recently received a letter from a polite and well-meaning person asking me to consider making my materials available as a podcast. Because I get requests like this on a regular basis, and can't spend the time writing a unique reply each time, I am writing this here.
You aren't the first to ask for more convenient forms of what I produce. These requests are hard to respond to, because there is so much that is not seen, some of which can be relayed in words but not in a way that doesn't offend a lot of people, and some of which can't be known by any who have not done the same.
So please give me grace in interpreting my best attempt to say this. I do not have an extra minute to devote to this ministry. I have a full-time (plus) day job earning my daily bread, which was recently made more difficult by the unjust theft of my prior career from malevolent people who knew what they were doing aided by a mob of ignorant people who did not. I have a family who has rights on my time. I have a small farm as well. In terms of discretionary time, I do not have hobbies, I do not hang out with friends. I watch a movie every once in a while with my wife or kids. Other than that, every moment of my free time is spent in God's explicit service, including several hours daily that most people use for sleep. I have no more time to possibly give, and it is all consummately focused on producing the things of greatest value. To create something that merely repackages what I've already said into something more convenient for others is to deprive those willing to make a greater sacrifice from what I could otherwise provide.
These truths were worthy of Jesus giving his eternal and mortal lives for, suffering the greatest pain possible in body and spirit to bring. While my sacrifices in piping them out is not comparable, and while I have not publicly described it anywhere near fully (nor could I), it is all a person can do, and I think what is evident in the sheer volume of what I have produced, let alone the content, let alone what I have shared about at least the time it takes, leaves me dumbfounded when people ask me to do something more so that they can access these things with even less work than it takes to merely read a book, let alone listen to an mp3, let alone hit play on youtube while washing the dishes. Certainly, these people are not those I am sent to minister to, for they can find all they are ready to receive in what is already available in so convenient of ways, and they will never reach up to what God offers to those who are willing to sacrifice all things to know him without being willing to do more to obtain it.
I suspect that in the future, my materials will be harder--not easier--to access. I do not expect there will be audio versions of any more of my books, and while I hope to make many more videos, none of them will be end-to-end treatments of any topic found in my books. They will just be intended to give easier-to-access reasons for investing the greater commitment to read the books, just as this blog has become.
-Rob