This is the 100^th episode of CS.

Because this is something of a milestone for the podcast, we’re taking a break from our usual episodic fare for something different.

For those listeners who subscribe only for the historical narrative, you’ll want to skip this one altogether because we won’t be looking at Church History at all in this episode. This Century mark for CS will be about the podcast itself.

I need to make comment at this point. This recording is a revision of an original made some years ago. While the content is essentially the same, the original series used a sound bed under the material I decided after a while I didn’t like. There was also a lot of time-sensitive material and news in the original that no longer applied. So I began this revision of the podcast, cutting out all that.

I thought about just cutting this episode altogether but remembered how many listeners said they appreciated the original.

At one point on the CS Facebook page, I posted a question, asking who’d be interested in an episode that was a personal look at CS & the host. There were enough positive replies that made doing it reasonable.

I remember listening to my first podcast years ago now; Mike Duncan’s stellar podcast, The History of Rome. About a dozen episodes in, I began to look for Duncan’s cryptic personal comments, rare as they were. Then as the series progressed, he’d share a few more details about himself. Though the content on Rome was sterling, it was those personal comments & his dry wit that kept me interested à & in an odd way, seemed to personalize the information so that it wasn’t just a dry academic pursuit. I suppose some prefer the personal element of a podcast be left out. But I suspect that’s the exception rather than the rule.

So, this being a 100^th episode of CS, I thought we’d do a kind of history of Communio Sanctorum-History of the Christian Church.

As I just said, my introduction to the amazing world of podcasting was listening to The History of Rome by Mike Duncan. I’m a bit of a nut for all things Roman and found his podcast on iTunes without much of a search. I even have a full set of Roman armor in my office. No – I do not dress up and do re-enactments.

When I finished listening to The History of Rome, I wanted more, so I subscribed to Lars Brownworth’s Twelve Byzantine Emperors; another outstanding podcast. Next I decided to find something similar to Duncan’s podcast on Church History. By similar, I mean, short episodes of about 15 to 20 mins in length. That had proven perfect for listening while working out, doing yardwork, going for a run and so on. But my search for something in the Church History genre was unfruitful. What I found were long lectures delivered in college & seminary classrooms. And while the content was, I’m sure, solid, they tended to be rather dry and tedious.

So, drawing inspiration from Duncan, who really did sound like a guy with a computer, a mic, and a love for his subject, I decided to give it a shot and do my own church history podcast. What it meant was that I was going to need to do what Duncan had done, and that was – read a lot and seek to cull the material from trusted sources.

So, I got started and over the next couple years churned out a hundred episodes. It didn’t take long before I realized the early episodes were of poor audio quality. And as the narrative progressed, the timeline got jumbled and confused. That was probably inevitable for a noob like myself since the history of Christianity means following the Faith where ever it went. But I grew increasingly dissatisfied with the number of times the narrative jumped around. So I decided to stop at a hundred episodes and go back to redo the series to that point. As we slowed down a bit, the first version’s about 80 episodes became version 2’s 100. Not including a dozen episodes in the first version on the difference the Christian faith has made in World History & Modern Civilization. Those episodes became the upcoming “The Change” series.

Some subscribers asked how far we’ll go in CS. The plan is to track Church History up to the dawn of the 21^st C. Then I’d like to go back and do some far more in-depth studies in certain moments, places, trends, and figures in the History of the Faith. These will be spotlight episodes that will drill down into a lot more depth on key chapters in the story.

Here’s a little about your host for CS.

As of this recording in February of 2021, I’m 65, blissfully married to Lynn for 41 years. We have 3 adult children and 4 grandchildren.

My favorite era of history is the Roman Era, everything from the later Republic through Constantine. I’ve read a few dozen books on the subject and as I said, have a complete set of Roman armor. I once wore it while presenting the story of the resurrection from the perspective of the Centurion assigned the task of guarding Jesus’ tomb.

I love backpacking in the Sierra Nevada mountains of CA, word-working in the garage, vacationing in Maui, working out at the gym, and reading in the backyard under the usually clear Southern CA skies.

I’m lead pastor at Calvary Chapel in Oxnard, CA, a church I founded in 1982 along with David Guzik. Some of you may know David. He’s one of the finest Bible expositors on the planet. His Enduring Word online commentaries are featured in the Blue Letter Bible. Hundreds of thousands of pastors & Bible teachers all over the world refer to David’s commentaries in their sermon and study preparation. Look it up at EnduringWord.com.

David and I co-pastored CC for 6 years, then he and his wife planted a CC church in a nearby community. They then moved to Siegen, German where they lead a Bible college for several years, returned to Santa Barbara to lead the CC there for several years. David now leads the Enduring Word ministry full-time.

Calvary Chapel Oxnard, where I serve as lead pastor, is part of a voluntary association of like-minded churches that began in the late 60’s and the counter-cultural hippie movement in Southern California. Calvary Chapel is technically a non-denominational movement that unites churches around a core set of doctrinal and practical distinctives. If you’re interested, you can find us at calvaryoxnard.org.

Our fellowship has about 1200 adults and a swarm of children. We have 3 Sunday services and a mid-week Bible study. The hallmark of CC is that we teach expositionally through the entire Bible, verse by verse. We’re now on our 5^th journey through. The pattern of teaching we follow is that I teach 1 to as many as 5 chs on Wednesday night, then on Sunday, we take a closer look at just a few verses from that same passage in more of a sermon format. We cover 2 OT books, then a NT book, then rotate back to the OT. And go through the entire Bible that way.

For those interested in my education, I have a Masters in Ministry & 1 in Biblical Studies. My education in the realm of church history is, as I’ve shared in previous episodes, not something gleaned from formal education in a classroom. It’s born from a lot of reading and personal study. I’ve loved history since I was in junior high.

The people of CCO know my passion for history because I use it a lot in teaching.

Now for some more technical details that no one but maybe other podcasters, or those considering podcasting will find interesting. I’ll keep this brief so as not to boor the bejeebers out of 99% of you.

I record in my office at church using a Blue Snowball USB microphone. The software is Audacity on a PC running Windows 10.

I write the script, usually a little more than 4 pgs of 12 point Font means about a 15 min episode. Then I record into Audacity, go back and edit out the gaffs, then run a Compressor and Normalize effect. Once that’s done, I slap on the intro & outro. Export it as an MP3, then post it to the site.

Some time back Lem Dees, a subscriber who’d become a friend, told me he does professional voice work and offered to assist any way he could. I asked him to record an intro and outro, which he graciously did. Thanks, Lem!

The sanctorum.us website is hosted at Win at Web where webmaster Dade Ronan does an absolutely stellar job helping with all the tech stuff that I’m clueless about. Thanks, Dade!

If you need a solid WordPress based web-service, check out Win At Web.com

CS is a member of the History Podcasters Network. There are some excellent podcasts on the Network & I encourage anyone who loves history to check it out.

CS is being translated into Spanish by Roberto Aguayo, pastor of CC Merida Centro. Many thanks to Roberto for the excellent job he’s doing.

At its peak, when CS was posting regularly, we had about 45k subscribers. Not shabby for such an amateur effort. That’s dropped way off now since no new content’s been posted for a while.

While CS began as a labor of love and was able to run without a request for support, things changed a while back when I had to move to a paid site. So we started a donation feature. All the content is still free to subscribers, but donations do help defray the cost of the service.

Okay. Back to our regular fare next time.