10 Years and 500 Episodes: The Story of BibleProject Podcast

Chapter 1: Intro

Lindsey sets up this special 500th episode, where we explore how the BibleProject Podcast came to be and how it continues to shape us and the community of Bible readers that’s grown over the past decade.

Chapter 2: Before The Mic

Tim and Jon reflect on how they began working together part-time, hashing out biblical books and themes, and writing video scripts. After slowly building a team of illustrators and animators, they released our first four videos: Heaven and Earth, Genesis 1-11, Genesis 12-50, and The Messiah. While making the third and fourth videos, Jon had the idea to start recording their conversations for a podcast.

Chapter 3: The Closet Under The Stairs

Jon and Tim recorded their first podcast series, The Law, in a tiny closet of the first BibleProject Portland office. In the early days, Jon did all the recording and editing himself, until he got some help from a fan and professional audio producer, Dan Gummel, who became the show’s first dedicated audio editor. Jon and Dan first worked together on our God and Money episode, which tells the story of Harvard Business School alumni John Cortinez and Greg Baumer.

Chapter 4: A Growing Audience And Team

As the podcast audience grew, Jon and Dan realized they needed more help. So around 2021, they hired a producer (Lindsey), managing producer (Cooper), and audio engineer and editor (Tyler).  These days, here’s how each episode comes to be. After recording an episode, Jon creates a high-level content edit of the audio, cutting and rearranging his conversation with Tim for greater clarity. A script is then written and recorded for the episode’s intro and closing credits. After that, Tyler creates a fine-tuned edit and mix of the audio. JB Witty writes the show notes and titles the episode. Then the audio is transcribed and edited, all before the episode is scheduled for release every single Monday.

Chapter 5: The Podcast In Other Languages

At BibleProject, we use the word “localization” instead of “translation” because it involves  cultural adaptation, taking into account cultures, regions, and social contexts, so that the resources feel native to each language. By 2021, BibleProject had been localizing our videos for years.Our Global team (including Anna Wyche and Angela Keuter) had the idea to experiment with localizing the podcast. They started with Spanish, our second-largest audience following English, hiring a studio and voice actors to recreate the podcast. Four years later, the Spanish podcast has localized over 80 episodes! In recent years, our Japanese team began publishing a localized Japanese podcast, and the Brazilian-Portuguese team is currently developing episodes.

Chapter 6: Hearing From Listeners, Plus Jon And Tim On What Motivates Them

Several listeners share how the podcast helps them grow in their understanding of the Bible and relationship with Jesus. Then Jon and Tim share their reflections on making the podcast now and the things that haven’t changed. They then discuss what motivates them to keep doing the podcast: modeling how to read the Bible in community, as its authors intended. In terms of what’s next for the show, Tim shares a desire to study through more books of the Bible, end to end. Finally, Jon and Tim share what inspires them to make the show. For Jon, it’s an ongoing drive to create a resource he would want to listen to and that serves people on the kind of troubled journey with the Bible he was once on. Tim loves the ongoing experience of working out complex ideas about the Bible in real time and finding clarity together.