When my father began his career in Christian radio in 1970, the media world was relatively simple: There were radio stations, television stations, newspapers, and magazines. If you wanted to reach a large audience, you needed access to one of them.
For Christian ministries, radio and television became extraordinarily effective ways to extend their reach beyond the walls of a church. The catch was, broadcast time was finite, so someone at the radio station decided what was aired. The Christian Radio and Christian Television industries emerged, assets accumulated, and established players thrived.
Then, technology came along to upend it all—as if someone knocked over the Monopoly board at 2 a.m., sending all the little hotels and houses flying across the living room (just because I refused to sell him Park Place). The game changed.
Now, scarcity has been replaced by something approaching infinity.
What does that mean for the traditional media that have served audiences for more than a century?
When everyone controls the channel
It would be easy to look at the decline in traditional media consumption and conclude that Christian media is declining with it, but the evidence suggests something else.
Bottom of Form
Barna Research reports that six in ten American adults engage with some form of Christian media, and half do so weekly. Two-thirds consider Christian media valuable and trustworthy.
What’s changing isn’t necessarily the appetite for Christian content. It’s how people find and consume it, with technology, lifestyles/commutes (accelerated by the COVID pandemic), and the media industry’s fragmentation and subsequent consolidation, a process which has been repeated roughly every decade.
Edison Research reports that 81 percent of Americans age 12 and older now use online audio monthly and 76 percent do so weekly. Podcast consumption has reached record levels, with 58 percent of Americans consuming podcasts monthly.
Television is experiencing the same transformation. According to Nielsen, streaming accounted for nearly half—49.6 percent—of all television viewing in August 2026. YouTube alone accounted for a record 15.8 percent.
A person watching a sermon on YouTube through a 65-inch television in the living room is watching television. But a television station didn’t necessarily put it there.
Radio tells two different stories
Radio offers a particularly interesting example because Christian radio isn’t experiencing one future.
Christian music radio remains remarkably resilient. K-LOVE and Air1 have grown into enormous national networks. There is something about the format that still works beautifully in a linear environment. Listeners don’t necessarily want to select every song. They appreciate discovery, personalities, encouragement, and companionship.
Teaching-and-talk radio faces a different challenge.
For decades, scheduled radio programs provided listeners with access to pastors and Bible teachers they couldn’t otherwise hear. At 8:30 came one teacher. At 9:00 came another.
Today, the listener can hear either one at their convenience. Podcasts and on-demand audio didn’t eliminate Christian teaching. They removed the appointment. This brings more challenges and more opportunities for media channels and content creators.
Traditional media, viewed purely as a distribution system, increasingly resembles a melting ice cube. Radio and linear television continue to reach millions of people and will remain important for years to come. But just because the cube is still large, that doesn’t mean it isn’t melting.
The content isn’t necessarily disappearing with it. It’s flowing somewhere else.
Christian television is becoming Christian video
Christian television once meant broadcast stations, cable channels, and networks such as TBN. Those outlets still provide enormous value, particularly in reaching older audiences who remain heavy users of traditional television.
But Christian video no longer requires Christian television.
A church can livestream its Sunday service worldwide. A Bible teacher can post a 30-minute message on YouTube. A Christian personality can reach millions through short-form video without ever appearing on a conventional television network.
The barriers to distribution have largely collapsed. That creates an extraordinary opportunity. It also creates extraordinary competition.
Over the decades, Christian broadcasters competed against the other stations on the dial (or satellite). Today, a Bible teacher on YouTube competes for attention with Netflix, ESPN, TikTok, Spotify, a true-crime podcast, a text message from a friend, and virtually every other form of entertainment ever created.
The problem is no longer getting on the air. The problem is earning attention.
The successful Christian media organization of the future may not think of itself primarily as a radio network, television network, podcast company, or digital publisher. It will create content and relationships. The audience will decide how to receive them.
From scarcity to abundance
All of this sounds like good news for the church. And much of it is.
Never before have Christians had access to so much biblical teaching, worship music, theological discussion, and Christian commentary.
But abundance creates a different problem.
When distribution was scarce, someone else largely determined what reached us. Today, we can assemble our own collection of pastors, teachers, commentators, and influencers.
And increasingly, algorithms help us do it.
That gives new relevance to Paul’s warning to Timothy:
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions (2 Timothy 4:3)
Paul obviously wasn’t describing YouTube recommendations or podcast feeds. But he knew that we are remarkably good at finding voices that tell us what we already want to hear.
And now there is another voice entering the conversation.
Barna found in 2026 that nearly one-third of American adults consider spiritual advice from artificial intelligence as trustworthy as advice from a pastor. Among Gen Z and Millennials, the number rises to roughly two in five. Nearly half of practicing Christians say they would trust AI with their spiritual growth.
That represents something far more significant than another change in media technology.
For most of Christian media history, technology delivered the teacher. We are approaching a world in which technology can be the teacher.
The mission after the broadcast age
When my dad entered Christian broadcasting more than half a century ago, he couldn’t have imagined carrying thousands of sermons in his pocket, watching a church service from another continent on his television, or asking a computer to explain a difficult passage of Scripture.
The technology changed. The mission didn’t.
Christian media still has the opportunity to proclaim the gospel, teach truth, encourage believers, and reach people who might never walk through the doors of a church.
In fact, we have more tools to accomplish that mission than any generation of Christians before us. The question is whether we’ll use them, and that’s true for individual believers as well as for those in Christian media.
You don’t have to work for a radio station or a church to understand that taking advantage of the resources available to us to grow in our faith is part of what it means to be a good steward of God’s provision in our lives. If you regularly listen to podcasts, how many of them draw you closer to God? If you’re more of a music person, how often does it lead you to worship the Lord?
While not every piece of media has to—or even should be—overtly Christian, taking the time to ask the Holy Spirit if there are any opportunities we’re missing here is a helpful place to start.
Ultimately, the question isn’t whether Christian radio or Christian television will survive, but whether Christian media can carry the best things broadcasting created—trust, companionship, discovery, shared experience, and faithful teaching—into whatever comes next. These are resources that can benefit all of us, but only if they’re used well. To that end, for those of us on the other side of the screen or speaker, Paul’s warning to Timothy remains just as important today as it was in the first century.
We can now choose virtually any voice we want to hear.
We should choose carefully.
