An Important Update from Instruments of Worship | Ep. 36

It's been a great ride!  Thank you so much for listening!  Praise God for a great year! 

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Friends, my name is Casey Rinkenberger, and I am so excited to welcome you to the Instruments of Worship Podcast. This is a podcast dedicated to encouraging and equipping classical musicians to apply the name of Jesus with their instruments but also their lives. Alright, everybody, I am going to just get right into it today. I am here to tell you that this will be the last episode of the Instruments of Worship podcast. I have thought and prayed about the future of this podcast, and at this point, the Lord is just allowing it to come to an end. My goal was to continue with the podcast for at least a year and then see kind of where the Lord was leading. And it seems as if the Lord is leading elsewhere for me right now. So this is just an episode to kind of wrap things up. First of all, I want to thank you so much for lending your ears to the podcast this year. I hope that you've been built up, equipped, and encouraged to live for Jesus in the classical music world. That's been my hope all along. And it just wouldn't have even been worth doing if you guys did not take the time to listen. So thank you so much, and I hope you found it to be just a beneficial use of your time. I am also just so thankful for all that I've learned by pursuing this passion project this past year. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I learned more spearheading this podcast than any of y'all did listening, that is for sure. It has allowed me to take a deep dive into how we can worship the Lord in the classical music world as Christian musicians. And I loved that simple yet deep and specific goal. At the beginning of this year, the idea to start a podcast for Christian classical musicians was a passion of mine and a way to just be faithful, to invest and show off Jesus in the sphere that I found myself in. As I implied before though, I'm walking away from this year of doing the podcast definitely changed. The Lord used this year to mold my heart, and I'm so thankful for that. To testify of the Lord's work, he grew my heart of worship, he lessened my love for self and the prestige that music brings, and he equipped me with even more love, boldness, and passion to be a light for Jesus in my relationships with lost musicians and then just in my presence in the lost classical music world as a whole. And yes, I want to teach them the valuable skill of playing the violin and to do it well and do it excellently. But above all else, I just want to invest in my relationship with them so that they may see Christ through me, that they would know the love of Jesus through our lessons. And those are just a few ways that the Lord molded my heart and changed my thinking over this past year. The podcast took a lot of time to prepare, record, edit, upload, and plan each episode, but it was just time so well spent as it gave me set apart time to study God's word, hear from past and current Christians in the fight, learn from super solid Christians in the classical music world when I interviewed them, and it felt like a way to worship the Lord in and of itself, just by trying to exalt him through the podcast and encouraging others to do so too. It gave me a platform to be bold and point people towards Jesus just through the Lord equipping me. And the truth is that the classical music world is still in just such great need for the gospel and people who are willing to live for Jesus in that world. Our call is to be faithful exactly where the Lord has placed us because it's on purpose with a purpose. So I hope that the 35 episodes that went out are tools that equip and encourage us to continue to be in the fight and living for Jesus in all things. I have no doubt that the Lord will use all that I've learned in this season and all the ways that He changed and grew me for His kingdom purposes now and even into the future. You never know how what you're investing in now is God growing you for something later on. I don't fully know what that will be, but I'm praying about it and know the Lord will make it known in his perfect timing. But I thought it would kind of be fun to give a few stats from the 2025 run of the Instruments of Worship Podcast. I always said when I was starting that even if the podcast encouraged or helped or impacted just one person, it was still worth it. And I'm thankful for any of the ways that the Lord used my just meager loaves and fishes for his great name. So I only have access to the numbers for when the podcast was downloaded onto a phone, not listened to. So keep that in mind moving forward. So as of January 7th of 2026, when I'm recording this, the Instruments of Worship podcast has been downloaded 1,683 times in 51 different countries, including 52 downloads in Singapore, 41 downloads in Japan, and 29 downloads in Colombia, and along with many others. But those were some of the top and most unique that were out of the US. And this next stat will answer the highly controversial question of whether Spotify or Apple Music is better. And the answer is it is Spotify. The podcast was downloaded 34% of the time on Spotify and 32% of the time on Apple Podcasts. It was a close race, but Spotify did pull ahead in the end. Other places people streamed were on Amazon Music, Amazon Echo, Overcast, and a lot of other obscure places I hadn't even heard of before. The top three most popular podcast episodes in order were first episode 16, which was Contemporary Worship, How Do We Join as Classical Musicians. In second place was Episode 29, which is Beyond the Awards, Lessons from Force Frank. And in third place, it was episode 5, titled Work and Worship. So feel free to check these episodes out if you miss them when they aired. They will still be up for the foreseeable future. Now I also posted the episodes with video on YouTube separately, and in total, the podcast got 952 views overall. We had 36 subscribers on YouTube, and the most popular video on YouTube was episode 22, titled The Sight and Sound Conservatory: Christ Centered Training in the Arts with Haley Swanson. At the end of 2025, I started a new venture selling music bags with Psalm 333 on the front, and I ended up selling 15 bags. So thank you so much for everyone who bought one. That's 15 more people walking into lost places, reminded of truth, and walking around with a physical representation of who they represent. So thank you again, everyone, for your investment into the Instruments of Worship podcast. It would not have been worth it if no one was willing to listen. So I want to leave you with a few final encouragements, some things that are just a continuation of things we've already talked about this year, but that are just kind of in my mind as we wrap up. First of all, wherever the Lord has placed you, like I said earlier, it is on purpose for purpose. So be faithful where you are and show the Lord off. Be bold and worship him. When Mordecai tells Esther in Esther 4 14, and who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this, he's reminding her of the Lord's hand, providentially placing her in that exact space and time, on purpose, according to his marvelous plan, his hand providing and protecting along the way, even in the ways that we can't see. And maybe we weren't put into royal positions like Esther, probably not. But wherever you are, whatever you're doing, even in the mundane, it is on purpose for purpose, for such a time as this, this exact time, right where you are. So take advantage of it, be faithful where you are and be bold for Christ. Romans 12, 1. This has been a favorite verse on the podcast for sure, says, Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship. So a living sacrifice. A sacrifice is going to include a level of costliness to self, a denying of self in some regard. It won't necessarily be easy or comfortable, but where could the Lord be desiring you to sacrifice for Him in your life to be a living sacrifice? Maybe it's your comfort, maybe it's your reputation or your popularity, who knows? But this, a life lived in service to Christ, this is worship. Worship is so much more than what we do on a Sunday morning. It is sacrificing all of your life to be lived out for Him. So in whatever you do, we as musicians do music, do it for the glory of God. That's another way to be a living sacrifice. Another popular verse this year was Colossians 3 23, which says, Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters. So out of love and adoration for him, we work hard. We do our best for the Lord to be glorified. I think if we could only get a sliver of the magnitude of the Lord's love for us, we wouldn't chase after anything else ever again. We would only ever seek his glory. So Ephesians 3, 17 B through 19 reminds us I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. So I just pray that we would know the width and length and height and depth of the love of Christ. It is infinite and it is more than we could ever imagine. So I just pray that this encourages us, that this softens our heart to the Lord and just makes us that much more in love with Him and that we would want to do everything to the best of our ability for the glory of the Lord and His glory alone. Another thing is certainly Psalms 33:3, it is an encouragement specific to us. Sing to him a new song, play skillfully with a joyful shout. So these are just a few of my closing thoughts, but we need Christians who are willing to be bold in the classical music circles. So prayerfully consider how the Lord might use you there, how he might use your unique place and position in time and space and your unique skills and abilities and personalities for his glory and for his name to be known. Throw off your fear of man. Proverbs twenty-nine twenty-five says, The fear of man will prove to be a snare. We talked about before that that is a trap. So throw off your fear of man, stop living for self, and seek to honor the Lord with your life, not yourself. He is what life is all about. And I hope that this podcast has helped remind you of that. I know it certainly encouraged me in that. These episodes will continue to be up on Spotify and YouTube, so feel free to continue to refer to them. I know that I will. And continue to send to friends and colleagues if you feel led, because the Lord can absolutely still use and speak through this podcast, even though we won't be making new episodes. So, thank you so much for listening, everybody, and praise God for a great year of the Instruments of Worship podcast.