6 Podcasts to Encourage Your Faith Over Summer

With exams done, and NTE now just a memory, we’ve gathered a collection of podcasts to help encourage and grow your faith over the summer break.

Uni break is a season of incredible freedom! You’ve got time to work, rest, maybe even serve God on mission. But without the weekly rhythms of uni and your Christian student group, it can be all too easy to stagnate in your faith. We pray that these podcasts might help bridge that gap for you over summer, as you grow in love and faith in the Lord!

SALT – Conversations with Jenny & Amy

Brought to you by Sydney Missionary and Bible college, the SALT podcast takes you deeper into the lives of ‘ordinary’ people with heart-warming, challenging, and extraordinary gospel stories. Whether it’s missionaries and media makers, scientists and sports people, new agers, and new migrants – Salt is a chance to enter into the lives of people and discover heartwarming, sometime challenging and always extraordinary gospel stories.

Check out these episodes:

• Colin Buchanan – 10, 9, 8… God Is Great: One of Australia’s most beloved country music and kid’s worship composers.
• Janet Riley – Big Animals, A Bigger God – As a vet Janet loved the big animals, as a Christian she knew the loved of an even bigger God. And it was this love that took her from regional NSW, to Africa and on as she journeyed through cancer.
• Geoff Harper – Leviticus saved my Life – a self-effacing Irishman with a love for the last book of the Bible most Christians get around to reading. He grew up as an evangelical in a country steeped in Roman Catholicism. He was certain of one thing, his life would not be one spent in ministry
• Jules Cole – Fashionable Christianity – she’s spent 40 years as a fashion designer – teaching, working and writing about fashion. What does that mean from the perspective of the Christian Faith?

Heart of Mission

Produced by missionary organisation CMS, the Heat of Mission is a podcast about God’s amazing global mission. It’s packed with valuable global mission conversations you won’t find anywhere else!

• Tell a Better Story: Bible Story telling with David Williams – Stories are a staple part of childhood, they capture and grow our imaginations and bring joy and at times challenge our world view. The Bible is full of stories, and sharing these stories are important ways Missionaries using to help people meet Jesus. But it’s not just overseas – Bible storytelling has enormous potential to pique interest and curiosity for someone with a secular background.
• Gospel Hope in Japan’s Student Movement with Kellie Nicholas –  Hear stories from Kellie, who has served for 13 years on campus with university students in Japan. She shares about the joys and challenges of uni ministry in a place when many students have never seen a bible or heard of Jesus beyond vague Western Christmas references, even confusing him with Santa.
• Journeying together towards mission – Hear from a team of CMS mission mobilisers who chat with people considering missionary. Sharing stories of steps towards cross-cultural mission as well as barriers, concerns and what sort of people they are looking to go to the nations.

Evangelism in a Sceptical World

Sam Chan’s book Evangelism in a Sceptical World has been distilled down to six 20-minute podcast episodes, giving you a shortcut to exploring his great wisdom. Of course, reading the book is good too!

• Start here: Make your friends, their friends – about combining your Christian and non-Christian social circles.

Let’s Talk

A podcast for women from the Gospel Coalition Podcast network, where hosts Jackie Hill Perry, Melissa Kruger and Jasmine Holmes talk through a range of topics, and how to apply biblical wisdom to everyday life.

Check out episode 2 ‘Battling Discontentment’ – I recently listened to this and found it so encouraging, and would highly recommend.

CCEF Podcast: Where Life & Scripture Meet

How do the treasures of Scripture connect with the troubles of life? As Christians, we have the privilege and challenge of Exploring this question. Hosted by Alasdair Groves, this podcast considers how Scriptures meets us in day-to-day life covering topics such as emotions, rest, trauma, weak faith, insomnia and more.

Check out these great episodes

• Cultivating Gratitude: A Christian Perspective – including practical ways to foster gratitude in daily life, while emphasising the coexistence of gratitude and sorrow, the transformative power of gratitude, and the need for humility in recognising God’s gifts.
• Rest: Is our rest actually restful? This episode exposes the ways that chasing after rest can feel like a never-ending, unsatisfying cycle and discusses how viewing rest through a Christ-centred perspective frees us to embrace true rest in whatever capacity it might come.

Women of the Word Podcast

Not just for women, this is a really helpful podcast where Jen Wilkins steps through how to grow in reading the Bible for ourselves.

Season 1 – practical steps to reading the Bible including a great episode of overcoming barriers for reading the Bible

Season 2 – digs deeper with tools to how to read the Bible, including a great episode on How do I read Scripture in a Christ-centred way.

Season 3 – explores what it looks like to bring Bible literacy to different spaces in ministry, such as mentoring relationships, worship, and youth groups.

NTE Talks

Whether you want to re-listen to Richard Chin’s final NTE talks, or Pete Sorrenson’s inaugural talks as National Director, or even diving into the archive, the talks from NTE’s dating back to 2010 are available on Vimeo.

• NTE2025 – The Timely and Timeless Gospel
• NTE2024 – The Edge of Eternity (NTE in the Regions—why not listen to another region’s talks?)
• NTE2023 – The Christ we Proclaim

Don’t let your summer break be a time of stagnating faith, but rather dive into God’s word and spend time with him in the quiet.

Heading to Uni in 2026? Find your local campus group.