Imagine experiencing your favorite podcast while on vacation. All of the knowledge, humor, and perspective – but without using your device’s data or battery. For Tim Ross, host of “The Basement” podcast, a faith-based show where people of any religious background can come on and discuss life in an unfiltered way.
Now, he’s bringing “The Basement” to book form in Welcome to the Basement, set to release on Feb. 27 and available for pre-order online.
Recently, Ross stopped by rolling out to discuss the book, his podcast, and his ministry.
What can people expect from this book transforming a podcast into a reading experience?
It’s giving people the opportunity to have “The Basement” in their pants. To be able to go line-for-line, word-for-word, and really process and digest what philosophy is all about. Because that’s what “The Basement” is.
“The Basement” is a philosophy. A state of mind, it’s a way of living. This book is taking chapter by chapter so that you can have those principles and be able to walk them out.
When you stepped down as a senior pastor at the end of 2022, you said it’d be nice to have 3,000 subscribers by the end of 2023. You’re now sitting at over 300,000 within a year of starting the show. What is that like?
Yeah, so that was not planned. None of that was planned. I was so shocked that after three and a half weeks, we had 25,000 subscribers. When you think you’re gonna have 3,000 in 18 months, and you wind up with 25,000 in three-and-a-half weeks, you’re like, “I don’t know what I’m doing at all.”
People were calling me like, “What’s your marketing?” And, “You guys are geniuses.” And I was like, “I promise you we’re not. We’re just trying to be obedient to what we feel like we’re supposed to be doing.”
The first thing that went viral was a clip I said on marriage. I was just talking about how marriages work, and Mrs. Tina Knowles put out that clip, and it was a wrap. So that one was the reverse of any clips that have gone viral. But that was the very first one and it was talking about traditional marriage being work.
What’s the difference between preparing a sermon and preparing a podcast?
That’s a great question.
Sermon prep is about speaking from the back row all the way up to the front. This has got to be a 30 to 40-minute message for me that has enough for the first four rows, who are super churchy, and the cat on the back row scrolling through Instagram like, “Man, when is this over? I just came with my family. I’m trying to date this girl; she came to church, and I’m hoping to hook up with her later.” For me, that preparation is different from sitting down, and holding a space with a person where I can have a pod. A pod is as long as four hours and six minutes. So, to be able to answer questions–something you don’t get to do when you preach a sermon. A sermon is a monologue. It’s not a discussion; it’s not a conversation, so to be able to sit down and wrestle through certain things people might have questions about, I love that space more. I thrive in this space.
