Picture a teenager in a youth group, hand raised, lobbing a hard question at the priest up front. Maybe it’s about heaven. Maybe it’s about suffering, or science, or whether any of this is real. The priest answers. The room leans in. And something shifts.
That scene played out at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Purcellville, Virginia, for years before anyone thought to record it. But Reverend Tom Simmons remembered what those moments felt like, and eventually, he decided the conversation was too good to keep inside four walls.
How a Youth Group Tradition Became a Ministry Platform
The “Priest in the Hot Seat” concept wasn’t invented for the internet age. It grew out of simple, direct exchanges between a priest and curious people asking questions they’d carried around and hadn’t known where to take.
For Reverend Tom Simmons, reviving that spirit in podcast form was about reach. “Our move into the podcast format was inspired by our desire to reach a wider audience within our geographic area, to attract interest in St. Peter’s and spur people looking for ‘our kind of faith community’ to check us out in person,” he explained.
The mission at St. Peter’s has always been clear and direct: “Turning Strangers Into Friends into Followers of Jesus.” The podcast is the latest expression of that calling, tuned for an audience that consumes content on its own schedule.
What COVID Taught Reverend Tom Simmons About Digital Reach
The seeds of the podcast were planted, in an unlikely way, during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020.
When in-person classes vanished, Reverend Tom Simmons began recording basic Zoom sessions, converting them to video files and emailing them to the congregation. The response surprised everyone. A Sunday morning class between services might draw ten or fifteen people. The same material delivered by video regularly pulled double that audience.
“It’s just so much more convenient to watch a video at your leisure than to come early or stay late at church on Sunday for a class,” he reflected.
When the lockdowns ended, the video format was quietly dropped. It no longer felt necessary. But the data didn’t disappear from memory. When the idea for a polished podcast surfaced later, that earlier lesson came back with force.
This time, the team wasn’t going to let the format fade again.
Chris, Eduardo, and the Loaner Studio That Made It Real
Good ideas need the right people around them. Reverend Tom Simmons had the concept and the content. What he needed was someone who could translate that into a professional, sustainable production.
That person was Chris.
Chris brought both vision and technical expertise to the project. He suggested the podcast’s name and helped shape its audience focus. Because media production is his professional work, he also had access to equipment and industry relationships. He brought in a coworker named Eduardo, whose skills in video and audio production proved immediately valuable.
The approach was methodical and smart. Rather than buying equipment blindly, Chris set up a loaner studio inside Reverend Tom Simmons’ office. The team tested everything, figured out what worked in the space, and only then purchased permanent gear. Chris also hunted down quality used camera equipment at significantly reduced prices.
“This saved us a lot of expensive trial and error,” Reverend Tom Simmons said. “It saved us a ton of time and money.”
The funding came together through a combination of community relationships and congregational support. The Robey Foundation contributed a $1,500 grant. That partnership carries real history. St. Peter’s and the Robeys have worked together for over a century, dating back to the Bell Tower project in 1922. A handful of church members stepped up with personal contributions, and the Vestry covered the remainder.
Eighteen Episodes In: The Questions People Are Actually Asking
Since launch, the podcast has covered territory that ranges from introductory to genuinely challenging. A partial list of topics gives a sense of how wide the tent is:
- What is Lent?
- What about demonic forces?
- Does Islam teach violence?
- Is the Pope a pacifist?
The episode on demonic forces drew the highest view count of any episode so far. The papal pacifism episode generated the most comments and discussion, arriving in the early days of the bombing campaign against Iran, when the question felt particularly timely.
The range of those questions is not accidental. It reflects something Reverend Tom Simmons has observed throughout his ministry: people carry genuine, sometimes unsettling questions about faith, and they rarely have a reliable place to take them.
“People have a lot of questions about the Christian faith,” he said. “And they often don’t know who to ask, or they don’t feel comfortable bringing up difficult questions.”
The “Ask Me Anything” format dissolves that hesitation. Leaving a question in a YouTube comment section is low-stakes. There’s no appointment to schedule, no awkward pause in a hallway conversation. And when a new episode arrives each week answering a different question, it reminds viewers that their own questions belong in the conversation too.
“Sometimes a lot of people can get stuck in a place when they have unanswered questions,” he noted. “It can be hard to move past those. So once we get the questions out on the table and thoughtfully engage with them, it stimulates deeper reflection and growth, closer engagement and deepening relationships.”
The Numbers Behind the Growth
Reverend Tom Simmons is candid about where the podcast stands and where it’s headed.
Since the launch, St. Peter’s YouTube channel has grown its subscriber base by 15 percent. During the COVID video period, episodes typically drew 40 to 50 views. Now, episodes regularly surpass 100 views, with some reaching several hundred depending on the subject matter.
Those numbers have arrived without any serious push on search optimization or algorithmic distribution. The team has been focused on production quality and process. A more deliberate distribution strategy, including social media targeting for the Purcellville geographic area and YouTube algorithm work, is planned for the fall.
The growth so far reflects something important: good content, produced consistently, finds its audience even without a full promotional apparatus behind it.
Where Reverend Tom Simmons Wants to Take It Next
The vision at St. Peter’s has never been about metrics for their own sake. The podcast exists in service of something older and more specific than follower counts.
Reverend Tom Simmons sees the format as a way to do at scale what Priest in the Hot Seat did in a room: open a door for people who are curious about faith, give them an honest answer, and invite them further in. “It would be great if this podcast brought our neighbors in western Loudoun into our fellowship at Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Purcellville,” he said.
He’s also thinking about families. A consistent thread in his ministry involves equipping people at home, not just on Sunday mornings. Marriages, parenting, the pull of outside forces on family life, all of it connects to the same core conviction: that faith lived well changes the way people treat the people closest to them. The podcast gives that conversation a wider berth.
For now, the loaner studio equipment has been replaced with purchased gear. The process has been refined. New episodes drop on a regular schedule. And the comment sections keep filling with questions.
“Turning strangers into friends into followers of Jesus” is the motto. Eighteen episodes in, the strangers are finding their way to the conversation.
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