2021 Reflections

by Krisan Marotta | Jan 18, 2022 | News, Reflections

I spent 2021 in the Gospel of Matthew chapters 1-7. Teaching through the Sermon on the Mount has long been on my bucket list of passages to teach and I’m grateful to have reached that goal.

If it were actually possible to compile a list of the “Bible’s Greatest Hits,” I’d put the Sermon on the Mount on it. After all, in this sermon the Messiah himself answers the question: “who will find eternal life?” That’s pretty important to understand.

What surprised me is how much time we spent in the Old Testament in order to understand Matthew.

Other highlights for me included: 1) finally getting a handle on the “fulfillment passages” from chapters 1-2; and 2) teaching through the temptations of Jesus without a time limit. While I’ve taught the temptations many times, I’ve always had to pare down discussion of the Old Testament passages Jesus quotes due to time constraints.

I’m still working through my file cabinets of study notes trying to turn them into resource pages on this website. But with life returning to some sense of pre-COVID normal and the time I spent on Matthew, there wasn’t as much time leftover to spend on resources this year.

Go to top

2021 Highlights

Created 35 podcasts on the Gospel of Matthew plus 3 by Dr. Erika Moore.
Upgraded the podcast feed from Google’s defunct Feedburner. Sadly, I lost many of my statistics in the process. But the podcast is now more accessible and easier to produce.
Organized the podcast into seasons. (Matthew is season 18).
Added 60 resource pages including a new section on Greek word studies.

Go to top

5 “most” podcasts

The 5 most downloaded podcasts published in 2021:

5 most downloaded podcasts during 2021:

5+5 (10) most downloaded podcasts overall:

Go to top

Who Listened?

While about 60% of WitW listeners live in the United states, we had listeners in 97 other countries in 2021. Here are the top 10 countries after the United States: