Kirsten Waldschmidt, Podcast Preacher

Actor / designer / director / publicist / great human being Steve Waldschmidt departed from Pacific Theatre this summer (okay, scratch the part about "great human being") with the excuse that his wife Kirsten had landed her dream job, pastoring at a Covenant church in Strathmore, Alberta.

I guess he was telling the truth. We have corroborating evidence.

My wife's mom is also a Covenanter. (Sounds vaguely cult-like, doesn't it? Like an evangelical version of the Freemasons or something, people meeting under cover of night to sign death pacts in blood, or possibly grape juice. Actually, they're just a bunch of nice Swedes and Germans who used to be Lutherans, only they wanted to have Bible studies in their living rooms and apparently that was a problem. Something like that. Over such controversies are schisms spawned.) Anyhow, Grandma Eunice sent us a copy of the latest Covenant Companion, partly because there's a regular column on film and she knows her son-in-law is kind of obsessed, and partly because there's an article that mentions... Kirsten Waldschmidt!

Heidi Griepp has a regular "Webwatch" column in the aforementioned periodical, and in August she focused on "Podcasting, Wi-Fi, and the Church: How to plug in to audio resources on the Web." She does a survey of Covenant churches that offer podcasts, and she leads off her list with Hope Community Covenant Church, in noplace other than Strathmore Alberta!

"Hope Community Covenant Church in Strathmore, Alberta, had my favorite sermon, from Kirsten Waldschmidt. The church has a well-designed and easy-to-explore website. You can find their podcast on their homepage and on iTunes."

Unfortunately, a quick trip to the HopeComCovenChu site indicates that they only archive the previous month's sermons, so the kudoed Kirstencast is not to be had. And while iTunes features a surfeit of Hope Community Church podcasts, and even one from a Hope Covenant Church, none appear to issue forth from Strathmore, or feature the dulcet tones of Ms Waldschmidt. Sigh. If you can't trust The Covenant Companion, who can you trust?

So maybe it's all a big fraud after all. Maybe Steve had other reasons for fleeing Pacific Theatre...