When I left MI, I had the distinct feeling that I wouldn't be doing anything "techie" for some time. This left me feeling a bit unnerved at the thought. I had been doing "techie" things the entire time I was in high school, what would I do with myself? There wouldn't be a website to update, presentations to create, or videos to edit.
Well, as it turns out, I'm not sure why I was worrying about not having something "techie" to do. St Mary's is very much not that technologically advanced, no projectors, a few computers, and well not much else. Besides this SMA (St Mary of the Angels) is a very spread out congregation (they come from all over) and thus, having say, a Bible study on Monday nights and Friday mornings, not many are able to come. So how do you get the Bible studies to the people who want to hear it without them having to come to you?
The answer: Podcasting. I had looked into podcasting a little bit in MI, but had never done any serious research on the matter. Now, that I am armed with a Mac and GarageBand I suddenly have the tools to do a podcast. After some research I found that the only real obstacles were bandwidth and server space (Don't worry I won't get into all of the technical stuff).
Granted this information then brought up the question: How to do this? I was soon trying to find the best option for SMA. Could we upgrade our own site to do it? Or would a podcast hosting site work better? This of course rose the question of: Which one?
After a week or so I finally came to the realization that if we were going to do this right, we needed to go with the company called LibSyn Pro. When I say "Pro" I mean professional. This is one of the podcast hosting sites so that equates to a price that as Bing Crosby said is, "Some where between ouch and bong." Well maybe not quite that, but that's what I've told the treasurer ;-)
So for this to fly with the church and the treasurer (a really penny pincher, a good quality in a treasurer I think) I was going to have to come up with a plan to finance this endeavor. Also when presenting this whole idea to the Vestry (the decision makers of the church) they asked that I present this idea at the Annual Meeting in January, granted when I presenting this to the Vestry it was fall. I of course still had the problem of financing. So after a suggestion from one of the parishioners I found myself presenting the idea to the Bishop. With the Bishops backing I could hopefully receive the financing help I needed for my project, by splitting the bill with the Dioceses (which he's in charge of, for those of you who are unfamiliar with this type of church). Well, getting the presentation to the Bishop ended up taking way longer than I had planned partly because I had every other event under the sun come up. I did finally get it to him but then the answer didn't come till the day before the Annual Meeting. I was of course eagerly awaiting his answer because this would be able to help "sell" the parishioners of SMA on this whole podcasting thing.
Well the answer I received wasn't what I expected. Don't get me wrong, the Bishop was for it. But here was the real clincher, he asked if I would present podcasting at the Synod. Synod for all you folks out there is the big Diocesan meeting. Yeah that is huge! I thought giving a presentation at the Annual Meeting was bad, dude this is like so much bigger! I was then presented with a choice. Hold off doing anything with all the recordings I had been doing for months and the up coming ones or do a small scale "test" and do one Bible study on a smaller podcast hosting site till the Synod. Which by the way is in September. (you realize that I will have been doing this whole podcasting thing for a year by that time...)
So with this in mind I made my presentation at the Annual Meeting. It went well, most of the people saw the opportunity it presented, so I found myself with the majority in favor (yeah there were a couple of nay sayers but some people just don't like change or technology but I had majority so there :-p) Also they wanted to the test run to see how this whole technology thing works. In fact I had someone front the money for the "low budget" test run right then. I think that is an accomplishment.
Within the next few weeks, SMA will be launching its first podcast. Be watching my blog cause I'll have a link so those of you who are interested can listen. Guess I should say what this Bible study is about shouldn't I? The Revelation to St John, this will be starting on February 8th so the podcast will be up a few days later. But I'll let you know when ;-)
