Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Trying Something New (at least new for us)

 For Christmas Courtney and Dave gave me a digital voice recorder to use for my classes at Duke. I just can't take notes as fast as I once could and I needed some help. If I could figure out how to cut out the class chatter and discussion, so that I only had the lecture recorded it would help. Hopefully I'll learn how to do that as time goes on.
 
It seemed that there should be some other way to use this cool little device. We decided that we would try to record the Sunday sermons on the recorder. Then I could take it home, download it onto the computer, and then burn it onto a CD to be taken to those homebound and in nursing homes or given those who missed that Sunday. Not that I think my sermons are so noteworthy as to be saved and passed on, but it seemed that it might be a good way to keep folks connected to the church and let them know we haven't forgotten about them.
  My first attempt resulted in a blank CD being given out. I am definitely not the most tech savvy person you will ever meet. But, I've figured out what I did wrong and the next CD will have two Sundays on it. We started with Sunday the 21st, the first Sunday of Lent. The one problem is distribution. By the time I take it home, download and makes the copies, its the next Sunday before we get them delivered. So we end up a week behind. We'll have to work on that. We're also not sure if everyone has a CD player at home, but that can be easily remedied.

I know larger churches have sound systems that can record the service and CD copiers that can turn out dozens of CDs in the time it takes me to make one copy. But, there is no reason a small church can't get the job done, too. Maybe in the future we'll update our sound system and include some of things that will help us be a bit more efficient. For now, what matters is that we keep our people connected to the church and that they know that they have not been forgotten.

1 comment:

Courtney @ splashing grace said...

cool! So, since you're using it for an additional purpose - it's like we gave you TWO gifts, huh?