The Ambush
About a year ago now my wife and I moved from South Florida to North East Ohio to the small town of Mantua. This change brought with it, even more, change than we could have ever imagined, most of that is for another blog. The change related to this blog is our church. We are Lutherans and so when we picked our house we did make sure that we had a nearby church to attend. While we loved the church we didn’t attend as often as we should have the first year or so and I believe because of this some of the members went out of their ways to make sure we got involved. This started by asking my wife to be on the council, which of course meant lots of meetings. In said meetings, the idea of recording our Christmas pageant came up which of course lead to my wife volunteering me to assist with. After the recording of the Christmas pageant, I was approached by another member and told this was something that they wanted to continue to do every week.
The Obsession
As I do with all things I started to endlessly research things. If you looked at my recent amazon lists you might think I have an obsession with cameras, but you would be wrong. No, my obsession can be much more closely tied to knowledge, or perhaps I am a perfectionist. Either way, the research started. Which camera should be purchased within their budget? What were their goals? They mentioned live streaming the sermon for people who could not make it to the service. That just didn’t feel right. It wasn’t enough. We should be live streaming full services and providing sermons alone as well. We should consider a larger target audience. It may not bring in new people to the church but there are other benefits to targeting more people. It is a way to bring more people to God even if not directly through our church and possibly a way to bring in church revenue. If we were going to live stream we needed even more equipment. That meant more research. For live streaming we would need a computer, we would need something to convert the camera signal, we would need the internet. As time passes I find my obsession with it growing.
The Fall
This past Sunday as I get ready for church I start thinking that we had talked about what we might purchase for the live stream but no one had told me if it happened. I quickly prepare as best I can in case they had purchased at least some of the things we required. I grab my camping backpack and shove in the laptop and some HDMI cables and a USB cable. As I am doing this I am thinking to myself this bag is terrible for this. It is way bigger than I need and I will have to pull my camping stuff out every time I need to use it. Oh well, its time for church. I get there and none of the things have been purchased yet. I am disappointed but understanding. Sometimes these types of things can take a considerable amount of time to get done in organizations like this and I half expected it. After church, I take my camera into my office and plug it into my computer to start working on loading the videos. On the way back out I trip over a black messenger bag. How it got there I will never know. A bag from the past that I had not seen in years that brings meaning to what I am doing. Luther’s Good News is reborn, but something different. Everything happens for a reason.