Robert's Blog

seven years ago i became involved in my first youth oriented worship service. this was when i was in carthage, missouri and i really didn’t want to do it at the time. it was suggested by a church member who i respected and i did it mainly just because he felt strongly about it. we structured the service as a worship service as just another worship service only with a slightly different flavor. thus it was for everyone rather than just for teens. it was a different approach to worship rather than a truly alternative youth only worship service. of course, this post is not really about a discussion concerning separate youth worship services (which i’m not really a fan of).

nope this post is about a graduation announcement that i received this week. one of my teens from carthage is graduating college in may. he sent me a graduation announcement and on the bottom wrote “i thought you’d like to see what that kid you taught to run sound is up to these days. thanks for giving me a start. daniel” daniel was the first person i ever taught to run sound and a/v equipment. every sunday he was there helping set up and get ready for the service and then helping to tear it all down again after the service. for three years we worked together. turns out that the kid had a real passion for it and decided that it was the profession that he wanted to train for and follow. so in may daniel will be graduating with a degree in mass media studies for the purpose of working with a/v equipment.

who knew that running sound and powerpoint for that little service would start off a career?

i know that i’m not ahead of the technology curve for the rest of the world but apparently i am for baton rouge, louisiana (which isn’t saying much). nobody i have talked to about podcasting has had the slightest idea what it was. this includes our church computer guy. when i realized how easy podcasting was i thought it would be a great idea for the church worship services (which we put on the net in an mp3 format). i went to discuss the idea with rob (the computer guy) and he didn’t have the smallest idea of what i was talking about.

i’m not sure if this means that we are ahead of the curve for the area or if our church is simply that far behind the times.

i’m very excited over the fact that i’m going to get the chance to go to philadelphia in october and spend some time with the folks at the simple way. the simple way is a church that is based on the concept of community. many of the folks at the simple way live together at the church, work together, and all of them are consciously involved in each other’s live during the week. ever since i heard the story of the beginning of their church (it’s an incredible story that i will try to link to if i can find it) i’ve been wanting to spend some time getting to know the folks at the simple way.

so i have my wife’s consent (she wouldn’t call it “consent” but i do), i have the time on the church calendar, and i think i’ll have the money necessary to get to phillie. now all i have to do is actually be able to contact them. i’ve been calling the simple way for two weeks and a lady named rose has been calling back. we’ve played “phone tag” the entire time. what i have discovered through the various messages is that it should be no problem for me to go to the simple way.

UPDATE – i finally got through to the simple way and had a great but short conversation with justin. he thinks october should be good but needs to run it past the group. so i’m almost there. he did recommend that i read “schools for conversion: 12 marks of a new monasticism” which is put out by some friends of the simple way.

after a little bit of effort and allot of time waiting for the youth ministry domain name to kick back into gear i have finally been able to set us up with podcasting ability. here’s what i had to do:

• obviously we had to convert the audio from our youth service to an mp3 format and store it on our website.
• next, i set up a blogger site for the mp3 files so that i can use it’s atom feed. i set the “link” feature of the post to the url of the mp3 file and just for extra insurance i setup the text of the post as a link to the url of the mp3 file.
• third, i went to feed burner and used their smartcast feature (it’s under the “additional services” section of the feed you set up with feed burner). this gave me a new site feed url. this is the address that i have posted for people to subscribe too. the site feed for receiving the podcast is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ViewPodcast.

now we can podcast our worship services to anyone who wishes to automatically download the mp3 files of our weekly services. sometimes i love technology.

i’ve decided that i’m going to try and start podcasting the music and messages from the view, our youth worship service. this whole thing is new to me so it will take a little while to figure out the specifics of the whole thing. since, i just ordered an ipod today i figured i should start podcasting the services.

of course, i also have to wait for our youth ministry site to be up and running again. for some reason our domain name expired. the reason i say “for some reason” is because i remember and jessica, the youth administrative assistant, remembers sending the check for renewal of our domain name. anyhow i called the company last night and charged the renewal. they said it would take 24 hours for the domain name to kick back into gear.

article – the observer | international | “how many more must die before kofi quits?”

the u.n. sucks! the article puts it pretty clearly too. ironically this article is all about consistency also (like my previous post). the point of this article is that the u.n under kofi’s leadership has betrayed the very ideals that “the left” has stood for both in the u.s. and the u.k. yet “the left” has supported the u.n. against “the conservatives” because they view being against the conservatives as their primary role. they abandon their ideals because of politics and needing to be different from “the right.”

it would be nice if we could consistently support freedom in the world (even if it is proposed by the u.n.) and consistently fight evil in the world (even if it is in the u.n.).