Noticings – March 24, 2021

NOTICINGS…

March 24,  2021

I guess we were due. In this extraordinary past 12 months where we have not been able to gather in-person for worship (or anything!) we have had to rely on technology – for just about everything. Well, as you probably know, last Sunday that technology failed us. I have dubbed it a tech-tastrophe! (You know how I love making up words!)

It began with some video problems. Mysteriously, two of the videos wouldn’t load into the worship program. That’s why we were a few minutes late starting. Frustrated, I resigned myself to having our scripture reading show upside down(!). Little did I know that was just the start. Realizing during announcements that there was no sound (well, apparently there was but it was so very quiet that only fancy speakers could pick it up) we tried to troubleshoot that problem. I would rather have been in on the jokes that were flying in the YouTube chat box. Y’all were having way more fun than me! J

We couldn’t solve the sound problem so we signed off, ready to record the service and upload it later in the day. Guess what? No sound on the recording either. So we set up a cell phone to record through the air – but that needed a power cord, and in the plugging in of the extension cord (the first one not working, of course) I accidentally unplugged the computer and we had to reboot and reconnect. The actual worship part went well – except that my guitar battery died – and we didn’t have that kind in the sound booth (of course), so I used my little guitar that luckily was in my study at the church. After worship I went to transfer the recording from the computer onto my thumb drive. Guess what? The 1.1 GB file was too big for my 1.0 GB thumb drive (of course). “I know,” I said, possessing just enough tech savvy to make me dangerous, “I’ll just edit the ends and make the file a bit smaller.” I did so – but incomprehensibly when I saved the file (waiting, and waiting) it was actually larger than I started. Seriously! So I had to come back later with a bigger thumb drive.

Next came the video editing. It went pretty smoothly (thank God!) – but it took a long time. Then the video ‘rendering’ process took forever, and the YouTube uploading, and in the end our worship – with boomy, echoey sound – was available for viewing – at 10:45 pm. Only missed our worship time by 12 hours! Yup, it was a complete tech-tastrophe!

As I said at the start – I guess we were due. We’ve had over 50 worship broadcasts since Covid torpedoed us and apart from one Sunday when a truck had physically knocked down an outside internet wire we have not lost a single service due to technology problems, until now. That is a great testimony to the faithfulness and passion of our Communications Team! That we all just went with the flow (and I didn’t get any nasty complaint emails) is a great testimony to how we trust that everyone at our church is doing the best they can, and if things go wrong, well, they just do. That’s life.

I don’t have any profound insight or noticing to offer about our tech-tastrophe. I just thought you might enjoy hearing the whole story. It has a happy ending – today I was at the church and tested the software out – and it worked. I heard sound! Now I can sleep tonight!

 Shalom,
Rev. Larry