Clergy Family Confidential

I spent the morning beating my head against a wall. In other words I was trying to teach myself how to use some new technology. And by “new” I mean something your average 10-year-old could do with his eyes tied behind his back. This particular head bashing revolved around podcasting.

At the Episcopal Communicators conference in Seattle last month I heard about a great new product for recording sermons. The Zoom H2 is a handy little recording device which I ordered and used for the first time on Sunday. The sound was great but unfortunately it doesn’t enhance the sermon’s content. The idea is to start podcasting my sermons. That way parishioners who can’t be in church on Sunday morning (because they’re out of town or ill – not because they’re sleeping in or going to soccer, of course) will be able to hear the sermon at their convenience. It’s also intended as a resource for our Sunday School teachers who bring the kids in for communion but miss the Liturgy of the Word.

Putting sermons on the web also means that anyone in the world can be inspired and enlightened by my preaching. I’m sure I’ll be overwhelmed with visits to my website and I’ll become the Joel Osteen of the Episcopal Church. The only thing stopping me? I still haven’t figured out how to make them available!

But I’m getting closer. I exported the file into an MP3 format and put it on my iTunes. So I can now listen to it on my iPod. The next time I go out for an 11 minute and 30 second run I’ll be able to listen to the sound of my own voice. Talk about hitting “The Wall.” Ugh.

Eventually I’ll figure out how to make the sermon accessible for download. It may take grabbing a teenager off the street and kidnapping him for the two minutes it would take for him to do it for me. Until then I’ll keep beating my head against the wall.

Ben recently received an assignment to do a presentation on a famous person using Power Point. He’s in third grade. I don’t know how to use Power Point. And I still associate it with middle management sales staff that travels around the country with their laptops giving presentations on the merits of corrugated plastic products.

I guess this is Exhibit A in the generation gap. The first computer I encountered was in middle school – it was named Huey and it was a giant contraption that used those manila punch cards. I’m not sure what it could do besides addition and subtraction and it seemed to me like the world’s largest calculator. I wasn’t impressed.

But, to be honest, this is why I decided to have kids in the first place: for at-home tech support. In a few years I won’t need to talk to someone in India. I’ll just need to roust a sleeping teenager (and, yes, I understand this is hard to do).

I’m always going to be behind the technology curve. Sure, I’m blogging now but this isn’t exactly a high tech site – no videos or a streaming “priest cam,” as compelling as that might be. And while I’ve never sent a text message, I am proud of the fact that I have never, ever used an emoticon in an email. If you ever see a smiley face in a message from me you’ll know the Kremlin has hacked into my email system.

Ben’s decided to do his presentation on George Lucas. Perhaps in a “galaxy far, far away” there’s a place where I’d be on the cutting edge of technology. I’m not holding my breath.