Serving the Church

This week I finished up some work on our Church web site. After the scare last week I am a bit more cautious. Sometimes being a tech has it pitfalls like thinking we are indeed infallible, then something comes along and knocks us off our feet making us realize we aren’t all that.

The Sermons are now on-line and downloadable as an MP3, or play through the web browser, or you can send them in podcast format. Not so sure most of the congregation understands podcasting as yet, but the option is there.

Last week I tried to upgrade Movable Type (MT) from 3.1.2 to 3.2 I followed the instructions by making a backup, then editing the files, then uploading. bam, site gone, admin panel gone, nothing but an error. This was bad as I just announced the Sermons in the newsletter and the weekly bulletin! People will be expecting Sermons, not a dead site, need to act fast. Spent unmentionable hours trying in vain to get the site repaired and running.

Tried to install my backup files but they kept failing on the upload. They would not overwrite the new files. Finally after banging my head against the wall for untold hours, I sent a note to the Hosting Company. They were wonderful and restored the site from an hour just before I broke it, thus saving all of my changes prior to the upgrade.

Lesson learned. God was trying to tell me to leave well enough alone, and brought me down a peg or two. Sometimes it’s easy to get elevated when you create something, and think that that something is in itself your talent. However the site can not be good for anything unless God makes it so, and uses it to move people, I think I lost sight of that.

Building and maintaining the Church web site is my way of serving the Church right now. Once upon a time I served as the Youth Minister, but today am called to the web. There are others more capable in the youth ministry and I fell compelled to get our message out there in the form of the Internet.

The message will only be as good as God allows it to be. The noise of the net is getting louder by the day, and it is not my goal to heard unless it is to be so. Blogging I believe has a limited life span, it will eventually be replaced with something else as it has been in the past, it will be in the future. I have watched the Internet grow from nothing to what it is today and the mutations it has gone through have been many.

I do believe it is a place that can be used by Christians to spread the word, but at the same time it is big responsibility. We can also warp that word unless we listen to what we are being called to do. Some people will only see us through our electronic connection and may never see the Church in action. This can be a dangerous thing or a true blessing.

For now I will continue to serve as called.