Growing Church Tech

Angel Food Ministry

I'm sitting here in an Angel Food Ministry meeting at the church.  JCC is a distribution  site for this awesome ministry.  It has really impacted lives here in North Central West Virginia.  We had 839 orders last month, and we're growing each month.  If you haven't taken a look at this, send that link up to a leader in your church.  If anyone is out there that is doing this, I wonder what kind of cool tech tools you guys are using to help make your distribution day go smoother.  This past Saturday, we used our security cameras on a laptop to determine when to send people through the line.  I love to know how other churches are doing this so that I can better help Bev, our Angel Food WV Coordinator, make things go better.  If you're not involved in this, or have never heard of it, check it out!  Even if your church doesn't want to be a part, take a look for a church near you so that you can order your own food.

Archiving Digital Assets and Media

This is a big subject!  I've been trying to come up with a end-all do-all solution for archiving and backup for Jewel City Church for a long time.  I read a blog post by Jason a little while back about how much space Granger uses for all of their digital media.  Think of a number in your head...  Nope, higher... Granger expects to be using 50 TB in the next three years!  They're using about 20 TB right now.  We don't
have nearly the storage needs that they do, but we do need a system to all our storage madness.  We have video archives of every service which are compressed in the QuickTime format at 3200 Kbps which averages about 3 GB/month of songs plus more of preaching.  Its SD video, so it looks broadcast quality.  Our users store most of their documents on their own HDs right now.  I'd like to shift that load to a file server for better backup.  Right now we have a "shared drive" that everybody places files to share with other people.  We also have a media server that houses all the video that I mentioned earlier.  That server is pretty nifty because it has Darwin Streaming Server built in.  The only problem is that I haven't made an easy way to access all the videos on it.  We just use the folder hierarchy right now.  While that works, I think it'll get very clunky soon. 

Portacom Intercom Repairs & Problems

In case you're considering purchasing Portacom intercoms, don't.  I'm normally lenient toward manufacturers, but Anchor Audio has done a very poor job on these.  We have had to crack open and repair every one of our headsets.  Why don't we just have them repaired?  Anchor reps told me that repairing them would cost as much as buying a new headset!  At ~ $220 a pop, I don't want to spend that much.  Repairing them is no walk in the part though, I've had to open up piece after piece of these things and have seen the poor manufacturing first hand.  They have taken way too many shortcuts in the design and making of these headsets, while still charging outrageous prices.  I'd love to replace this system, and try again.  Let me know if you've had a good experience, but as for me, I have seen nothing good come from them.

In the near future I plan to post pictures and guides for what I did to repair these things just in case you're unfortunate to be using these same intercoms.

Church Media/IT Experiences

As a staffer of a growing church, I've had the opportunity to experience many questions and thoughts into media and IT at churches.  I've grown to realize that ministry isn't about the cool gadgets that you have, but rather the cool gadgets are about the ministry that you have.  I have tried this blogging thing in the past on both a personal level and a church tech resource level, but have never done it in the long term.  I think my previous attempts have failed because I tried to take it too seriously.  This blog is more about community than working towards a goal.  It's more about people than tech.  I encourage all of you to drop a comment and correct me when I'm wrong, or maybe agree with me every once in a while to make me feel better.

Thanks, and I look forward to speaking with all of you much more in the future!

PS:  I'd like to thank Jason Powell for what he does in the church IT world.  He is a huge inspiration for me.  Also, Brian Baily and his book, The Blogging Church, have been a very helpful resource.