At the moment, Lane End church uses a PC to record the service. This is then burned onto a CD before being put through a CD duplicator, and the CD is then sent to the housebound with a copy of the order of service. This is a considerable improvement over the old cassette system, as the tape duplicator was on its last legs, and the congregation's tape players were suffering a similar fate.
The downside to this is that there is a cost of purchasing CD's. One of the CD drives has died on the duplicator, and while it's a simple fix to change one of the drives, as it's just standard sata drives it uses, is there a better way?
Hosting the service on the website isn't realistic, as the intended audience doesn't have computers. We were thinking about giving out USB drives to those who have radios with USB ports, or giving out speakers with the USB to those who don't. My first thought was something like this and a small (1gb) usb stick.
So what does your congregation use?
In my home church we used a CD duplicator as well but I do like the idea of the USB radio. I suppose some of the obvious draw backs is the limitation that you can only give out as many radios as you have wich I suppose would limit your flexibility. Also our Sunday school teachers like the CD's as they can listen to the service in the car. We used to have a podcast, which judging by the downloads was listened to, but I agree it probably not suitable for the house bound. Also in my personal experience I have found cheap MP3 player difficult to operate, with confusing OS's and annoying small buttons, so I wonder if this would be drag to their adoption by people.
ReplyDeletePS how did your last essay in Mark go?
Still waiting to hear about Mark, although I thought it went OK. I'm sure it will pass. Are you in the class, and how did it go for you?
ReplyDeleteI think my first step should be to find out what hardware is out there. Someone may have a USB enabled stereo without realising it. If I can get a practical solution on place I'll share wit any congregation that's interested.
Yes, I am your namesake :). I get an automatic extension on all my essay of a week on account of my dsylexia, so this term i have been using it on Mark as i am doing another course and its essays chronologically come first so it gives me more time between essays. I am just about to finish the one of the charges against Jesus by the Sanhedrin but was finding it difficult to write 2000 words on so have padded the start with just talking about the legitimacy of the Sanhedrin and that takes up about a third of the essay. I hope i havent strayed too far.
ReplyDeleteI thought that was who you were:-)
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's unreasonable to assess the judicial process and the legitimacy of the sanhedrin in order to describe the validity of the charges.
Re the recordings, we are thinking that an Ipod shuffle with a small set of speakers might just work. The shuffle has the simplest of interfaces, and I'm hoping I can track down a few shuffle's from the congregation.