The first time Sue and I ministered via video was back in 2016 when I was providing pulpit fill for a church in Panama City. The learning curve was brutal. Our camera split every video into ten minute segments. So, I would try to edit my sermon into appropriately timed chunks. I would preach until Sue held up her hand, then hold very still while she restarted the video. Sue was spending hours editing the fragments into one sermon. Then we discovered that if we just kept filming, the camera would combine the segments for us. We needed to just keep rolling.
This new Covid-curve is also pretty steep. Thankfully, we started doing Facebook Live before we knew we needed it. Still each week of the isolation measures has brought a new challenge. The first Sunday I preached to 21 people, the second Sunday to six and the third Sunday to a one-eyed parishioner on a tripod. Facebook live with a phone was relatively simple … but then thousands of churches around the world jumped on the bandwagon effectively crashing the servers.
That’s why we decided to prerecord and preload the service. We had the service recorded Saturday night, got up extra early to post it to the server … and it aired at Noon. That was the first time in 26 years of fulltime ministry that I was late to church. It’s been a little stressful, very challenging, and super exciting. Even with the setbacks and frustrations it’s been fun to be reminded that Sue can accomplish anything she sets her mind to. It’s also nice to know that every challenge in life is an opportunity to come out the other side with new skills.
I think the hardest thing to do when making a video … is to just keep rolling. If you make a mistake in front of a live audience, you squirm a little, laugh a little and move on. That’s true even with Facebook Live. What choice do you have? But when you’re prerecording video, it’s tempting to stop and restart every time you goof up. The only trouble is that can turn in to hours of retakes and hours of editing. In life and videos it’s better to just keep rolling. Believers in Jesus have this awesome thing called “grace” that allows us to just keep rolling. Paul put it this way, “One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13–14
