Podcast time again

An overnight trip for us to Kenilworth this afternoon, to celebrate Rhiannon's sixth birthday. She has a family celebration tomorrow, then all her little school friends on Sunday afternoon. Having not seen her since Christmas, the changes in her over a couple of months are more obvious. Schooling agrees with her, and she produced a lovely welcome card for us, with carefully executed designs, showing dexterity and powers of concentration.

Anthony was fresh back from a London trade show where he'd been promoting his soundtrack music business, talking about the problems he'd been having with his re-vamped, stylish website. Although definitely more user friendly, its very size now means that consistency checking every one of several hundred links is a long laborious process. Been there, done that, I thought, now I'm recording and uploading new podcasts of my Lent Talks for this year, trying to get them all done uploaded to the web server and scheduled to display a new one for public download each week of Lent. The number of errors I can make in executing such a modest routine task is utterly bothersome. I should have learned to touchtype decades ago. By the way, the podcast link is here

Palm Sunday - strange company

The various churchyard enclosures and entrance porch were less strewn with match day consumer rubbish that usual this morning, thanks to a rain all day and into the evening yesterday. There'll be less to clear up. I fully intend to have a good tidy up before Easter, unless the weather defeats me.

The work on the south aisle is nearly complete. There's just the huge plastic screens to take down the sanding of the chapel floor and re-levelling of tiled areas to be completed in the next few days. Scaffolding and screens are up in the north aisle and painting has begun already. The church is bound to feel a bit like a zone of occupation if not a building site to casual visitors, who pop in for al look and don't read the notices. It's had an impact on regular attendances too. We were less than three dozen in total for the Parish Eucharist today. We just have to take it on the chin and keep going.

Tonight was my last FutureFaith talk. It was also the smallest evening congregation so far this Lent. People voting with their feet? Weather? Post match blues? Heaven knows, maybe nobody's that much interested in where we're going. The podcast web page has logged over 600 unique visitors, from all around the world, with less than a tenth of them making a return visit.
If I count the known familiar faces who've heard any of my talks during the past six weeks, it still amounts to just twenty people.

Well, as Paul said: "Preach the Word, in season, out of season", and it was mad Ezekeil who said: "Whether they listen to you or not".

Many faces of mission

My technology obsession takes me into some interesting places - boldly going where not many Vicars have gone before. I had a phone call today from Mark Crook the editor of the website Podcast Nation a database of British podcasts, asking me if I'd like to have the Lent Talks listed there. Apparently I one of only six or seven clerics in the UK doing this at the moment. He also gently pointed out that it wasn't a proper podcast, only a downloadable audio file unless it was available via an RSS feed, and promised to send me instructions about how to set that up.

Also there was an email from the editorial team of BBC Wales' Mousemat 'tech programme, asking if I'd do an interview on Thursday. I thought to myself, I'd better get hooked up to this RSS mularkey pretty quick, or else expose myself for being the bumbling amateur I really am. Mind you, when people look at the church website, they can tell (if they're under 35), because it's so information rich and style poor. Like a ramshackle house with character, or a Greek villageI like to think. It does what it's meant to do, except that some of the pages don't display prettily in every browser. Apart from that, it works. It just needs a massive overhaul. I need to learn some of the new publishing technologies, but I never have the time. In fact, failing to set up an RSS feed kept my glued to the computer till well after midnight. How stupid can you get?

Back on parochial ground, I had the pleasure this evening of attending the AGM of St Teilo Arts Trust, which, after six years of operation can finally see an end to the adaptation and renovation work on St Teilo's church, to make it suitable as a concert and rehearsal venue. When I think back to my early involvement with the church, to the time when the architect did a 'runner' in mid-project - all the problems with contractors, and funding sponsors chasing progress that was, at that moment, un-achievable. Yet, the place kept being used for concerts, earning good revenue, that finally enabled all the work to be done, and the building to be compliant with regulations for public use. It's a huge achievement for a few dedicated, patient people, and especially Chris Berry and his wife Rosie. Now that the original first year redevelopment phase is over, the trustees are looking forward to making their own plans to optimise a superb local community asset.

If this project had been in the hands of anyone other than a handful of committed Christians, it would have died the death, probably with ensuing scandal and lawsuits four years ago. But the applied vision and determination of those committed to giving the church a relevant opportunity to serve the city and the student community has actually produced an exemplary piece of missionary enterprise. I feel very proud to have accompanied their journey over the past five years.

Lost, on Ash Wednesday

There was a lot to pack in today, starting with an ashing ceremony for children at Tredegarville school. I must have 'ashed' about 150 people. I decided to interpret the sign of ashes as one of lostness, and started from the week long dissapearance last Autumn of Father Roy's dog Thomas, familiar to the children, and everyone else who lives in Adamsdown. I was leased wiht how it worked and developed that into a grown-up sermon for the noon and Evening Eucharists of the day. There was no time to write it down, but somehow it developed in the telling in a way that gave me pleasure to relate.

Chris Seaton was with me for the morning. It was good to share two services with him. I wasn't looking forward to performing on my own something I've so often been able to share with other clergy. I'm pleased that he's preaching on Sunday too. I feel as If I could do with a break.

Just as I was leaving for the noon Eucharist, Ben Glaze rang me for an interview, expressing enough interest in the Lenten podcast story to want a fresh picture of me to publish. The photographer turned up at the end of the Eucharist, and we had an amusing twenty minutes clowning about getting something he was happy to offer up for print - all in a day's work. The only bad publicity is no publicity, I tell myself - preahc the Word in season and out of season. I'm not sure how St Paul would take to this.

Then ,I had a quick errand to deliver mail to the City Centre Manager's office, and at that point I got distracted, and completely forgot to go to City Church for David Lee's lecture, which I'd been looking forward to. I went home and continued editing sound files, as the pod-cast preparation was only half complete. My efficiency seemed to drop somewhat and I only managed to get one more done and uploaded during the afternoon. Then I had to go out and take Holy Communion to two housebound people, and offer them a copy of the Lenten addresses, before it was time to go down to church and celebrate the third service of the day. After a late supper, another couple of hours of editing and another file was uploaded before bed. Nearly there!

Bread casting to podcasting

I was glad of a day with no fixed appointments today. It gave me an opportunity to work hard on completing my Lent talk preparation. The texts have been written and re-worked now for several days, and I've posted the downloadable text files on the parish website. Not many people find it easy to commit to attending a lecture series, no matter what time you arrange it. That's partly why I've abandoned trying to do the high profile series with lots of outside speakers. I've been asked for texts before. So maybe that's unavoidably necessary if I do a series - I argued with myself.

This year, my creative burst on holiday made me confident that I had enough to say for a full series, on things I'm really interested in. The question is: does anyone else think interesting what I think is interesting? You can only cast your bread on the waters...

On Sunday, I asked if anyone in church wanted advance hard-copies, ( a way of stimulating people to think of questions and discuss) and I had about a dozen people interested. One man I asked replied : "No, there's no need to bother, I've already downloaded them and made a copy for me and one for my father." His dad is ancient and housebound, but still taking an interest in life. His response made my Sunday - the effort of having done it is already justified in my mad mind.

It spurred me to think I should get on with my other little plan to record the talks and upload pod-castable files (a new word Google's spell checker doesn't recognise) to the church website as well. So I bought a microphone from Maplins, and spent most of my day recording and editing sound files, apart from the odd hour when I popped down the church to print off Ash Wednesday liturgy sheets and copies of the booklets of the six talks to hand out tomorrow.

I should have recorded the sound files before printing the booklets. The point nine percent of errors you miss when diligently reading in silence really show up when you're reading a script aloud ... ah well. You live and learn. Anyway, I'm nearly there.

During the day I decided to cast a bit more bread on the waters, and emailed a promotional flyer to Ben Glaze, an 'Echo' reporter who takes an interest in church and community affairs. Really there's no way of knowing if anyone's interested in Vicar's critique of modernity, and progress in science and technology. We'll see .... it's all in a day's evangelisation.

Oh yes, if you've read this far, you can check out the site for yourself