Rebuilding

Well, I spent all day yesterday (except for taking my father for a hair cut and a quick lunch) working on the rebuild of the sermon archive on the church web site. Last year when our web site suddenly disappeared, so did all the sermon files. So I have had to take them all, one by one, and convert them into posting format and upload them to the site. I was doing well but when the Lent and Easter seasons hit, I got too busy and didn't get back to it. So now, I believe I have the entire Pentecost archive completed - at least, mostly. There are probably a few broken links that will need attention and I still have to upload a lot of audio files, but most of the text files should be in place. The next step is testing all the links and finding out which ones are broken and how to fix them. But with this, the archive is almost complete! I still have to do the Easter season and the special sermons - but Pentecost was the biggie! And now I also have all these files in the cloud as well as on the web site, so should this ever happen again, I am prepared!

Would Anyone Notice?

Would anyone notice if you just disappeared? Would anyone care? Of course, your family and friends would notice and care, but most of us are quite unknown outside of this. There are only a few folks like Nelson Mandela, whose death a world mourns. Many people come and go every day quietly and anonymously.

So it is also in the cyber-sphere. Web Sites, Blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds come and go and few notice. They disappear into the ether and we go on with our lives. For (perhaps) all the work that went into them, they were hardly noticed.

So I was greatly encouraged and gratified that when our church web site went away for a time, people noticed. I received quite a number of e-mails asking about the sermon archive in particular, from pastors, vicars, and laymen, asking when it might be restored. It was missed. That's nice to know! For all the work that goes into creating and then maintaining a web site, you have to wonder: Is anyone looking at it? Is anyone using it? Does anyone care? It's nice to know that the answer is yes.

I started archiving my sermons like this - and there are now some 11 years of sermons on the site - not because I consider myself such a great preacher, but because I greatly appreciated other pastors who did this. Some weeks sermons come easily and writing them is a joy. Other weeks sermons are quite difficult and writing them is quite arduous. Those weeks, I was (and still am!) truly blessed to be able to go and read how other pastors have preached the text and get ideas from them. These often kick-start my mind and get my thoughts flowing. My hope was that by posting my sermons in the same way, I could do so for others as well.

I am still working on rebuilding the archive - 11 years is a lot of sermons to have to convert into the right formats and upload! - but its coming along. Advent and Christmas is complete, and hopefully Epiphany will be soon too. Little by little. But at least I know it's worth it.