Technical problems abound

This has been a difficult week for a tech guy. First, I've been dealing with getting our new website working properly. We archive our messages on our site. But, I just found out we only have 2GB of space on the current site. No one seemed to know how we were supposed to save the large number of video and audio files needed for our purpose. I knew that there had to be a plan when the new site was being designed, but no one still involved knew what that plan was. I offered a few ideas, then checked with a friend who was in on the early meetings but is no longer here. Turns out my idea was the plan all along. So now we are waiting on the web designers to get this working properly.

We lost our internet connection on Thursday. Everyone looks to me to fix it, but it was an IT issue. Our IT guy, Dan Seitz, came in and spent several hours getting our firewall back up. It's amazing how much we have all come to depend on the internet to do our jobs!

Then, yesterday, my character generator wouldn't power up. After an hour of trying to figure out the problem, Dan came to rescue again. Unfortunately, I was correct in my diagnosis that the motherboard was toast. We are trying to find a replacement but it looks like we'll be using DVD for the many videos that will be running this weekend.

And, last evening we hosted a live satellite feed for a Beth Moore LivingProofLive conference. A thunderstorm rolled through about an hour before it was to begin and we lost our feed. I was able to get the webcast up as a backup, but the picture quality wasn't nearly as good. After our prayer team jumped into action, we got the satellite feed back, even with the storm in full force! But, we had some really bad audio the rest of the night. I was able to log into a live tech forum and found that many of the other 516 sites that were hosting the conference had the same problem.

By the end of the evening though, even with all the tech problems, it was an amazing experience. Nearly 400 ladies worshiping with a live satellite feed on our screens! It was as though the praise band was in the room with us. God is alive and well in Mansfield, Ohio!

The audio feed was still bad this morning, but with only about 3 minutes left before the conference was to continue this morning, it suddenly cleared up. The worship that started the program this morning was awesome!

We'll continue to have technical problems. That is part of using technology in church. But how we react to those problems is what really matters. As a tech guy, I am learning to trust God and my faith in Jesus Christ. Stop, pray, and let it go. And the Holy Spirit will abound.