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Beginning of Comm Project

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Cincinnati

I was back in Cincinnati after leaving Phoenix in 1985. I was planning to pursue work in church communications, so I took a job selling video as a temporary measure, so I could begin to do some independent production work. I settled back in video sales and installation for 4 years. Along the way we had our first child in 1989. The day before our son Brian was born, we were in a Cokesbury (Methodist) book store where I saw abook by Dennis Benson, whom I had spoken with on a couple of occasions during my youth work days, and so I looked at the back cover to see what he was doing. He was director of the Master of Arts in Religious Communication at United Theological Seminary in Dayton. The next day and a while after was quite distracting, what with the new baby, but in October, I visited Dennis and returned to sit in on one of his classes. I began in January 1990. I felt I had come all this way in the church, and now the way was beginning to narrow down to focus me on where I had been getting prepared to offer my best gifts.

Janet said it sounded like me. We set off on an uncertain (and expensive) journey, sensing that this was the correct path. I felt ready, and moving forward with the call I was sensing.

I went in thinking video production, but it was not that specific technology which was to capture my attention. Ken Bedell became my advisor, and a work study project was given to me to help- research how we might do distance education through videoconferencing. I also did work in the studio with wiring and getting things working again, as well as assessing needs there. The computers for desktop video needed upgrading, and I discovered some presentation applications that we used to do our senior project presentations. I began to see, through my research and experiences in videoconferencing and distance education that a communications shift was rapidly arriving.

As I prepared for graduation, I put together a proposal to the seminary to create an "Education Technology" director. I was seeing more focused now ----the future was becoming clearer, only what my role was to be was not so clear. It was a point of anxiety, particularly after my efforts went nowhere. I went to Circuit City to do more sales while I sought out what to do. Circuit City opened a Computer department, and I was learning a lot in the process. I got my first PC and began exploring the applications and the online services. A year later, after Circuit City's Computer department trimmed back staff, and I left to go work in a friend's business and then left disappointed with that work.

I was at CAMCON (Computers and Ministry Conference) in Dayton. (October 1992, 36 years old). I had begun to dream a dream about the shape of online possibilities for the church. I called the dream "A Compuserve for the Church", and I opened a discussion of it on Ecunet.(Still going strong.) I started doing a business of my own (Home entertainment electronics installation), which hasn't been that successful. My hope at the beginning of my business was that I could do this to support us, and give me the schedule flexibility to be able to research and pursue this work in Church Online Communications.

I had begun to get some clarification on my "place" in ministry. As I looked back on what I had always been interested in as a child (tape recorders, movie projectors, VCRs, etc.), and then books and resources as I got to college and on to seminary, and then youth ministry where I did a lot of "observation" and "assessment of the media with my groups. As I focused on media in music, TV, and movies, I became acquainted with the work of Dennis Benson, an early pioneer in use of "multimedia" and other mediated experiences with youth. In Dennis' early days, it was projectors , film, popular music, -----now the use of multimedia is becoming easier to put together (at least quicker---if you have some of the tools---and these are getting more accessible economically and in ease of use.

I've only in the last few days been playing with a computer presentation program called "Freelance Graphics for Windows" which is amazingly simple. It allows use of video clips captured (recorded with a PC) and sound.

It made a lot of sense to me to look at where I had been travelling to get to where I was. Unfortunately, in the past year it seems to be a pretty tough sell to the church and her organizations. Since finishing my Communication degree at United in 1991, and getting no response from United about hiring an Education Technology Director, I have been very frustrated with finding a place to use my talents and put bread on the table at the same time. I've been doing my inhome elecctronics installations, but it has been a struggle to get enough business, which is still another blow to my sense of leadership in that I have been unsuccessful at self-employment.

It's not that I see myself as lacking the skills to do what I do, because I am certainly very talented and knowledgable about setting up home entertainment systems and providing solutions to the confusion people here in Cincinnati experience with this cable system. But it is difficult to fight the attitudes of the big retailers and the cable company here when they want to appear as if they are providing enough "customer service" when they really do a horrible job at helping people deal with the problem of hooking it all up right when they get their new stuff home. Usually, the whole problem is ignored, and VCRs and TVs are sold with no warnings or information about using unique features with the Cable system here. And so I am largely ignored when I try to offer myself as a third party service for their customers. And Circuit City says they are "where service is state of the art" (more like "lip service").

And so now I find myself thinking again about the things I could be doing for the church somewhere. (My reason for going into business for myself was to enable me some freedom to work on some of these communication projects, and go to events and visit seminaries and churches and see about getting a BBS project going) . Since I proposed the Education Technology idea to United 2 ½ years ago, so much has happened in the communications world. At that time I had entitled it "An Immodest Proposal", meaning bold and adventurous. Now it is the way of the business world and of organizations in general. It is assumed technology. Gotta have it.

I sent a copy of an idea I was thinking about to Trinity Grants program. It was about Electronic Publishing: getting conventional documents and reference volumes into electronic, searchable, organized form where it can be networked among users, utilized more effectively, and ultimately cheaper to distribute and use. Imagine being able to search the database of information (text, graphics, audio, video) compiled by a teacher AND by the class ---and all classes that went before. As a class is offered again, the work of those before is all available as material for consideration. No more books on reserve. The places of interest can be scannned and put online. Comments of everyone can be "attached" to any file (again, files consisiting of one or more elements of text, video, audio, graphics, etc.) I listed about $20,000 worth of hardware to do some experimenation and development of electronic documents for the theological education community and for use in distance education/ education networking.

A representative wrote back and said that their grants for 93 and 94 were focusing on projects for helping the global south benefit from technology. My particular idea for Electronic publishing research is not specific to global south issues, but I do feel that if the church begins to utilize these technologies to help upgrade the communication efforts, the global south will certainly benefit. I hope that this is so. I would hate to be working for such changes in the way the church communicates only to see these media become a barrier between people.

I find myself caught between the real world of having to find the ways of keeping an income to allow myself and Janet to keep up with the family budget. It hasn't gone well (we haven't been "keeping up", and largely due to the many failures of my business, and my stubborness in refusing to back off of putting so much time into trying to make it work. When I had first begun my installation business (last November), I was doing well. By January 1993, we were doing well enough that we felt safe enough to increase the payment on our house and cut the loan to 15 years from 30 (due to refinancing at a lower rate).

Now it looks as though we'd better hurry and return it to a 30 year, at an even lower rate. Also, most frustrating of all is that Janet does not understand what I am all excited about. In her defense, I'm not making any money in this arena for all my interest. Most of you are working in the church in some capacity. I left fulltime ministry in 1985, and served part-time in 1990-91. I've had resumes out to the Methodists, Presbyterians, and American Baptists, but I feel that I burned a lot of bridges by leaving 8 years ago.