Broadcast News

The history of worship broadcasts at First Baptist, Tallahassee, has had its share of twists and turns. In the early years, our church offered live broadcasts of our 11:00 service, which must have involved an amazing amount of work behind the scenes, given how complicated many Sundays can be in terms of transitions and timing. In more recent years, the live broadcast gave way to a delayed broadcast, where we rushed a taped copy of the morning service to a local station for replay on Sunday and Wednesday nights. Aside from some occasional glitches, some from our end and others from the local station’s end, that system served us exceedingly well, and for a much lower cost. 

 

Last year, that local station was moved to the digital end of the cable, resulting in a steep decline of homes that could access our worship. Almost immediately, we began to see an increase in requests for DVDs of services, which told us that some were already moving from our cable broadcasts to an “on demand” DVD option. All of these developments coincided with our efforts at upgrading our church’s website, with much attention given to the feasibility of “webcasting” our services there. When we discovered that we could move in the direction of “webcasting,” we knew the time would be drawing near when we would make the switch to that new technology.

 

As we began to look at the 2010 budget and areas where we might make cuts, we saw that we could realize significant savings by moving to the “webcast” model. Such a move would not only save us money (we estimate a savings of over $14,000); it would also expand our ability to have our worship viewed to anyone with a computer and Internet access. 

 

For several weeks now, we have posted sermons to the web site, and you can view them at www.fbctlh.org/sermons. Our last cable broadcast will be this Wednesday, March 31. After that time, you can either view sermons online, or you can request a DVD copy of the entire worship broadcast from our church office. DVDs are $5, and you may request one either through our web site (under the “Resources” tab) or by calling the church office. 

 

We want this transition to go as smoothly as possible. To that end, we are putting together a group that would be available for those members who might need some help setting a DVD player. If you need such help, call Joyce Barnes in the Pastor’s office at 222-5470 x121 to get your name on the list.

 

I believe that we are riding the wave of the future with this move. I know of many churches that have already begun webcasting their services, many much smaller than ours. I am hopeful that this move will enable us to expand our reach in the long term, which has always been the driving force in our broadcast ministry. Pray with me that we will be able to address whatever transitional concerns may arise and see even more response to extending the worship of First Baptist far beyond both a set time and a set space. When you think about it, that even has the ring of eternity about it, and all of us can surely feel good about that.