When Lord of Life started as a mission in 1987, color television had only existed for 33 years. By the late 80’s, the average family had progressed from hoping to be lucky enough to have a single console television in their family room to having TV’s in multiple rooms.
From the 50’s to the 80’s we also made it possible to answer our land line telephones from multiple places in our homes by installing jacks throughout the house, and many homes were even able to cut the cord and use cordless telephones. My sister always had ours, so I never got to use it. We added answering machines, caller ID, and pushed buttons instead of dialing on a rotary. Our stereos went from AM/FM receivers with record players to 8-tracks and cassettes, and by the 80’s we were using compact discs, and I remember having all of that technology at one time because we still had records, cassettes, and CD’s in our giant media center.
Our audio/video landscape had changed drastically from 1954 to 1987.
Now it has been 38 years since Lord of Life planted roots in West Chester. In that time, I remember fully adopting and then abandoning CDs and DVDs. My sister got me an MP3 player to carry with me, and I spent hours downloading music so I could have the best of my collection with me wherever I went. Now my iPod is gathering dust because I just stream whatever music I want to listen to any time I want. I have gotten rid of all of my giant tube TVs and have sleek flat screens that hug the walls in several rooms in my house, a projector in one room, and several small home displays, any of which allow me to watch any show, movie, or media clip I might pull up online. I don’t have cable anymore, but I can access almost any program at will any time I want - I can even watch worship from previous weeks at Lord of Life! Despite having a screen in every room, most of the time I watch everything on my phone - the all-in-one music/video/calling/texting/mailing device I am attached to all the time.
Not only is technology changing fast, but we are constantly adding ways we connect with each other. We experience that in the church building, too.
Ten years ago, we had a 16 channel audio mixer that just barely accommodated the band, the pastor, a worship leader, and two speakers. Upgrading to a relatively inexpensive 32 channel mixer kept us going for eight years. It offered digital integration so we could integrate our online worship, and the extra channels let us add more band members, add microphones for additional worship leaders, and support our outdoor worship space.
The mixer we have currently has aged and some channels have died. The cost of repairing it is now beyond the value of replacing it, and we have completely maxed out the number of channels we are using each week. We’re constantly finding new things we wish we could add. Just last week, we hosted Baptism sponsors over Zoom from California - this took an additional channel coming into the mixer and one going out so they could hear us. I had to temporarily remove something else from the mix to make that work so we had enough channels. We would love to add microphones so we can hear the congregational singing, additional instrumental mics when we have extra musicians at Christmas and Easter, channels from other parts of the building in a retreat or conference situation, and whatever new technology might pop up in the next six months or sixteen years.
The great thing about the newest mixers is that they are built the same way new computers are - they can be expanded with additional components. We are not locked in with our initial purchase. If the power supply or processing unit goes bad, it can be swapped out on site instead of shipping it away at great cost to us. If we need more channels, we can just add them. The new units are meant to last many years.
I’m committed to making music as great as I can and being as responsible as I can with our resources. Our Sound Footing campaign launched last week to raise the capital for our sound system and to repave our parking lot. As of writing this blog, we’re over half-way to our $165,000 goal to achieve both projects! This will bring our audio technology up to date and keep us worshiping joyfully for a long time. I’m excited as we step into this next chapter of our history together!
If you are interested in contributing, please visit www.lol-lutheran.com/give and select the Sound Footing tile.