Sermons, Technology & Catholicism?

Since the onslaught of the Coronavirus pandemic, I’ve struggled with technology to provide sermons online for my congregation. You’d think with a background in technology this wouldn’t be so hard, but my professional technology background was never in audio/video production. It’s been an unpleasant learning curve, to say the least. In no small part made steeper by my frustration at lack of resources. Undoubtedly a change in attitude on my part my transform all of this from an irritation to an opportunity.

Or I could convert to Roman Catholicism, I suppose.

Part of my technology woes have to do with YouTube’s refusal to allow me to upload videos longer than 15 minutes, even though I’ve authenticated my account and done everything they’ve said to ostensibly allow much longer video uploads. This means I have to decide if I’m going to gauge my sermon lengths to fit inside a 15-minute format, or if I’m going to say what I feel like I have to say even if it takes longer than 15 minutes.

Now that my congregation is meeting outdoors, this takes much of the pressure off as many of my parishioners are there on Sunday mornings and don’t need it posted to YouTube.

The Roman Catholic approach (at least in the Santa Fe diocese) is a lot simpler – preach shorter sermons. In fact, priests there are being warned if their sermons consistently are longer than five minutes in length, they could have their preaching privileges revoked. This is their attempt to mitigate the risk of in-person worship, by all but eliminating the sermon.

My Protestant (Lutheran) background finds this a terrible solution. If worship is essentially God’s gifts to his people in Word and Sacrament, then to minimize the Word portion does a disservice to the people of God. While shorter services and sermons might make sense for a limited period of time, or in addition to or as alternatives to a longer preaching service, to simply not provide the Word to God’s people for months on end strikes at the very heart of what and who the Church is.

So I’ll go on struggling with technology and trying to find better solutions. And I’ll continue to find ways to bring the Word to the people of God in weekly worship. And I’ll resist the temptation to convert to Catholicism.