Cyberpreaching

The weekend's cyberpreaching began with a train wreck when livecasting to North Wales.

I'd carefully set up my rig by balancing my phone on top of my computer screen, checking I can broadcast via Facebook live in portrait format and so on, as taught by numerous YouTube experts.

All was good. Notes were on screen. All ready.

Saturday morning comes. I switch on, find the button - and I'm sideways... So I sign off quickly and race off to get my laptop and send the video from that.

It's OK, except that the phone was at a good angle, right by my notes, and now I'm gazing down at the slightly rubbish webcam on my laptop.

Oh well...

For Sunday we use Zoom, and each week we've taken another baby step forward. This week we were planning to sing together, as well as time of prayer, readings, message. I set up a Powerpoint file and learned how to share my screen. On Saturday, in response to criticism over security, Zoom imposed passwords, so I put that on the Facebook group with the info required to connect.

The time came. All worked well! Songs were OK. The only slight hiccup was a text message from a church member asking for the password, so while I texted that back to them the words were slightly late changing for one of the songs.

Then came the message - and my channel froze.

We waited, but it wasn't going to unfreeze. My laptop was signed on with the church account - it gives us unlimited time -

So I got my iPad and quickly signed in as me through that and carried on. All was then fine.