Garden Hose and the Gospel…

Well, service number three has come and gone.  The Lord continues to bless our church with positive gains in Bible study attendance and good gains in worship attendance.  As a church we are knocking on a thousand in both worship centers, with The Encounter @ FBC knocking on four hundred.  I simply say may God be praised.

This week the new wrinkle was the garden hose.  Yes, not one, not two, but three garden hoses.  You see we are having a problem getting a good lan connection between the building.  So we knew that we could string a cat5 cable between the buildings and bypass the week link.  But, how do you protect a network cable across a busy gravel parking lot and a major side street of the church.  The solution, thanks to Ray Leininger was a garden hose.  Why did I know think of that.

So now each Sunday we turn off the wireless connection at the main building.  Plug the cable in a hose into the router at the Esquire and spool out about three hundred feet of hose carrying cable.  We go in a window at the church into an intern office and plug in.  Progress.  I keep telling myself that is is progress.

Well, I will gladly continue to call contractors, enlist the help of my friends to get a good bid (Roy) and continue to bury this wire or fiber which ever we can afford.  Until then, if you wish to see spooling for to gospel carrying garden hose at FBC Bolivar just come by and see me before Bible Study.

To God be the Glory….

It is Official!

Well, family and friends live practice services have come and gone.  A few minor issues, but nothing that the team could not handle.  The growing number of volunteers has made the creative process of a contemporary worship service very dynamic.

We launched Sunday, Feburary 1.  I don’t mind saying it was a crazy Sunday.  We moved back into one Sunday morning Bible Study hour.  I talked with a few people in the halls that were looking for a class or did not have an idea of what class to try.  I hope my suggestion help them find a small group Bible study home.

Oh, I also helpped with a baptism on Sunday morning.  That is always a good day in my books.

Then the start of the  dual worship at FBC.  It was a great Sunday.  Take out a couple of minor techinal issues and it was a perfect day.  We did have a great attendance in both services, with the total approaching a thousand people.  It is nice to know that we as a church can adjust to changing times.  We understand the important relationship between worship and small group Bible study.

All in all a good day to walk with the Lord and to do His thing with Him.

Oh, the technology that we are using to reach the Esquire (old movie theater) is a slingbox, our in house lan, to wireless routers for a bridge across the block, the in house lan in the Esquire, a computer to catch and spool the main worship service and Tom Sneed’s quick and nimble fingers on a combination of buttons.

New Server Room

Picture 1 is our server space before the move and the center and right picture are the after picture.  We where able to make a new secure room for our church servers by taking eight feet from a classroom.  We now have a locked and air conditions space for our servers.  Meet the servers from left to right.  Box 1 is our smoothwall firewall.  Box 2 is our Domain control.  Box 3 is the work horse data server and vm server.   The vast expanse of open playwood is for future growth and a later telephone project.

Thinking Big, Thinking Secure

Life at FBC is moving at a very rapid rate for me.  But safety and securing have been on my mind with my “back burner” projects.  However, a couple of those projects are slowly moving to the light of day.  Here are the current horse race of projects that are in the lead.

Project #1 – Preschool Move (bad baptist word) and Security

My friend Amy D (Interim Childrens Minister) is close to consolidating our preschool on to two floors and dealing with the congestion in our preschool hall.  The solution is a mix of moving some classes, new furniture, new security doors and a computer check in system.  When it comes together it will be a sweet project.  This project is in the lead for going from idea to touching lives.

Project #2 – Server Room

As the IT man for the church (lot of help from Robert, Russ, and other volunteer brain trust members) we have been on a search for a secure, climate controlled, limited access location for our growing infrastructure needs.  It seems it may be possible to take part of a little used room and add a wall, and poof – space for a server room that should last us for a good while.  The nice thing – out of site and out of mind.

Project #3 – Asterisk Server

The leased Nortel is showing it’s age in features, function and size.  If three things come together moving to an internally managed phone server would be a reality.  If we have a place for the server (server room), if we can wirelessly like our remaining two buildings (prices are dropping for hardware) and we organize the team of people to pull wire, patch things together it is a done deal and will save the church some cash down the road.

Playing

Was just playing with a new bit of web 2.0 technology called drop.io.  Great website for sharing thing with people.  You might want to look into it as well.  My drop.io site is drop.io/lstehr59.