You’ll find today’s sermon is now up on the Web site of First Unitarian in New Bedford. [Note: no longer on Web site.] I ad libbed more than usual this morning, so if you were here to hear the sermon, you’ll find the written version is significantly different.
I remain ambivalent about making sermons available in written form, because I don’t think of them as a written genre, but rather as an oral genre. I found a little booklet of a sermon series preached here at First Unitarian in 1943 by Duncan Howlett, and they are prefaced with this note:
Through the generosity of one of our members, the series was taken down stenographically. As theses sermons were delivered without notes or manuscript, it has been necessary to rework the material for printing. The spoken word rarely makes good reading.
The last sentence expresses my thoughts exactly; I’d only except a few of Jonathan Edwards’s sermons. Nor do I feel audio recordings do justice to sermons. There’s something about a sermon which requires you to be there, to be a part of the congregation. You’re not just listening to a sermon, you’re sitting there with other people, you’re singing hymns together, the sermon is just one little piece of an entire worship exeperience.
Yet at the same time, there is a long American tradition of sermons serving as a means for exchanging theological ideas. Maybe that’s why I am ambivalent about reading contemporary sermons: too many contemporary sermons do not address theological issues at all.
I enjoy reading sermons, but I agree with you that sermons are a unique and uniquely oral form. I’m very interested in podcasting — people recording their own radio shows and narratives and making them available on the internet. Recently I’ve noticed that a lot of faith communities have started podcasting. On the podcast.net directory there are already 5 UU churches making their sermons available as a podcast. One cool use? People can “subscribe” to them and have them delivered when they travel. You might think, c’mon, who would want to do that? But I like being reminded of stuff from home when I’m far away.
And a little voice recorder like the iRiver t30 can get you into recording them and putting the audio files on your PC for under $100. Plus you can use it as a music player in your car on those rides to New Bedford, or listen to other podcasts.
Hey Lisa, thanks for the thoughts on podcasting. I’ve been ambivalent about podcasting, but I hadn’t thought of people who are traveling (I had already heard about shutins subscribing to podcasts). Maybe I’ll have to revisit the podcast issue.
Podcast questions: Do you like to hear just the sermon, or the whole worship service? What kind of audio quality are you willing to tolerate?
I’m sort of excited that I’ve read several references with links to Arlington Street’s
sermon podcasts. We haven’t even started publicizing them to the congregation yet!
I agree that reading a sermon or even listening to it at home isn’t really in the
same ballpark as experiencing the worship service live with the congregation – nothing can
replace that – but I think podcasting is a great development for the reasons listed above.
I’m waiting impatiently for my husband, the webmaster for All Souls NYC, to start podcasting
their sermons, as I miss the excellent preaching from the ministers there (even though I get to hear wonderful preaching from Kim each week). It would be fun to listen to during my commute – a good way to start my
day on the right UU foot.
Podcasts are generally just the sermon, and I think that’s probably best; a lot of many worship services are wordless, so as a listener you’d get long stretches of silence. I’m willing to tolerate very wide variations in sound quality, and most of the podcasts I listen to (and most of the most popular casts) are not professionally produced. In a way, that’s part of their charm; you really get a sense that there’s a real person on the other side of the earphones.
If you’re interested in it, I’d recommend checking out an MP3 player with a voice recording function, like the iRiver T30. There are MP3 players with recording function that you can get into for under $100. They’re small, you could slip them in a shirt pocket or leave them on a lectern. A nice feature is a recorder that has a microphone jack as well as a built-in mic.
Four Minutes About Podcasting is a fun little web video that shows you how to get started, and Podcast411 is a great how-to site. You can find lots of what are often called “godcasts” at Podcast Alley.
I think Alison brings up a good point. It’s not so much that a podcast can compete with the live experience. But podcasts do allow you to replace blah programmed media on your car radio with something that you choose to listen to.
What about pod casts people can download?
Ayatollah Khomeini would smuggle his sermons all over Iran on video tapes
back in the days of the Shah.
Bill — good news. Podcasts don’t require an iPod or any MP3 player — you can just download them onto your computer and listen to them. I think a lot of software developers were inspired by the iPod and wanted to create software for it, hence the term “podcast”
And as you point out, tools are neutral, they can be used to disseminate any kind of message.