After quite some time, I am very happy to share that our podcast is finally up and running! I know, I know, we should have had this working a long time ago. Unfortunately, a series of issues arose that caused challenges. None the less, it is now functional and you can access it through itunes, or by just subscribing to this link.

Much thanks to Jim Lumpkins who has taken the podcast on as his task. Jim is uploading a number of recent messages so if you go to the podcast, you should find a decent selection available.

Tracy is leading a prayer group this Saturday for our local Baptist Association and she is tasked with leading the prayer for West Africa. She is very excited about the opportunity. I was helping her do a little research tonight and was on the West Africa region website, which is incredibly full of amazing information. While researching, however, I ran across a page filled with music from West Africa. We almost jumped out of our skin when we saw a couple of songs from the Dagaara people.

This is a big deal for us because the Dagaara recordings were done in one of our villages while Tracy and I were serving among the Dagaara. We worked, together with a couple from Senegal who were music missionaries, to lead our people to write this original music and then we helped record this music. Tracy and I were sitting with our Dagaara friends while these recordings were being made. We had never had the chance to hear this music so to listen to it tonight was an unexpected treat. It was also a walk down memory lane for us.

I’ve posted a song below so that you can get a taste of Dagaara music. I hope you enjoy it as much as we have.

[audio:http://gowestafrica.org/media/music/13-west-africa-music-dagaara-of-bu.mp3]

[audio:http://www.sbcsmallchurch.com/audio/micahfries.mp3]

[audio:http://www.sbcsmallchurch.com/audio/drfrankpage.mp3]

Dr. Page’s Q&A:

[audio:http://www.sbcsmallchurch.com/audio/qanda.mp3]

As this post goes up on the web I’ll be in the middle of speaking at Impact 2008 on the topic of Affordable Technology in the small church. I’ll be adding the audio as soon as I can get it edited, formatted and uploaded.

As I was preparing for this talk I was originally planning to create a cd that included a plethora of resources. I decided against it for a couple of reasons. First, it’s pretty expensive to produce cds for more than 100 people who are attending the conference. Secondly I realized I could build a website that anyone could access and that way every person at the conference as well as those who didn’t attend can access the resources. Finally I realized that it’s easy to lose a cd. This will be available even if you lose a copy of the files I’ll provide on this site.

So, if you are looking for help with technology specifically geared to the church, you can find the early stages of this site by clicking here.

[audio:http://www.sbcsmallchurch.com/audio/drgreglawson.mp3]

[audio:http://www.sbcsmallchurch.com/audio/chrishauser.mp3]

[audio:http://www.sbcsmallchurch.com/audio/cbscott.mp3]