Changes in teaching videos and updates on coming lessons

Daniel Segraves

Early on this blog, I began to post study guides and videos when teaching series of lessons at The Sanctuary UPC in Hazelwood, Missouri. It’s easy and quick to post the study guides. The videos have been another matter.

To record the videos, I set my iPhone up on a tripod. This is straightforward, but then the time consuming work begins. I’ve been using YouTube to upload the videos, but first I must get them off the iPhone onto my PC, then from the PC to YouTube. This process alone can take hours. After the videos are on YouTube, it’s necessary to edit them by trimming the videos off on both ends. This can be a challenge, and when it’s finished, it can again take hours for an edited video to be saved in its new format. When this is finished, there is the matter of posting the final video to my blog, which also shares it on Twitter. This last step can also be time consuming, because the results are not always consistent. I don’t want YouTube suggesting other videos when the teaching video is over. The results can be unpredictable.

I am committed, however, to making the videos available. Now, YouTube has announced a redesign of the program that makes all this happen, and it is no longer possible to block suggested videos from appearing at the end of the posted teaching videos.

So I am switching to Vimeo. Although this still consumes time, I’m able to prevent suggested videos and the process seems simpler. The lesson “The Spirit of God in the Minor Prophets” is the first video I’ve posted using Vimeo.

Now here are a couple of announcements about lessons coming up soon.

Beginning on December 2, I will teach a series of lessons on the Holy Spirit: An Apostolic Perspective. This will continue each Sunday through the end of February. We are Pentecostals, and we emphasize the experience of baptism with the Holy Spirit. We are right to do this. But Scripture has much more to tell us about the Spirit. There are nearly 100 references to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and about 350 in the New Testament. The Bible begins and ends with references to the Spirit.

Each Sunday during December, January, and February, we will explore surprising and helpful insights from rarely noticed texts that will give us greater understanding and appreciation for our experience with the Spirit of the Lord.

I want you always to be able to read posts and view videos free of charge. You will be able to download videos for a minimal fee. I hope this will help defray the costs of using Vimeo.

The lessons I will be teaching for the next three months will be related to the book I am now writing on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. I’m enjoying the research and writing for this project, and I hope it will be helpful to those who view the videos and read the study guides.