Getting a job as a community worker in a church was an unusual but not too strange choice. I've been working with community in lots of different ways for the last eighteen years or more and this was just one more way.
Of particular attraction to me, it was based ten minutes walk from home and it was an explicitly spiritual context in which to practice community building - usually working with groups like this may be deeply spiritually connected, but very few people talk about it in those terms - I can remember one person who said that Tuttle, for example, reminded him of his childhood experience of belonging to a church, but mostly, as with many things in our culture, the spirituality of it is shared through nods and knowing glances when something deep happens.
I've been making online media for about the same amount of time. Pioneering a home-made DIY style that characterised a part of the podcast and vlog scene that has died off a bit, or just had the rough edges smoothed off.
I had no idea, when I started working in November that the two would merge. It would have been ridiculous if I'd walked in saying "I think we're going to build community here through online video and regular tele-conferencing, I need you all to get your heads round YouTube and Zoom, pronto" I'd never have got the job in the first place.
But as it's turned out, I'm iMovie-wrangling again and we now have a good part of our congregation tuning into YouTube on a Sunday morning to watch what has emerged as a playlist of pre-recorded videos and then there's a (usually chaotic) Zoom call where we have coffee together and catch up on news.
Overall, I'm pleased that we've managed to keep church going for people in this way. I have some reservations that it doesn't do much to help with my "proper job" which is about supporting the wider community. But as it's worked out, it's been good to find a sustainable way of helping people worship, and hopefully I can now get back to being of service in the way I initially intended.