This is how the church should be using YouTube. Father Matthew Presents is a video blog with a humourous edge. Here is a news report about it: Priest’s video blog inspires laughs, faith.

I haven’t watched a huge number of the video entries as we’re on limited broadband, but I did take a look at one on writing a sermon and another from up the church tower. Very enjoyable.

The closing seconds of each of the videos direct people to Fr. Matthew’s church site – that of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Yonkers, NY. To me this is what ‘outreach’ (for want of a better word) is all about. Putting a human face on the church and not taking ourselves too seriously.

I’ll look forward to watching more of thse videos – the one where he ‘plays the Super Mario Brothers theme song on the church bell system’, also the one where he ‘vows to hide the old church sign in a place no one will ever find it, and swoops down darkened stairwells and past boilers to a suspense-building orchestral tune from an Indiana Jones movie’.

As I said, this is how the church should be using You Tube. Not by posting the Archbishop’s sermons. No disrespect to the Archbishop or anything.

I found this video blog via this post on epiScope, a new blog that ‘looks over the Episcopal church’. What a clever name.

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