Banks Glover on 20+ Years of Advancing Faith Through Technology

Gene Liverman: 0:05

Hello everyone and welcome to the Volunteer Technologist podcast. Here we take a look at the different ways that people who are technically inclined volunteer outside of their primary job. Today I'm joined by Banks Glover, a member of my church who has been doing technology for a very long time and wanted to hear a little more about his story. How are you doing today, bynx?

Banks Glover: 0:25

I'm doing well. I hope you are as well, gene.

Gene Liverman: 0:28

I am, thank you very much. So I recently joined our technology and sound teams at our church and I understand that you've been involved with it for quite some time and are actually getting close to retiring from it. So I thought it might be interesting to hear how things have changed since you started and, just in general, what your experience has been and what got you into doing all of this.

Banks Glover: 0:53

Little background on this is I spent 30 years working abroad as a business analyst and in the evenings I had nothing to do. So I started playing with computers and started using them for fun as well as in business. And then at some point, when I was around 50 years old, my father started losing his eyesight. So I said to heck with it. I've been divorced three times. Let me come home and spend time with Daddy. And I started coming back to church and again attending Sunday school and actually teaching the five and six year olds in Sunday school for a while. And I brought the very first computer into the church and it was one of the standalone units, primarily for word processing, and later I had the secretary learn a little bit about spreadsheets. And then, sitting in the back, somebody asked me to help them on the sound. I noticed that we had a 16 channel mixer board, but the person in charge moved every slide up to unity and turned on the recorder and walked away, and at the end of the service they had stopped and he had rewinded so that we would have 45 minutes exactly to take the tape to the radio station, regardless of where it started, and that's the length of time. That's where we first started and I knew enough from my years of playing guitar and band and stuff that no, you don't leave all the mics on all the time, and I started to let me sit here and start working the sliders. That's where we first started. It was strictly just a tape recorder and then later we started going beyond that and working on making CDs, and then we brought in the cameras, and the cameras we have now are the third iteration. You were instrumental in getting us to where we are today, but that's been the transition. In the beginning there was one person and you would waste every Sunday at the board doing nothing working the sliders, and it got more complicated when you had to work the cameras as well. We didn't get to appreciate the service, so we enlisted other people, trained them and we started taking grounds, and so each person had a month. That's kind of where we are up to date. It's a very slow transition. In terms of computers in the church, everybody has one, some have two or three and they're now responsible for doing all the updating, which at one time I had to come in on a Saturday and do backups to a zip drive for those old folks who may not know what a zip drive is. It was an early form of backup but seen a lot going on in the transition in the last, I guess, 20, 25 years.

Gene Liverman: 3:52

That's a long time to be doing this. The part you mentioned about not being able to appreciate the service cost of sitting there all the time that was something I experienced firsthand a few years back and it caused me to take a couple years break from doing anything with church technology, because I just got burned out and realized I was coming to work. I wasn't coming to worship anymore and that's not really the point of it.

Banks Glover: 4:15

No, it's not, and since you've done this before, it is a ministry. It is One thing that we did do once we got cameras is we went on television to the local television station and that was done live and other considerations. I would have to come in and skip Sunday school so I could study the bulletin and go ask people where you're going to be standing this Sunday. You're going to have to pull up to the lectern and it just it took away everything and there was a period where, even with the cameras, we had one full year of doing nothing but the audio video. You're right, the burnout is there and you don't want to come to work. You're supposed to be there to learn and be around people and you don't get to be around people. It is the least appreciated ministry in the church. Only time people notice you is when you screw up.

Gene Liverman: 5:19

There's a fair bit of truth to that, so I wanted to maybe back up just a little bit. So I know you said you brought the first computer into the church. You happen to remember around what time that was.

Banks Glover: 5:32

Actually it was around the year 2000.

Gene Liverman: 5:34

Okay, I know at that time that was obvious with the only computer and it was kind of standalone. How did that kind of evolve from then to now? Was it kind of one computer here and one computer there, or did they're just all of a sudden be like oh, we need a computer everywhere?

Banks Glover: 5:50

That's exactly how it occurred, gene. We just had the one computer and it was for word processing, and then it evolved that the I mean that was a church secretary. Then we got the church finance girl and she needed a computer and standalone program. At that time you loaded it on your computer. We didn't have this cloud magic out there which we have now. Everybody's connected to the cloud. Most of the programs that we use are on the cloud and, as a result, we have a very hefty fiber network coming into the church that people are hooked up to. It's much faster than what we started off with I think it was the 14 KB modems, but it has evolved.

Gene Liverman: 6:41

Yeah, it certainly seems like it. That's kind of mirrors some of the stuff I've seen, both at church at other churches I've been at and in my personal life. The difference from computers around 2000 to now is just the way we connect this stuff is just incredible.

Banks Glover: 6:58

Being an older person, I tell the story. My first computer that I traveled with was a Kay Pro 2000, which had two, three and a half inch floppies, no hard disk drive. It did have a modem, but it was the 300 Baud modem, which most people can't appreciate. The way you connected is you went to the hotel room, took the mouthpiece off the telephone, hooked your alligator clips to the two leaves there and you would dial up using X modem, y modem or Z modem. You could actually see the characters that you were sending going across the screen. You could watch them. It was that slow. There was no internet at the time.

Gene Liverman: 7:35

Yeah, that would be a feat to behold. I started off on modems also, but it was a bit later than that, certainly was am to deal with some of that particular set of challenges.

Banks Glover: 7:47

If you remember, back then we didn't have video, you didn't have music, you had. Streaming was out of the question. There was no internet. The first iterations of internet were abysmal. They just weren't worth doing. I think the very first browser was one called Internet Explorer or something like that, or maybe it was Netscape. Much like Windows 3.11, it was rudimentary. We've seen tremendous changes.

Gene Liverman: 8:20

Yes, we have. You happen to have any idea what kind of timeframe it was Was that the church went from having standalone things into having what we would consider a network like we have today? I know there's a pretty extensive network at the church today.

Banks Glover: 8:35

I'm thinking it was within the last 10 years that we made the transition, albeit somewhat slowly. Everybody had wireless. Even down in the music room you couldn't get the wireless. So, Anne had to have a separate line coming in there. The machines were really never networked. It was such that if I were one machine and wanted to contact the preacher, I'd send them an email. Now we are fully connected. We've got the cameras around the church where someone can actually tie in and look and zoom in or speak to others. It's very extensive. The folks who have finally put this thing together much smarter than I. I've done a marvelous job. I look at it and much like I think I mentioned to you once is that you like the Mac machines and I'm a PC person. If somebody asked me about a Mac. I have to say I know nothing While I walk in and look at these machines. I can't help you anymore. You just far beyond me.

Gene Liverman: 9:40

Yeah, it's kind of an interesting thing the way that's worked out. Certain machines thrive in certain scenarios. I do like a Mac, but I also like PCs, and I like PCs that have Linux on them too. But it's all about the right tool for the job. In a lot of cases, what that right tool is changes every few years. It seems like.

Banks Glover: 10:03

I think you and I had mentioned that at one point is that I do love Linux. I have to stay with Microsoft for so much stuff, so many applications that are one off, that are only viable on a PC. I do love just the simplicity of a Linux machine, but I don't know that If one is set up properly, the user really doesn't know the difference. That's one transition that I've seen. Early days of computers, people understood this is a hard disk drive. This is how you take it out. This is how you replace it If you need to find a different driver. There were just so many things that folks knew about computers. Today, no one knows anything about computers. They only know applications. As a result, your operating systems have really honed in on this and made it simple for the user to deal with the different applications and move away from the required knowledge of computers.

Gene Liverman: 11:05

The operating systems have facilitated a lot of that. Not needing to know some of the other stuff too, and just the general advances in the technology, it's quite fascinating. I was actually using Linux as my full-time operating system at my last job for a year and a half or so. It's actually finally gotten to a point where, for the most part, you can actually do that today and not be missing out. There's a quivalence for so many of those Windows-only applications, but there are still the one offs that if you have a need to use them, there's really no alternative.

Banks Glover: 11:40

That's so true. I think Linux Torval, the guy who ported Unix over to the PCs, did a wonderful job. The community at large that keeps on improving the various distributions of Linux have done a wonderful job. But going back to where we are, at the church, everybody is on Windows. Windows has done a very good job of forcing your updates, not letting you miss things, which I think is a wonderful deal. With the advent of Windows 11, I think, being the last operating system at least that's what they tell us in sending the frequent monthly updates, they've done a fairly good job.

Gene Liverman: 12:25

Yes, it's going to be interesting to see how that one evolves. The whole idea of updating and what you run locally versus what you don't is really starting to change. On the audio-video side, how have you seen even just the equipment you use in the sound board or at the sound and video station? How has that changed over time? I know you said you started out with a tape recorder, but how is the sound board or the microphones and the other just individual bits and bobs of the day-to-day workings? How has that changed over time?

Banks Glover: 12:58

Our original setup. We had, I think, two wireless mics and they were okay. That's the best I can say. They were okay for speaking. It certainly could never be used for singing or any high-pitched voices, and at the time we had to change the settings on the lectern and the pulpit. If we had a female, you had to change your levels and such, not just the volume levels, but you had to change your trims and bass and such so they would pick them up best. We really didn't have a good hearing assist setup. We had one that was. It wasn't even good. We've moved to that. The cameras again, this is the third generation of cameras. The first one we had were these really big ones with long optical lenses, and where we've come today with the digital everything, that's amazing. When we first got this generation of cameras, the system that we were using I can't even think of the name of it right now, but we had four or five boxes that converted everything to everything and we recorded only to native AVI, which required each of us to carry a terabyte SSD drive with us to bring home to make edits and convert it to MP4 so we could upload it to the television station and to YouTube. And now the latest generation is going straight to that for the streaming, and it's so much simpler, it's so much faster. Before we got the new computer, all the heavy lifting was done in the computer and it was marginally slowed it down, and now, with a new computer, it's so much faster, it takes care of everything and I think that we really could, if we tried, have a smart monkey running the soundboards.

Gene Liverman: 15:04

That is the ideal, because nothing against people will volunteer, because you and I are both those people. But not everybody who volunteers needs or should have to be an expert to be able to do a and I say this in air quotes a normal church service. A trained monkey should be able to sit back there and do the basics.

Banks Glover: 15:28

You know that's so right. When I was, people were scared of the old 16 channel mixer with the sliders and all the knobs and such, and because I at one time was the only person working it, I tried to encourage others to volunteer. I had two retired pilots these are commercial pilots, these are the ones who fly the 747s and they said I could never learn to work this board. This scares me and you know it was an intimidating function. And then that's just the soundboard. That didn't include the cameras.

Gene Liverman: 16:04

And considering the number of knobs and levers in an airplane, especially with commercial aircraft, that's saying something.

Banks Glover: 16:11

And so so many people said no, I couldn't do this, I don't want to try, I don't really want to learn. Then at some point we started having two services and it worked well that the early service was not videoed so we could teach people how to use just the audio function. And it was a question of pay attention and when the preacher gets up before we start speaking, raise the lever up so that the mic is hot before he starts speaking, rather than waiting until he's halfway through the sermon before turning the mic on. So we have a group of folks who are well trained to do the early service and then those who are a little bit more comfortable with technology, doing the later services and streaming. We no longer have to record because it goes straight to YouTube and if we need to, we can download it, edit it and put it back. Youtube has been a tremendous benefit to us. The one thing that I do kind of miss, which is no longer an option, is that we have people far away outside the city who are not computer literate, who would never get on to YouTube for any reason, who would watch television In the local television station for the longest time would carry us. But then the demographics of cable providers say no, no, it no longer makes sense for us to have people here running programming, so we're going to buy programming and everybody down line is going to use that programming and local programming is no longer an option, so we no longer have that. I feel like we're missing some folks out there who could benefit from the ministry of seeing it but say lovey.

Gene Liverman: 18:08

Do you think those same people would only benefit from seeing it, or would they benefit from being able to hear it, and would they be interested in the audio only version?

Banks Glover: 18:19

That's an interesting question, gene. You and I very visually oriented. We watch our screen too many hours during the day and then after we finish eating supper we sit down and perhaps watch television. We're very visually oriented. I think that to be able to see it and hear it has the maximum impact. I suspect that there are folks out there who, like the old radio station days when we first did this, who would benefit from that, whether that's over WCOH or a local channel or whatever. However we get it to them, it could be beneficial. But I really think that in today's market you need to see and hear. It has a greater visual impact. One thing that I had people request, especially from out at Wesley Woods the local retirements is they say, well, how many people were at church today? And so I ended up having to, at some point when the congregation was singing, to scan the entirety of the congregation so that whoever's out there doesn't ask that question again. They can actually see the attendance. Of course, being a good Baptist, no one sits in the front rows and it makes it look like no one's there, and so you really do need to scan. Say, well, we've got 500 people out here in the back, but the first two rows are empty. That's just the fact of life for the Baptist Church.

Gene Liverman: 19:50

That it is the reason why the phrase back row Baptist is something that almost everybody has heard. So, just kind of following up on some of the stuff we've been talking about, I know you've seen a lot of change in the years you've been doing this. Do you think we're at a fairly stable place now? Where do you see a lot of things changing still as far as the way that we use technology in the church and for both during and for saving and sharing things that happen in the church?

Banks Glover: 20:23

Wow, that's a loaded question, gene. In 1965, I could not envision where we are today. My first computer that I ever saw was a 1973 in graduate school. It was a Spectra 360 IBM and you fed it punch cards and you didn't have a display. And that was at the time. The cats meow, there was nothing more powerful. Who could envision this? In the mid-80s, when I had the traveling computers, we had WordStar, harvard Graphics and Lotus. There was no audio, there was no video. I came and vision that Didn't see a need for it. Here we are. Your question is is this, in my mind, the pinnacle of requirements and benefits to the church? As far as I can see, what are we providing? We're providing a church service to the community at large, the world at large. In regards to running the church, we now have access to inside and outside cameras, as everywhere. We have control over the doors of who comes in, who does not. We have access to all of our required programming, finances, everything already in place on individual computers. What can I see in the future that would be required? Gosh, I don't know. I think that, if nothing else, we can rest on our laurels for another five or 10 years. I can't see any real thing coming down the pipe that would be beneficial to us. It's the same question as in an office. We have office 365. What more can we use? What more is available to be used in an office that would be beneficial? We have project management software. We've got financial control software. We've got tax software. What more do we need? Well, every day we see more games and such coming out on our phones. People have their names, their noses, in their phones. We have so much computing power I have in my little phone over here. I've got 512 gigabytes in the little chip. I've got most of the movies I'll never watch stored on here. I can't use more than half of it. New apps I don't see any new apps that are important coming out. I see a lot of games. Most of the games really don't entice me at all. I'm an old Tetris player. That's the best I can do. I don't know if I've answered your question appropriately, but are we at a good holding point for some period of time, I think with what we've got now? I just can't envision any way to improve upon it. We had this new guy come into our church who knew what he was doing. He got us a new software and got us a new computer and hooked all these things and got rid of all those extraneous boxes and problems that we had and gave us a software that none of us could have been aware of. It's just easy to use. What would permit a good, trained monkey to be able to produce a good church service?

Gene Liverman: 24:15

I think you answered it best when you were talking about how you took a vision in some of the earlier decades, because I feel the same way. I think we're in one of those times where we're going to have a lot of as far as things that relate to the church. We're going to have some incremental and small nice cities here and there, but as far as game-changing things, I have to imagine it's going to be a little while until we have another one of those big milestones. We thought we were doing really good when we got off of just regular modems, regular dial-up, and got some I say this fully an air quote some broadband internet which was completely unusable by today's standards. There's no way you could do a YouTube live stream over those kind of connections that we used to think were really great, but the time periods in between the two were just pretty significant. I know changes happen faster now, but I have to imagine it's going to be a little while.

Banks Glover: 25:13

I think it's your right. I recall when I first came into the church people would say banks, can you fix my computer? People would bring it up and typically there was nothing I could not fix. And all of a sudden we started getting things that I did not know how to do. And technology has been growing logarithmically for the longest time. Again, there was a time, 10, 15 years ago, when you and I both knew everything there was to know about a computer and all the peripheral devices. And today I'm so far behind and it's not that I have stopped learning, it's just that things are coming at me just too fast.

Gene Liverman: 25:57

I mean, I work in IT and I feel the same way. I literally do some of this stuff for a living, but the breadth of stuff to keep up with is just so much better than it was even just a few years ago.

Banks Glover: 26:09

now it's kind of mind-boggling, and you know one thing that I think about is that are we groundbreaking with what we're doing or are we at Central Baptist Church just matching the capabilities of other similar-sized churches? The First Baptist Church has had a video audio performance coming out for the longest time. I think one way that we have taken advantage of technology is that the last time I talked, they had four people required to run the audio and the video services, and the way that we've got it set up is one person can run all the audio and all the video and stay on top of it with one person. I think that is leveraging technology in such a powerful way. I think that we can match our output to any church out there, with perhaps the exception of some of the mega churches, and I don't know that there's. Pardon me for saying this for those folks who are not Central Baptist folks, but we really don't have a need for microphones for drums or for electric bass, guitars and such like this. We don't need that because the type of service we have is it's when folks call us a piss-cable light. We are a very traditional church. We occasionally have the bluegrass people come in, but we don't hook up to big amplifiers. It's when we have string quartets, we have the brass come in. It's very worshipful for us. Contemporary services are not something that we aspire to, so I think we can match anybody as far as our output.

Gene Liverman: 28:07

Yeah, I think we're, I think ours is in a really nice spot. I think there's a few things that a few almost tips or tricks or nice cities that we might be able to pick up from some of those more contemporary churches, like maybe doing a little bit better job of making some of the instruments that come in, and I'll just so that people who are either in the back or who are watching online or listening later can more fully enjoy the service. But I don't think we're talking anything super significant. I'm amazed at what we're able to do with one person at that booth. I think we're right on the cusp of if we tried to do any more, we would have to have somebody else back there too. But it is. It's fascinating what we're able to do with just one person back there, and it's all just because of how streamlined some of the processes are able to be. Now we're, you don't have to spend a lot of time working on some of them.

Banks Glover: 29:01

I think you're exactly right. Were I to continue again. I'm retiring in after my stint in December, but if I were to say I'd be there for the next five years, I would insist on having a third camera for certain things such as weddings and funerals. And to have a central located camera would be good, because when you're focusing on the minister from the right camera you catch the organized yawning and if you catch from the left camera you catch folks in the choir yawning. You know I'm being lied here because no one really younds on the service here, but you would be able to focus more directly onto the pastor and not have those distractions.

Gene Liverman: 29:49

Well, I know you were kind of making light of it away, but I mean to be honest, I've had services where the organist literally fell asleep and unfortunately they were either in camera or, in this one particular case, they were off camera. But where they sat there was a reflection of everything they did off of a window and a door that was right next to them and that window was in shot, and so everybody got to watch them fall asleep for that week, and it was all because of angles, like you were talking about. I actually think that third camera is a thing that we would really benefit from and something that I think we might actually do in the foreseeable future, if for nothing else because it'd be really nice to have kind of that generalized wide shot or be able to just kind of see the whole front of the church without being at an off angle, and especially for, like you were talking about, with weddings and funerals, where there's a lot more focus on that kind of center front, straight-on aspect of it. To kind of wrap us up, I wanted to kind of close out with your thoughts on what it is you've gotten out of your years of volunteering that might make somebody else interested in starting out volunteering what's been the most rewarding aspect of it for you personally.

Banks Glover: 31:08

Well, that's a loaded question.

Gene Liverman: 31:11

Those are my favorite time.

Banks Glover: 31:13

I have to give a little bit of background here and this is going to take a few minutes. My grandparents were the first couple married in the church in 1897. My father was a pediatrician here and he gave so much of his time I think he actually collected 50% of his receivables. My aunt was the very first female deacon in the entire Southern Baptist Convention, of which we once were members, and almost got kicked out of the church for having a woman deacon. Our family has always been one of volunteering. My first 50 years of life I didn't volunteer. It was just banks and banks alone. What really got me started volunteering was when my mother said that I needed to teach Sunday school and I told her I can't teach those old people. She said no, it's an opening for teacher for your peer group. I said what are you talking about? She said you need to teach the five to six-year-olds banks. I got so much from teaching the children. Then the next thing came out is that banks are a good cook. Why don't you start cooking for Wednesday night? Many times I would prepare for that. Actually, the last time I prepared I got a standing ovation. People appreciate what you do. I think it's the appreciation that people show and the fact that you know that we were all given gifts of the Spirit, and my gift is not knocking on doors or calling people. My gift that I can give back is attention to detail and doing the soundboard. It's so gratifying and people are appreciated. I recently had to record down in the Fellowship Hall a service for a guy's birthday and I put it on DVDs. I swear I think probably 20 times that's an exaggeration probably 10 times. He said banks. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you're doing that. I look back and this is forever. I've got a memory of this. When people appreciate what you do, you feel good about what you're doing and you know that you are doing a service for the Lord. It just feels great.

Gene Liverman: 33:34

I think that sums up the same way I feel about it. It's that knowing that you've done something that truly makes a difference to somebody is kind of a process thing. If you can have the ability to make that difference to a whole room full of people, then even better. Thank you very much for your time and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to let us hear your story. I will chat with you later.

Banks Glover: 34:02

Thank you, I do appreciate it and I hope that you don't just delete this one.

Gene Liverman: 34:07

No, I definitely won't.

Banks Glover: 34:09

Thank you very much, Gene.

Gene Liverman: 34:12

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