MP3 technology may be the musical saviour of the extraordinary number of Sydney Anglican congregations whose community outreach is being hampered by a drastic shortage of musicians.
Merrylands is at the heart of Sydney's "struggle street'.
But at the local Anglican Church, the Rev Nathan Killick has found that computer technology is the answer to the parish's musical resource problems.
When the parish's early Sunday morning service could not find an organist, the answer was to train a team of 70 year-olds from the congregation to utilise MP3 technology.
"We record a pianist live during the week and then download the MP3 on to our computer," Mr Killick says.
“It's not the ideal. It would better to have someone playing live, but it works fine for us.”
Merryland's innovative solution comes as new data reveals the appalling dearth of musical resources hampering ministry of many Sydney Anglican churches.
A Southern Cross survey of 330 Sydney Anglican congregations found the majority are musical "have nots', with many struggling to field even a couple of musicians.
Among these congregations is Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands.
The church battles to sing to an ageing ghetto-blaster playing tapes and CDs owned by members of the congregation.
"It is an embarrassing turn-off for outsiders," admits Bundanoon’s minister, the Rev David Pratt.
In contrast, Nathan Killick's Merrylands-based parish is a leader in using technology to reach out to their western Sydney community.
Power point is used in every Sunday service with videos embedded into those presentations about once a month.
"It's visual and emotive, so it’s really helpful in reinforcing what we are preaching about," says Mr Killick, who produces the videos himself on his home computer.
Amongst his recent productions was one on Christian persecution and another which used extracts from Archbishop Peter Jensen's presidential address which can be downloaded from sydneyanglicans.net.
"It really makes people feel like they were there," Mr Killick says.
Full results from the music survey were released to church-goers yesterday in sydneyanglicans.net’s sister publication Southern Cross.
For more information see Southern Cross Online
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