There were some really good developments at the Southern Baptist Convention last week (here is a quick summary). I wanted to listen to a couple of speeches in particular, so I took to the Web, confident that the largest Protestant denomination in the world would have the audio up a few days later.
Imagine my delight to discover SBCTapes.com, which is apparently My Source for S.B.C. & SBC Pastors’ Conference Presentations. Yes indeedy, to get a recording of Danny Akin’s and Al Mohler’s speeches, I just have to download and print out the PDF of the order form. Then I can use a fax machine (which apparently people still have) to send in the order form, or I can mail it to them. They will then send me a CD in the mail.
The best part is that each CD is only $9.00! (Plus $2 shipping & handling for the first CD and $1 for each subsequent one.) So for a mere $21, I can have both the messages I wanted within about 6 weeks.
In the meantime, I guess I can keep busy with thousands of hours of free downloadable audio from Desiring God. Or Mars Hill Church. Or Monergism. Or Sovereign Grace. Or the Gospel Coalition. Or any of the many, many churches and organizations who’ve figured out it’s not very hard to put audio online.
(I should also point out that my own denomination, the PCA, is apparently behind even our Baptist brothers, as there doesn’t seem to be any way to get ahold of MP3’s from our General Assembly.)
Wiser Time 
Doesn’t surprise me a dang bit, friend. One of the SBC State Conventions (yes, there are two in Texas…another division discussion for another day) recently paid out the ying-yang for a super computer…that can only list ONE EMAIL ADDRESS PER CHURCH to which all correspondence is sent.
Yeah…”we” can tell you how to get to heaven…it just may not be the most efficient way
=)
That’s pretty funny. My husband is the IT guy at one of the organizations you mentioned. When he was newish to the job, he had to take the printers offline for some reason, and to his surprise, there was an unexpected outcry about the “broken” printers. Since he rarely prints, copies or mails anything, he was surprised that anyone even noticed. He was like, “Hey, who prints???”