I’m feeling
like a proud parent today as my baby takes its first few tentative steps. In May of this year, expecting that 2016
General Conference of the United Methodist Church would provide no immediate
relief in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer persons
who participate and serve faithfully within the denomination, I took the step
to reserve the domains wearecompatible.com and wearecompatible.org. My thought was that, if the church once again
looks at us and says that we are incompatible, this would give myself and
others a platform from which to look back at them and say, “Yes we are!.”
Over the
past few months, through conversations and encouragement from many others, the
‘We Are Compatible’ podcast began to take shape. The first person to come aboard was my
co-host, Alex Shanks. I think, at first,
Alex thought that this was just some crazy idea that I had concocted and
wouldn’t follow through on. As time went
by, he began to see that I was serious.
The next person to join our little crew was Nick Federinko, our sound
editor. He said that he was on board as
soon as I told him the name of the website.
He immediately saw the potential of having a means for LGBTQ+ persons to
share their own stories in their own voices with the world.
I knew that
I needed other pieces as well though, and this was to be an audio
production. I needed music. The first name that came to mind was the
person who has provided the soundtrack to this reconciling movement for at
least these last few years that I have been involved, Mark Miller. I barely knew Mark Miller though, and I was
pretty sure he didn’t know me at all. I
also knew that I either wanted ‘Draw the Circle Wide’ or ‘Child of God,’ as our
theme music. While at General Conference
in Portland, I considered approaching him a few times, but I kept chickening
out. What if he said no? What if he thought the idea was
terrible? What if he wanted a fee for
using his music that I couldn’t afford?
Music is his livelihood and one of his gifts to the world. He had a right to make money doing it. I never got the nerve up to ask while in
Portland. After I returned to Ohio, I reached
out to Mark via Facebook. I didn’t even
have a real e-mail address for him. He
responded very quickly that I could use his music. He even suggested ‘Child of God,’ and told me
that there would be no fee for doing so!
I was ecstatic! At that point, it
became even more real. It also became
clearer that I actually had to make this happen.
 |
| Alex and I in the studio |
Then, I
began to wonder about the organizational structure and the financing of all of
this. What should this be? Should I form my own non-profit for this? Should it be run as more of a business? I wasn’t doing this with a desire to make
money. I just wanted to be able to share
stories in a way that others, even those who might not be fully supportive,
might be open to hearing them. Again,
when I didn’t even expect it, Equality Ohio, an organization that I give a
great deal of my time and energy to here in my home state, offered to allow me
have the funds for the podcast run through them. Perfect!
Now, I will admit that I am still a bit stressed about the finances for all
of this. There are costs involved. Alex
and I have determined that it costs about $80 per episode to produce the show,
and we estimate a total minimum budget of $10,000 to cover the full estimated two-year run. So far, the money that we have spent has come
from my own pocket, but, as a currently unemployed seminary student, I cannot
sustain that. Also, that just covers our
basic costs (studio time, file hosting, website, etc). It doesn’t include
purchasing our own microphones to be able to do creative things in the field or
small things like the reimbursement for the travel costs of those assisting us
in this effort. I am trusting that, just
as the other doors have opened when they needed to that provision will come as
well.
Please take a listen to our first episode at http://www.wearecompatible.org/episodes/
~ Culbs
Twitter: @culbs1138
