The Augustine Project
Record One Story
A parish program that costs nothing, needs no equipment, and can be run by two volunteers on a single afternoon.
This is yours. Take it.
Every page here is free. Print it, photocopy it, hand it out, put it in a bulletin, post it on your parish website. There is no licence, no fee, no registration and nobody to ask.
Adapt it as you like. Change the questions, change the wording, put your parish or diocesan name on it and run it as your own program. The only thing we ask is that a version you have changed not be presented as published by The Augustine Project.
In every parish there are people who remember a church that no longer stands, a village they left, a language their grandchildren do not speak, a faith they kept when keeping it was difficult. Almost none of it is written down. When they die it goes with them — not because anyone was careless, but because nobody ever asked.
A life does not have to be historically famous
to be historically
irreplaceable.
What the program is
One parishioner sits with one older parishioner and asks a short list of questions while a phone records. That is the whole method. Twenty minutes can produce a record a family may value for generations.
How a parish runs it
- Print the interview sheet and the consent card below. Photocopy as many as you need.
- Name two volunteers. No training is required; the sheet does the work.
- Set aside a Sunday afternoon in the hall. Invite anyone over seventy, and anyone who wants to record a parent.
- Record on any phone. The family keeps the original file. The parish keeps a copy only if the narrator consents.
- Send us nothing at all if you prefer. These stories belong to the families who made them.
The materials
The ten questions — printable sheet Consent & details card
What a parish should not do
- Do not wait for good equipment. A phone recording made this month is worth more than a studio recording never made.
- Do not present it as preparation for death. The invitation is to ask while they can answer.
- Do not keep the only copy. The family holds the original; the parish holds a copy.
- Do not record anyone who has not given consent on the card.
Why the Augustine Project
Augustine's Confessions is one of the most influential early sustained first-person examinations of a life in the Western tradition — his mother's speech, his own errors, the ordinary texture of a household. It exists because someone thought an interior life was worth the trouble of recording. This program applies the same conviction to the people in your pews.
For religious communities, this page is the wrong offer
A parish has families, and families have someone with a phone. A congregation of sisters usually does not. Where the median age is in the eighties and the motherhouse is being sold, there is no niece to hand the recorder to, and what is needed is the work done rather than a method to follow.
If there is an aging religious community in your diocese, send them here instead. Jubilee accounts, founding histories, and an honest answer about what can be done in the time that remains.
If you would rather it were written properly
Running it yourselves is the point of this page, and most parishes should. But a closing parish, a retiring pastor or an aging religious community sometimes needs the work done rather than organised.
I am a writer. I interview one person for about an hour by secure video and write what they tell me into finished prose — not a transcript and not a scrapbook, but a piece of writing a congregation can still read in fifty years. Nothing is invented; where the evidence ends, the writing says so. Nothing is published or shown to anyone without the written permission of the person interviewed.
If there is a closing or changing parish, a retired priest, or an aging religious community in your diocese whose memory should be preserved, tell me who to contact. If you received my letter, I will complete one pilot at no charge for the person you name: one interview, one finished narrative of roughly 1,200 to 1,500 words, and one round of factual corrections.
Send me one name What a Legacy Interview involves The Congregation Anniversary Book — $9.99
This works as well for a congregation as for a person. A retiring pastor, three founding members remembering the building fund, a women's guild recording what it did across forty years. Record separately, send separately, and I will draw them into one account. Nothing leaves this device while you record: listen back, start over as often as you like, and send only when you are ready.
This browser cannot record.
Use Safari on an iPhone or iPad, or Chrome on Android or a computer. You can still choose an existing voice memo below and send it through this page.
Already have a voice memo? Upload it here instead of recording again.
MP3, M4A/MP4, WAV, WebM or OGG; maximum 40 MB.
Listen to it.
Where should it go?
Your recording has arrived.
It is here on my side now, safely stored, and you do not need to do anything else. An acknowledgement is on its way to the email address you gave.
Your reference:
I listen to every one myself. You will hear back from me directly.