Give learning a chance

Technology is huge.  The mention of the word conjures up a variety of different things for anybody and everybody.  It’s no wonder that many people know just enough to get by.  It’s interesting, people who don’t live immersed in technology will sometimes comment about how did you learn all of this stuff and the simple answer is just spending time and figuring it out.  The more you learn, the more confident you become in what you are doing, that is true for anything.

I enjoy troubleshooting and making something work and even work better.  I relate it this way, I expect my car to start when I turn the key.  I am no expert with cars, engines, transmissions etc.  and I trust someone who is immersed in that world to be able to fix my car when it won’t start.  I don’t really want to know how to fix my car, in my mind, I have more important things to do, actually not more important things, but other things I would rather spend my time and energy on.  I would like to know what might have caused my car to not start and what I might do differently.  I just had my starter rebuilt because my car wouldn’t start, it would start, it just took a few tries.  My mechanic says it’s a fairly common thing and will likely occur again in another 80000-100000 miles.  So now I know.  I’m basically a starter expert, in my mind. wooohooo  So ask me anything about your starter and I’ll point my finger and say go see that guy, he will fix you up.  

Anyway, I think I’m rambling.  My point is this, many people don’t want to know how their computer works, they just scream when it stops working.  They are not going to know details of spyware or slow internet connection or anything, they just know it’s broke and it needs to be fixed.  That’s well and good and I will venture to fix it, whether it’s at church or otherwise.  But there’s more.  It does no good for me to clean spyware, viruses, or do anything else if I don’t educate the user on how to prevent the same from happening again. 

Education occurs when you can break something down into manageable pieces.  The interesting thing is, even the most non-technical person can learn basic steps to prevent spyware or whatever, although they have to want to do it.  Anyone who does any kind of computer repair or support has probably been asked to fix the same problem a second time, even after equipping that person to prevent it.  So there’s only so much you can do, but there are some that want to know more, they just haven’t had the opportunity given to them in a way that is easy to understand.  

Whether it’s in the church or otherwise, but especially in the church, teach your people, educate them!  Equip them to use this technology to reach their world for Christ.