Leadership Institute – Final Thoughts
Posted on October 13, 2006
Overall, the Leadership Institute was an incredible experience and I got to hang out with some really interesting people. There are others who covered the details in much better detail than I did and Clif has a list of all the posts here. Now that it’s over, it’s hard for me to narrow down what I got out of it. I think the main benefit to me is many new relationships, my world and reach has been expanded in many ways. So here are my final thoughts in no particular order.
It was great to hang with the guys from COR, I’m really wanting to be onsite more often than I have been, staying connected is important.
In our final session, the IT panel discussion, was probably the best, for me at least. As I mentioned earlier, we had about 20 people from all over the U.S. and most were out there on their own, trying to get a grip on all things related to church IT. I love reading blogs of those of you in big churches, sometimes with a full staff, because you all are really leading the way, but honestly, I think the majority of churches are like the 20 or so represented in this discussion. I wrote a post about this recently but never published it (never quite finished it) but that was my point. I spent 2 years or so in my old church playing network administrator, desktop support, hardware and software buyer, technical support, on call tech guy, tech counselor, documenter, inventory hardware and software, standardize everything, centralize all things technical, part time, oh yeah and volunteer. I spent up to 15-20 hours a week at church, usually late into the night, getting things done and keeping things going. By the time I left, we had close to 50 desktops and 3 servers and on the verge of buying 1 or 2 new servers. It was a great time and a great experience.
Last Saturday, I sat in a room full of people doing the exact same things, which is really encouraging to see. I know I had no clue what I was doing, which is a big reason why I start this blog, to find out what others were doing. My heart really reaches out to these people, both those that were there last week and everyone else, who are working to understand how to best use technology to enhance the ministry of the church. Not surprisingly, a big focus of our conversation, both in this session and otherwise, was on ChMS. I would like to do more in this blogging community to reach out and support the one man/woman IT department in the church. How’s that gonna work? I don’t know, exactly, you tell me.
It was an honor to meet Paul Ervin and Lynda Leonard of the Foundation for Evangelism. The Foundation for Evangelism is the organization that sponsors Web Empowered Church. They are doing big things for the Kingdom and I really enjoyed spending time with them, hearing about some things going on.
It was also great to meet Mark Stephenson, the Director of Web Empowered Church. I have known of him and his work for quite a while and knew he was doing big things but to meet him and spend time with him takes it to a whole new level. He is extremely knowledgeable and has such a big heart for using technology and the internet for ministry. Web Empowered Church is an open-source content management system, based on Typo3, designed for the church that is always growing and evolving into something more. It was an honor to meet you, Mark, I enjoyed hanging with you and talking about anything and everything.
Oh yeah, how could I forget, I’m pretty sure Mark wrote a book! You know how authors usually talk about their books a little too much? Not so much with Mark, but I think he’s so intelligent, he manipulated us to talk about it more than he did, kind of a real world, viral marketing thing. He did write a book, though, on Web Empowered Church and it comes out in December, here is a link to information about it.
This book is intended to help generate Internet ministries and produce new possibilities in church ministry including worldwide evangelism.
I will definitely let you know when it is available, I’ll be picking up a copy of it, as well, I’m sure.
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