Equipping The Church To Effectively Use Technology

Church Tech Matters has been in existence for over 2 1/2 years, which blows me away. I didn’t have big aspirations for this blog when I started it, I actually felt like I had a lot to learn and thought this might help me learn what others were doing in the world of church technology. I didn’t see blogging as a serious medium and I expected this blog to be short lived, take it for a spin, then move on to something else, back to the real world.

Long before this blog was born, it took a long time for God to penetrate my heart with this idea that there is a real role for technology in the church.

• I resisted
• I ignored
• I didn’t care
• I criticized
• I pushed back
• I looked the other way

But it just became more real in my mind and in my heart. Once I started noticing and paying attention to how the church could use technology, it started making me crazy. I would rant and rave about how the church could do so much more with technology, yet they, as in pastors, staff, lay leaders and volunteers, just didn’t acknowledge that there was a better way to do it. (In reality, it’s not always intentional on their part.)

How much more obvious could the benefits of technology be? I would pull my hair out because the church just didn’t seem to see how much technology could help them. (If you know me, you now know where my hair went!) God softened me, He opened my eyes and showed me that it was up to me to do something if it was so important to me. I couldn’t continue to sit on the sidelines and criticize the church’s lack of knowledge and motivation concerning technology, I actually needed to step up and get involved.

He provided me with an opportunity to serve in my church in a way that fit this passion that He has given me. It wasn’t long after this that I started playing around with blogging and ultimately decided I needed to focus my blog on church technology.

That’s the history, now, back to the real world.

The real world is this – God has given me a heart to equip the church to effectively use technology, which includes through this blog, through my interaction with churches around the world and even at my own church.

In fact, the tagline for this blog from the very beginning has been just that:

Equipping the church to effectively use technology

I see God leading me in this direction more and more all the time. However, a good part of the last year and a half has been a challenging time for me in the church, and that alone reassures me that I’m heading in the direction that God wants me to go. Mary and I consider our recent past to be our wilderness experience as we watched our comfortable situation in our church turn bad, literally overnight, and after holding on for awhile, found ourselves moving on. We wandered for about a year, a long year, yet God was with us and there were many lessons learned in the wilderness. Someday, I may share more things from that experience, but for now, know that God set me on this course of equipping the church to effectively use technology 5 years ago or so and it has led me to where I am today and who knows where beyond this.