… and it’s been forming for some time.
It still isn’t complete either and if it comes off it probably never will be complete. But enough dancing, let me share it with you. First a little history.
Five years ago I stepped down from my main leadership roles at the church I attend. I walked away from being chief usher (steward) and I ran away from being a small group leader. The first had become staid and my heart was no longer in the specifics whilst I never felt I was the second. Since then I’ve been asking God what am I to do now?
About 3yrs back I became disenchanted with the idea of supporting the IT in the church I attend, but with no-one else who could (this isn’t a “nobody could replace me thing”) it remains with me… However, due to budget restraints, lack of understanding and lack of wanting to push the use of technology from the church side and with my interests covering more than just IT, I hatched a plan.
Now for me to say I hatched a plan is wrong. I find it easier to say it that way but the reality is God hatched it (I believe) and it’s my role to understand and facilitate it. If I can. A part of this can be seen in my personal vision document on my blog (link to vision) but that doesn’t really scratch the surface. The rest is covered by another URL I registered approx 13mths back – personally I didn’t believe it was still available** but no revelations today.
So I’ve been putting the site together, formulating the idea some more, identifying folks to help and generally feeling quite content that all was ticking along nicely and that it wouldn’t interfere with my current job or my role of support at my church. Then Jim (yes, the Jim behind CTM) came along and something he said made me tell him and since then it has taken on a more global feel than “my” originally envisioned local one.
So what am I talking about? I’m talking about the ethos of this site – that of volunteers serving volunteers and helping them to help the local church wherever that may be. Be it the UK, US, China, wherever we can reach I guess. The basic idea is to provide a central register / clearing house for techies. We’d place no restriction on where you were or what you needed help with other than the very general “if it has a plug on it” then we could likely find someone. The idea being to provide more than just IT support but to add in A/V/L, Policies, Management, Projects and so on.
The only real restriction was that the end church seeking assistance didn’t have access to a regular volunteer to do this themselves – and any end dealings regards remuneration would be between the volunteer and the church. And so my idea was born ….
But at this point it sits there fermenting in my head and prayer times.
What does God want of me?
What does God want of the idea?
Have I heard correctly?
What do you folks think?
Is this something you feel the smaller churches in your areas need?
Or am I way off track with this and just dreaming (I’m good at that)?
** It has been pointed out that the domain I registered could easily be seen as
‘borrowing’ from a well known established business so for now plans are still
in formation and the search for a name goes on.
Sounds like something I’ve been thinking on for some time. And it’s not just smaller churches that could benefit but the mid level of organisation. For example I was a member of a local deanery synod here in the UK, that’s a group of around 6 or 7 local anglican churches who could have really benefited from some centralised IT – though all stuff that could be provided at low cost/free.
I’ll be keeping an eye on the blog for developments
Glad to see you bringing this to light, Stu. It will be interesting to see how things move forward on this. Your timing…….better said, God’s timing is interesting. Other things are lining up for me personally that are just pushing me back to get focused on the right things. Let’s keep refining and further define things.
Hi Tim and thanks for the comment.
I confess my initial thoughts was only for the smaller church (less than 2 to 400 members) because these are the ones I see locally as struggling with little or no support.
It was my discussions with Jim that caused me to re-evaluate my stance before God and consider that the problem isn’t just local to me in Bridgend but worldwide.
I also confess I’m ultra nervous about this and will need copious encouragement / direction but I don’t plan on letting it sleep. It may also get talked about on my blog a bit more, but CTM has a greater reach than mine.
Jim – funny thing is I logged on to check the status of the plugins and WP revisions, etc and was going to write a short how to when I spotted this was still sat in draft.
God gave me a mighy kick – let me tell you.
And yes, God’s timing is the only thing I can put it down too.
Stuart,
Very interesting, as a supposed “techy guy” in a church of the size you mention people throw all sorts of queries at me and I get a lot of help from CTM. I can see a very definite role for what you have in mind & am watching with interest. I encourage you to “press on”
Stuart – interesting post and caught my attention as I have also been ruminating and praying on how I can get involved in just such an endeavor. I work for Google’s largest partner company, focused on doing Google Apps deployments for large and mid-size companies. Bringing cloud computing to churches and faith-based organizations is such a game changer for them – no costs for licensing, world-class systems for mail, calendar and collaboration and no real barriers to entry. I have started approaching small churches near my home in Northern CA and deployed Google Apps to my current and former home churches with great results. Every dime saved on IT infrastructure for these core services is one more dime to be put back into the offering and used to further His kingdom. Using my gifts in this way has re-energized my own faith life and has become my personal ministry.
So a simple question – how can I help? Anybody need inside details or an assist with Google Apps? I have deep contacts into Google engineering and product management and would be glad to share.
~BradS
Brad,
What a great opportunity to use the skills and knowledge you have to help churches deploy those solutions. As one of the IT volunteers at our small church, going Google Apps could be HUGE. But, I just haven’t had the time to sort out how to make it all happen.
PLUS, I can easily see how this could appeal to quite a few of the churches in our area.
I am very interested in learning more about it, how to set things up, how to handle the migration, etc.
One or more of the other CTM contributors has done this as well (I believe). Perhaps we could set up an online meeting to discuss? Tokbox, Ustream, dimdim, you name it.
I’m in.
Jim and all,
I’ve been working at this in my local area for some time by developing conversations with Pastors and lay techies in my local area (Atlantic Canada) for several years. The response hasn’t been much as of yet. At least here pastors don’t “get” technology, or more to the point they are hard pressed to see it outside of Sunday morning. Certainly if the conversation extends beyond plugging something in there’s a high risk of mego (“my eyes glaze over”).
Two of us did set up churchtecheast.ca but it hasn’t seen much activity – at least yet. I think this is along the lines of what Jim is thinking.
I have had super conversations with one gentleman who is ministry staff at a local summer camp who has an appreciation from a business standpoint and who is a bit of techie himself.
Bottom line: yes I think it’s a solid idea, but it’s hard slogging, at least for me here, right now.
Thank you all for commenting. This is a concept that many of us share a heart for. I’m thinking we need a way to pull together these various sites that some of us have set up for our local areas. Maybe a wiki type thing where we can maybe begin to see the greater potential here.
Maybe it makes sense to use Google sites or something similar. I’ll look at that and share it if I get something practical together.
Brad, any insights you have are greatly appreciated on using any Google apps related tech. I have churchtechmatters.com email hosted at google and many of the CTM contributors do have a CTM email address. So, my point is, we have access to use many of the google cloud technologies available.
I know of others who have set up a site similar to what Rick has done.
Loving seeing all the comments on this.
Not wanting to cripple any discussione here but can I suggest we repair to the forum for ongoing discussions? Post is here: http://forum.churchtechmatters.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=53
@Ken – thank you for the encouragement as I certainly need it.
@Brad – wow o wow. We have an inside to google now, that is so uber cool. How can you help – stay tuned I guess. In the meantime I’ll drop you an email and we can discuss other options and how you can see more of the ‘plan’.
@Greg – good idea and without wanting to stop such a meeting happening I’d love to be a part of that even if it means I stay up late on a day off.
@Rick – cool. I’ve applied to be ‘on the list’ even though I’m in the UK. It definitely sounds like it’s a similar idea and my pastor does a ‘mego’ impression most days of the week!
@Jim – it is of course still very much up for discourse as to whether we use CTM’s name and re-direct it or just use CTM’s reach to advertise but as you know I have no bone over what name is used but I do feel a fresh name may just help it work better.
As my comment above says – lets movethis to the forums if you guys are willing?
Pingback: Light Shines
Pingback: Website for Church Techies – Church Tech Matters « The Fractal Elephant