The Myth of Security

I have been quiet for some time now, but it is time to start commenting again.  As I write this particular entry we are in the height of leaf season in Northern Vermont. The temperature is starting to fall and we turned on the heat in my house last night.  The season is undeniably beginning to change.

The seasons are changing in other ways, too. Last Spring my secular workplace informed our entire office that we would be closing down and all operations would be moving to New Hampshire.  When the dust settled we found that half the staff was to be laid off, including myself.  For the third time in twelve years I was to be looking for a new job because of a layoff. 

When I began my adult working life I considered the possibility of being laid off to be remote.  Layoffs were something that happened in mismanaged large companies and I had no intention of going there. Then reality hit.  The first time I was laid off was when I was in college and working for the City of Lowell (Massachusetts) in the Library, due to Proposition 2½.  I was laid off one day, and picked up the next day on another budget line item.

So, what have I learned?  First, there is no such thing as ‘security’ in this world.  Everything is temporary, especially jobs, and especially when you are working for someone else.  You can mitigate the risk, but it never goes completely away.  Sooner or later you will likely face a job loss.  Second, God will take care of you.  Always. 

When I was laid off this last time I went back to my office and prayed.  I thought about where I was in life, what God had done in the past, and asked myself one crucial question, “Did God still want me to stay in Vermont?”  Strangely enough, the answer I received came out of silence.  God had previously called me to Vermont.  He had NOT told me that He was done with me here.  Therefore, I knew that God would provide me with work to enable me to stay here.  He did.  Within two months of my layoff date I had a job offer.  The work environment is ideal, the job is flexible, I ended up working for a Christian supervisor, my job has a certain prestige to it and I work in a fertile field. 

When you go through hard times, ask God what He wants you to do.  Ask first, not last, and listen to Him.  Sometimes the answer will come even through His silence!  And know that He will take care of you no matter the answer.

 

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."  Phil 4:6 (NIV)

Educational Return on Investment

I have been considering over the last several years the value of education, and what might be termed the 'return on investment' it might provide. I read an article yesterday that dealt with the overwhelming cost of obtaining a law degree and the crippling effect it has on graduates. I can see this in my own daughter; she just completed a year in law school and I know what debt she carries. The article made the point that in most cases the debt is likely to take many years to get rid of, if at all. There is an overabundance of lawyers and the field is shrinking.

Then there are the theology majors. The so-called 'entry-level' degree is a Masters of Divinity. A traditional MDiv will take 3 years of full-time study and cost anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000. The typical graduate will join a field of graduates all vying for pastoral positions which pay in the vicinity of $25,000 in salary (other benefits MAY be included, but no guarantee). As a matter of fact, the average church in the United States has 75 people and the pastor is likely to be bi-vocational. Return on investment? I would say that there is very little.

This raises a question in my mind. If the return of investment is so low, why do it? Especially for a minister who is already ordained, what's the point? There are only a couple reasons to pursue an advanced degree in ministry. One is to advance your skills or keep your skills sharp. Another is for the 'prestige' of an advanced degree. A third reason would be to allow the recipient to teach in a more formal setting (at a District educational center, for instance). A fourth reason, at least in our denomination, is that there is a requirement for ordained elders to participate in continuing education.

A better option might be to take advantage of free or low-cost educational opportunities according to a plan of education you draw up yourself. There are free courses available online from places like Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Covenant Theological Seminary. Low cost courses are available from Nazarene Bible College and others. Why not look at a Master's level program from a legitimate school and see if you can duplicate it, or come close to it, by using these kinds of resources? If you honestly pursue the plan and meet your goals, at the end you could even print yourself a certificate and hang it on your wall.

The typical response by many in our field is that this is simply not the same as earning an advanced degree from an accredited institution. Yet, if it brings the knowledge and skills that you need, who cares? Abraham Lincoln did not seem to find his self-education in law a problem either when practicing law or as a politician. Maybe we are becoming too caught up in the formalities to recognize what the end goal should be...ministry.

New Frontiers in Communication

Imagine a church where the pastor can keep up with the daily lives of his or her people without ever leaving their desk or talking on the phone. Where a sick church member can hear the sermon from the last service without the time and expense of cutting and delivering a tape or CD for them. Where the pastor can send a birthday greeting or note of encouragement to someone without using a postage stamp or having a three day lag in delivery. Where a person searching for a church can find information on service times and ministries before ever walking through your door, and you can make an announcement to the entire church or to the prayer chain by sending out a single message! Sound like science fiction? It was until a few years ago.

Talk to any preacher and they will tell you that their primary job is communication. Our job is simply to communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ in such a manner that the hearer can understand and assimilate the message, which will then be used by the Holy Spirit to change that person’s life through repentance and acceptance of Jesus as their personal Savior. Other jobs within the church also involve communication. Teaching a Sunday School class, one-on-one discipleship, running a board meeting, facilitating communication in counseling, writing copy for ads or newsletters. The pastor is a communicator.

Seeing all the emphasis on communication within the church and specifically within the job description of the pastor, we have to ask ourselves “how can we best communicate to our audience”? The first thing we need to recognize is that our audience is changing. Along with that change comes a shift in the methods of communication our audience prefers. We are accustomed to communicating with our people through the sermon, through the printed word and face-to-face or by phone. But now we can add to the mix several other methods. Television and radio are two familiar technological tools. But how about a church web site, texting, IM services, eGreeting cards, Facebook and other social networking sites, streaming audio and video, church ‘listserv’, YouTube and the classic podcast? It is the rare church that makes full use of even a few of these methods. The irony is that our people, and the people we so desperately want to reach, use these communications media daily.

The church has an unfortunately well-deserved reputation for being ten years behind everyone else on technology issues. We may not be able to affect the whole church, but we can affect the place we serve. We can use the gifts God has given us to reach people through these means.

Here are a few tips:

1. If you don’t know what one of those terms used above means, do a search on the web and find out!
2. You don’t have to use all of these communication techniques, but picking and using two or three should be enough to get you started.
3. It is not necessary to be fancy, spend lots of money or be flashy, just informative and professional. Many of these are actually free or included with other services you already use. A big bang for your budget buck!
4. If you want to get started but don’t know how…find a responsible teenager and ask them to help. They'll be thrilled!
5. Involve various people in your church in administering these ministries…it helps to assimilate people and relieves pressure on you. Do NOT relinquish final authority on any of these media, however.
6. Realize that there is likely to be inertia in your church and on your board.

You can take one of several approaches. The first is to wait on initiating anything until you get approval. The best way is to talk it up until they think it was their idea in the first place. The second way is to simply go ahead and get something simple started and wait until people notice. Or third, you can do nothing and find yourself increasingly handicapped.

When I started the Facebook account for my own church I wasn’t sure of the reaction I was going to get. Within a week I had 8 people listed as members of the group. Not bad, considering we are a small church running in the 20’s. I also noticed another interesting thing…fully 75% of those people were under 30 and most were under 25. This is the demographic our church needs to reach, and I bet your church does too. Now, realize that each of those individuals have literally scores of Facebook ‘Friends’ who therefore can access your group and find out about your church.

There are many new means of communication out there, and one author has suggested that this is just the beginning. So, if you want to be a pastor and lead a church, then please do lead the way and take the good news of the Gospel to new frontiers!

Happy Podcasting!

.

Technology and the Minister: Email

When you think of the Internet the image that normally comes to mind is that of the graphics and flash of the World Wide Web. The WWW, though, is only one piece of a larger whole which we call the Internet. One of the very first elements of the Internet is Email. Broadly defined “E-mail (electronic mail) is the exchange of computer-stored messages by telecommunication” (source: http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid40_gci212051,00.html) . At it’s most basic an email message is a text letter sent from one person to another.

Am email message has several advantages over its hard-copy ancestor. First, it is faster. The typical ‘snail mail’ message takes between one and three days to be delivered, while an email message is typically delivered within minutes if not seconds. Second, it is available anywhere you can get to an internet connection. If you are using a web-based email system (even AOL has a web interface) then you can access your messages or send a message from virtually anywhere in the world you can access the web. Snail mail can be sent from anywhere, but you can only receive it at designated locations. In other words, you can send someone a birthday card from any mailbox, but you can only get your incoming mail at your mailbox. Third, email is paperless and most systems will allow you to ‘attach’ documents of various kinds. You can send someone a multi-page spreadsheet or document by the push of a button. Fourth, email is (or can be) free, while snail mail requires paper, envelopes and stamps. With a significant amount of mail going out even the paid services become economically feasible.

Another feature of email that enhances it usefulness is the Distribution List. This is a way of designating a group of people who will receive a single email. For a mailing sent to every member of the church, for instance, in snail mail you would have to print a letter to each, fold them, stick them in envelopes and stamp them. To do the same thing with email you would write a single email message, enter the name of the distribution list (‘All Church Members’ or some other easily remembered name) and hit the ‘send’ button.

One last advantage of the email address. Since the world has moved inexorably into the “Age of Communication” more and more people have come to expect to be able to contact others in this way. Placing your email address on your corporate literature tells the world that you are not stuck in the past and that you are opening the doors. Psychologically it is a wise move, and it shows marketing savvy as well.

Technology and the Minister: Technology Overload

The term ‘Technology Overload’ is a strange one to western ears. Technology is always supposed to be 'good', isn't it? How can you have too many gadgets? That seems to run contrary to our culture. But this is a matter which ministers must pay close attention to in order to actually perform ministry.

The key question here is, “What does this technology do for me and is it worth the effort?” Each gadget or technology which we decide to use should have a specific task or set of tasks which it handles. The end result must save enough time, money and effort for ministry purposes to make the effort productive. If it does not, then the technology actually hinders ministry.

A simple example would be as follows. A minister decides to use a calendar software package on his laptop to keep track of events because it has a nice graphical interface. However, the package does not support imports from his current software on his PDA. Each event is going to have to be entered by hand into the new package. After entering, the new package requires the user to perform a series of steps when trying to print a comprehensive list, and a further set of steps if the user wants to break events into categories (Birthdays, Church events, Personal events…). In this case the nice interface is costing the pastor much time and effort. This translates into more time spent in front of a computer monitor than in ministry and therefore is not worth the effort.

Another example of a positive experience might go like this: The pastor needs to send birthday and anniversary cards out to a number of people. He knows that these people are technologically savvy and check their email frequently. He goes onto the Internet to a favorite site and selects an Electronic Greeting card for each of them, spending about 3 minutes each. Not only does he do this in the same time it would take to write the cards by hand, he saves the cost of the card, the cost of the postage and the card is delivered nearly instantaneously. As long as the recipients regard an e-card in the same way they regard a physical card, he has found a way to leverage technology to his advantage.

When considering new technology, ask yourself these questions:

• Is it going to save me more money than it costs (including labor time)?
• Is it going to save me time over what I am doing now?
• Is it going to open new possibilities for me?
• Is it going to save me effort?
• Is it going to be more accurate, and does that matter to me?

If you can answer at least three of these questions positively, then it probably is a good thing. If you can answer four positively, then it definitely is a good decision to incorporate the technology. Anything less than three, don’t bother.

Remember, technology is supposed to help you do a job. If it doesn’t do that, then it is failing to give you what you need.

Technology and the Minister: The PDA

Society is becoming increasingly mobile and hectic. Demographics prove this out, but all we really have to do is look at our schedules. The typical pastor may spend his or her day between several different locations, the church office, the hospital, a meeting at McDonalds and a conference at the District office. In between all of that the pastor is expected to find time to study to pray, to prepare a sermon, to put together a program for Sunday morning, do a Sunday School lesson and a devotional for the Wednesday night Study. How do you keep it all straight, never mind accomplish it all?

One of the best tools you can use to accomplish these tasks and make life easier is the humble PDA, or “Personal Digital Assistant”. Typical models range anywhere from US$100 to US$500 in 2008. The most useful for the money tend to be in the range of US$200-US$300, with my personal favorite the Palm Tungsten E2 being US$200.

Those unfamiliar with PDA’s assume they are fancy electronic calendars and not much more. If that were so I would still recommend them, because of the many features the calendars employ. The typical PDA calendar application, such as Palm Desktop, will allow you to keep track of events and set reminders for them. But it will also allow you to sort and categorize entries, displaying only what you need. It will also allow you to synchronize with the Palm Desktop calendar application on your office PC, or with MS Outlook should you prefer. But their usefulness only begins with the calendar.

Scenario – you have taken a group of teens on Saturday to a District Bible Quizzing meet. It is over an hour away from home. It has begun snowing quite heavily and you know that it is not worth going home and coming back, even though you have a Sunday program and a sermon to complete. Solution - You are not worried, because you had the foresight to upload your sermon and the bulletin outline to your PDA. You go upstairs and grab a Hymnal, find a quiet corner to set up your Infrared Keyboard and within three hours it is all done. When the quizzers are finished you drive them home, go to your office and upload the documents to your PC to print them.

Just exactly this happened to me about three years ago. If it had not been for my PDA, I would have had a very hard time finishing everything without putting in a very long night. I attended a seminar with the well-known churchplanter Rev. Ralph Moore of Hope Chapel in Kaneohe, Hawaii about 8 years ago. The seminar was conducted in Nashua, New Hampshire. While having lunch he told us that normally he was traveling for several days out of the week. He would compose his sermons and notes on his PDA, then on Friday he would connect to the Internet to send the documents to his office where his secretary would print them. By the time he got home his sermon and other materials were on his desk waiting for him.

What did I use to edit my documents? Believe it or not I used Microsoft Word, through an application called DocumentsToGo. My PDA writes to native Word format, and I can even keep track of church statistics on-the-fly with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. These applications come bundled with the PDA. Keeping track of expenses is just as easy with the PalmSource “Expense” application. Simply set up your categories and start entering information.

Another very useful application is the “Contact” database, also included with the PDA. This interfaces with your Calendar application and displays items like birthdays on the calendar. Email is easy to compose and you can send it when you next connect to the Internet, either through your desktop PC or by WiFi (if so equipped).

Need inspiration or relaxation while out and about? Use your PDA along with a set of earbuds and listen to the MP3’s you have stored on your PDA or memory card. For an even better experience when traveling you can use your PDA hooked up to your car stereo using a CD-to-Tape converter (US$10-US$20).

One of the blessings you will find right away is the speed and stability of the operating system. The Palm OS is extremely stable, and is nearly instant when turning on. Setup is easy and quick, and is very intuitive. Writing with a stylus should you choose to do so can be quick but takes a little getting used to.

There are many different ways to use your PDA effectively for ministry, and many different add-ons, but it can be life-transforming right out of the box. All of this from a small device that will slip easily into a suit jacket pocket.