Posted by Zack Hubert

As I’ve traveled the country visiting many churches I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon: sometimes IT ministries, in an effort to serve their church well, become a bottleneck to the mission of the church. Though largely unintentional, the effect is the crippling of the communications and community ministries. Here are some reflections I hope can help church IT ministries become a mission enabler.

“Not Invented Here” Culture

Why were they the bottleneck? Because for varying reasons, they decided to build everything themselves. This has been labeled as the “not invented here” culture and is a very bad thing in resource-constrained organizations.

Of course, there are some things that absolutely need to be built in the context of the church; these are things that are so unique to the mission of that particular church that no existing technology would fit. Alternatively, perhaps God has given a particular vision for a technologist to serve their church in a specific new way…in these cases, charge ahead as fast as you can and recruit more to your cause.

However, to pick a ludicrous and hopefully illustrious example:

If the ministry needs a word processor then buy Microsoft Word and let them get on with writing.

Do less, and you’ll do more

There are fewer things than you might think that are unique from church to church when it comes to technology needs, so an excellent Technologist will apply their limited resources upon those unique things, rather than blockade ministry through trying to do too much themselves.

Of course, if you make technology an end in itself, your mission will always be crippled. My guiding principle is that the goal of technology is to serve the church and it does that by getting out of the way and achieving the results that ministry demands.

Put technology in its place…put it in service to the church.