Discover how to leverage technology in your church

“What’s your favorite color?”

As adults, we typically do not ask each other this, but for kids, it is an especially important question.

My four-year-old daughter has a knack for both picking up on details about people and mentioning them in a positive way. She will notice if one of her fellow students is wearing a new shirt and say how much she likes it. She will compliment a teacher on her new haircut, telling her it looks nice. And when she colors a picture for someone, you’d better believe that it will have a lot of that person’s favorite color in it because that is one of the first questions she would have asked them.

Everyone appreciates it when someone else does a nice thing for them, but when that nice thing has been personalized, it makes it even more special.

Admit it; you’ve done this before too. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I’m at a restaurant having a meal with my family. The server brings the food out, distributes the dishes to each person, and checks to see if everything is in good shape. We confirm, and she replies, “Great, enjoy your meal!” I respond, “Thanks. You too!”

How embarrassing! If I had stopped to think about what I was going to say, I would quickly realize that she was going to continue working, not sit down and enjoy a meal, but I did what came naturally and returned the pleasantry in kind.

This past Sunday, my church, along with many other congregations, observed Good Shepherd Sunday. While not an official holiday in the Church Year, it has been historically called that because the Fourth Sunday of Easter focuses on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. 

The Gospel reading this Sunday was from John 10:1–10, but I want to draw your attention to what Jesus says just a short time later in verse 14.

“I know My own and My own know Me.” (John 10:14 ESV)

What a wonderful thing to have a Savior who cares about us so much that He left the glory of heaven and became a human being so that He could live and die for us and our salvation. Jesus is a Savior who really, truly knows us.

We as leaders in the Church are called to follow Christ’s example as a shepherd and care for His flock. In fact, the word pastor is a Latin word that means “shepherd.” As every good pastor will tell you, you can’t care for your flock until you get to know them.

At Concordia Technology Solutions, we hold weekly product meetings with members of our marketing, support, and development teams. We discuss what happened during the week and what tasks will be accomplished in the coming week. This is also a time for us to share feedback we’ve heard from the users of our software.

We get a lot of great ideas on a daily basis, but I’ve learned I have to be careful in how I bring them up. If I say, “What do you think, can we add this new feature?” it’s likely that I will get a tongue-in-cheek response from a developer such as, “Yes, we can do anything ... with time and money.”

I’ll admit I’ve used that phrase in other meetings as well. While there is a certain level of sarcasm to it, the reality is that technology has improved so much over the years that (almost) anything is possible, as long as you have sufficient resources.

One of my favorite board games to play when I was a kid was a two-person game called Stratego. The goal of Stratego is to capture the flag of the opposing player while protecting one’s own. Each player starts with a large number of pieces, and each piece has a ranking. The players battle those pieces against each other until one can capture the other’s flag.

Throw out the phrase “bullet journal” in conversation, and you’ll likely get a variety of responses: everything from “Oh, I’m not ‘arsty’ enough for that,” to “This is the single greatest tool I’ve found for organizing my life,” and a lot of reactions in between. While some take a more elaborate approach to bullet journaling, others use their notebook or journal to simplify.

The COVID-19 has quickly changed almost every aspect of our lives, including our worship lives. Many churches are choosing not to hold worship services in person, but are moving online through recorded videos or livestreaming.

When I started as a church office administrator, one of my first projects was to update member records in a spreadsheet. As I sat typing, I remember thinking, “There must be a software program that can make this process easier… and keep it that way!”

We’ve all heard about those congregations that just seem to have a toxic culture. Perhaps it’s a tight-knit community that has a hard time welcoming in strangers. Maybe it’s a church whose members try to run the church behind the pastor’s back. I think one of the most common examples of toxicity in a church, however, is one in which too many people become apathetic to the church’s mission of growing disciples and feeding Jesus’ sheep.

I recently reread Kem Meyer’s book, Less Chaos. Less Noise. As I did, Meyer’s words hit me right between the eyes, as they often do. This time, however, it wasn’t about written communication. What got me was her writing on people skills.