Discover how to leverage technology in your church

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wonder what my congregation thinks about (fill in the blank)” or “I wish I could ask my youth group if they preferred (option one) or (option 2)”? Well now that a majority of people use smartphones, you can!

On average, a church worker spends about 39,204,823,907,402 hours of his or her life in meetings. Okay, maybe the number isn’t quite that large, but there are times it doesn’t seem too far off. We have board meetings, council meetings, voters’ meetings, informational meetings, and training meetings, just to name a few.

Meetings can get a bad rap, but when we keep a few things in mind, they can move from a begrudged necessity to a powerful ministry tool.

The phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” has been tossed around for a long time, but it is absolutely true. Pictures have a way of sharing thoughts, ideas, and feelings with people that can sometimes be hard to put in words. You can even experience God in pictures by viewing the beauty of His creation. Photography is another tool that churches can use in a wide variety of ways.

Part two of a two-part series on Incremental Change vs. Transformational Change by Rev. Bill Johnson.

Part one of a two-part series on Incremental Change vs. Transformational Change by Rev. Bill Johnson.

An author I once read (and have now forgotten the name of) shared a story about incremental change. Take a photo. It’s a good photo, and probably one you’ll look back at often, but it’s just a photo. Take a second photo of the same subject moments later. Now, switch back and forth between the two photos. You will see that a few things have changed, and the experience will begin to feel a bit like one of those “Spot the Difference” puzzles you find in the Sunday newspapers. It’s a change, but it’s really just a notch forward. Two pictures aren’t really all that much different than one picture. This is incremental change.

Perhaps no game has been more anticipated (and more divisive) in the gaming community than the recent release of No Man’s Sky. Hyped as a nearly infinite universe, it enabled players to explore the breadth of its over 18 quintillion stars, each with its own planets, moons, plants, animals, and ecosystems. The player is cast in the role of a survivor of a starship crash and must repair his or her ship and make a way boldly forth into the unknown. 

This post is an excerpt from the ebook, Millennials and the Church, written by Hannah Osborne.

Millennials have grown up relying on technology. Those born in the early 1980s might remember a time without computers, but TVs were most likely a household staple, and video game systems quickly became a major form of entertainment for young people.

Okay, I’ll be honest. Taking high-quality photos for a church directory is not as easy as pie. Nevertheless, it is possible, even for a nonprofessional. It just takes a little extra patience, planning, and know-how.

It doesn’t really matter how large your congregation is, there will always be more work to do than your church staff can handle on their own. If you take a good look at thriving congregations, their church staff typically isn’t comprised of doers; it is comprised of equippers. Of course, staff workers will end up doing a lot of the work themselves, but to really get things done, they need to be able to equip their volunteers to assist them in doing the work. 

A quick online search about making yourself replaceable at work is likely to try to offer you articles about being irreplaceable or indispensable. While each of us brings a special set of skills and abilities to our jobs, we should all keep in mind that illness or sudden changes in life could mean that we have to leave our job to another person with little notice. So how can you prepare for someone else to take over?