Regardless of the expression and context, the mission of the Church is obvious. It is to make disciples. The local church is the Church in context. It is the Church visible and in action. This means that everything that happens in the local church is important. When local churches are failing the global Church and its mission suffers also. Many people miss out…
Jesus entrusted us with a great mission and privilege. No pressure. What this boils down to is the importance of everything every local church does. How the church reaches out to its community, discipleship, everything. Every program and initiative has to be purposeful.
Church tech is an important component in the mission of both the local church and the Church at large.
We have the privilege of technology. The Internet, for example, is a normal part of life. It is a normal part of people’s lives. There is no debate needed on its usefulness for discipleship and such. If harnessed well can be a potent tool for communication.
Other things, such as church management software and giving platforms, should make church life better. It should help serve the mission of the Church better.
Technology is sometimes contradiction. There are times it makes things simpler and complicated at the same time. As we use different tools at our disposal, we must be careful not to sabotage the mission. The tools we can use to advance mission can become an obstacle.
We do church tech wrong when it gets in the way of mission. This can manifest itself in many ways. Here are a few:
Celebration
When is your biggest cheer? That you’ve built or done something that worked or impact on people’s lives. The biggest cheer we, as the Church, should always make is for changed lives. It must be for people making decisions to follow Christ.
In The Way
When the debate of which technology or solution to use stalls the pursuit of mission. We must be wise about the solutions we choose and use. The processes and decisions we make must never be at the expense of making disciples.
Tools are for the work; they are not the work. We need to make sure that we’re not so caught up in how systems work that we forget how they contribute to the mission.
You’re doing church tech wrong when the mission always has to wait for endless tinkering. This is not to say we should never get better at what we do. We must always hone our craft and technology; strive to be better.
There is a problem when our getting better is an endless process that doesn’t lead to action.
It’s About Our Mission
The mission is the purpose. What you do, with what you have, is of eternal significance. It must always stay visible. The mission is our true North. Tech enables mission.
You’re doing church tech wrong when it gets in the way of the mission.
[…] on my previous take by expanding it and redefining what we have wrongly assumed to be the main work of the church, namely, entertaining the […]