This principle is pretty darn simple but making the mistake could be costly, literally.
There’s going to be a temptation to be innovative, fresh, new, cutting edge, and if you’re a big enough ministry, thoughts about building applications for your ministry out of your own ministry will be huge.
Don’t.
Or, at best, please think it through a lot and really carefully. There’s a lot out there in terms of social networks and services that can already do what you need it to do.
Your job is to find them.
Money is tight, the recession is real. If you want to be a good steward financially you’ll take a look at the freebie shelf. What’s so nice is that this particular shelf is stock full of enterprise-grade, worldclass applications, that are just waiting for you to use them.
This is not even mentioning Open Source technology.
Where Oh Where…
There’s nothing wrong with using existing applications and services. In fact, it’s plenty smart. But how do you go about finding the right ones for your needs, both internal and external?
Ask your congregation and staff. They probably have the answer, and if they don’t, they know someone that does. And if they don’t know someone that knows someone that does, you can always ask the general populace on any major social network. Shoot the question out on Facebook or Twitter, I’m sure you can find what you need.
People are far more accessible and available than you might imagine, and the low cost of answering a question is almost too easy. Take advantage of the crowd: This is typically called “crowdsourcing” and it’s an unbelievably good resource.
Again, the principle is simple and basic: Don’t build what you can get for free. Save your time and energy into putting the tools into good use after building a robust strategy of engagement. Your staff, congregation, and many more will thank you for it.
And especially your web developers.
Daniel_Berman says
As they say time is money. Money and time these days are precious commodities. You can spend your time building infrastructure or using infrastructure, the question comes as to whether you are using that infrastructure in the most effective way possible.
Name:Anon says
Agreed. My church just spent thousands this past year trying to create a social networking site for the church. I knew it was going to be a complete waste of resources, but of course all decisions are made completely apart from any consultation with the congregation, so there was no venue in which I could let them know this. Sigh. In the meantime, they had to fire some employees because of lack of funding. Sad story.
human3rror says
Wow. That… SUCKS!
Did the congregation learn something from it?