Geeks-4-Jesus – The Future
Our church is in a transitional period right now. We’re less than 10 months away from having a new worship center, and the leadership is taking a long hard honest look at everything we do and deciding what needs to change. We’re working hard at defining what our purpose is and how we plan on fulfilling it.
I’ve been doing the same thing with Geeks-4-Jesus. For the moment we’ve stopped the few things we were doing, and we’re taking a hard honest look at what G4J is and what it has done. We’re trying to figure out what the purpose of G4J is. This has been a difficult process. When we started all this I had a vision for what I wanted out of this ministry, but nothing turned out the way I envisioned it. Obviously, no matter what I envision, or what I plan, God has His own plans. The original “Prime Directive” that I came up with, and the dream I tried to set before everyone was just too vague. I don’t think anyone ever got any more out of it than, “We do tech stuff for Jesus!” Not a bad goal, but it’s incomplete. I’m afraid it’s the details that have eluded me. We’ve had as many as 60 volunteer geeks on our roster, but I can’t figure out what to do with them. I have the occasional project I need help on, and we’ve had almost 30 people involved with the Geek Day of Service, but beyond these occasional events, I don’t have much work for volunteers.
I met with a group of our core volunteers last week and we discussed all these things, and they don’t have any answers for me either. I think I’ve defined two goals I want to meet, but I don’t know how to do both well. The first goal is to make technology a transparent layer of the ministries here at CHCC. In other words, I want 100% uptime and I want all our staff and volunteers to be well-trained so that when technology is involved in their ministry it’s something that’s just there and they don’t have to think about. The tech is invisible because it’s reliable. I still have some work to get there, but that’s my goal. The second goal is to provide a place to serve for those who want to use their technical gifts for the Lord. That’s where I have trouble. Part of the problem is that we’re not that big yet. Most of what needs done around here I can usually manage on my own. Another problem is that like most geeks I would rather do the job myself than rely on someone else’s work. I guess I need to deal with my geek-pride.
In a little over a week I’m going to the Church IT Roundtable in TX. I’m hoping I can get an idea from some other IT guys who have larger networks how they use their volunteers. Until then we’ll just keep praying. When I get back I’ll get our core-geeks back together and we’ll continue this discussion. I want to get all this figured out by next Fall. In the Fall we have a volunteer ministry fair at CHCC, so the plan is to figure out what the real purpose of G4J is, make a plan for how we should live out this purpose, then figure out where we really need volunteers, so when we have the volunteer fair we’ll have an idea of who and what we need to recruit.
