Joplin Church IT Roundtable
I’ve been talking with Jim Walton lately and we’ve decided to start a local Joplin Church IT Roundtable. Joplin resides in the buckle of the bible belt and as a result we are saturated with small churches. I’m pretty certain most(if not ALL) of these churches are using computers somewhere for something they do, and I would assume most of this is handled by volunteers in those churches. Some may outsource for serious issues, but most of the Church IT stuff that happens in Joplin is handled by volunteers in small-medium sized churches. I believe this is the group that will benefit the most by our round-table. Some of these churches will have volunteers that are highly skilled professionals, while some will have volunteers that only work with computers as a hobby. If we can get these people together, they can help each other out.
This is how I envision the future…
We create a group of Church IT people who become close friends. We help each other advance Church IT in the Joplin area. When one church has a problem, there’s a pool of volunteers from churches all over the area that are more than willing to help out. Then we start doing more and more together. I recently found out another church in Joplin is doing a Geek Day of Service, so maybe someday we have a large enough group that we can work together and have a Geek Day of Service every month in a different church. We can help each other out each time, and we can refer people to the next one coming up at church XYZ on the other side of town. How much good can we do for the kingdom when the people of Joplin see Christians, from different churches and different denominations, working side by side and referring others to an event taking place at another church?
Anyway, anybody in Joplin who might be interested in joining the Joplin Church IT Roundtable, we’re having our first informal meeting this Saturday, May 5 at 9:00AM at Panera Bread Co. on 32nd Street. Stay tuned for more info…
[...] So, we have initial plans to begin something, yet we’re not even sure what it will form into exactly. This Saturday, tomorrow, May 5, 2007 at 9:00am, we are having a planning meeting at Panera on 32nd in Joplin. Bryson has a great post about it here, he does a good job of expressing our intentions. [...]