So, my first ever official meeting about IT / Media / Tech with the leadership team took place today.

I’m still stunned and overall I think it went well and the pastor is now much more aware of what I think his role within the IT setup is. I also think he’s more aware of some of the possibilities and points where IT crosses over into other departments. I also think that maybe prior to today he hasn’t promoted anything to do with tech because he’s not a big user and he’s not someone whom understands the need for it except in business. He admitted a week or two back in front of the whole Church that you’ll never see him on Facebook and today I had to explain what Twitter was.

But I had somewhat of a Damascus Road moment when I realised what I needed to tell him. We were midst discussing the development of the Church website which we badly need and he even accepts that. However, he was talking about creating the content when it hit me. I stopped him mid flow and said that the content can pretty much take care of itself but for that to happen he needs to get his philosophy about the site written down. Once we (the Church as a whole) have that, then the content and the formation of the site can begin and will probably fall naturally into place.

Also today I heavily pushed the need to create a volunteer team that does techy stuff in the Church and fortunately the leadership team were 100% in agreement on this. My final success, I think, of the day was in getting them to see that media, etc doesn’t just happen because we have a few lines in our vision document. I’m pretty sure they know that but the added extra was that they now see that all the various departments from sound to worship to events, etc, etc all need to rely on IT and we need to have a coherent, forward looking IT plan in place.

I’ve given them a lot to think about and we meet again in about a month so I’m looking forward to the benefits.