An inflammatory heading I know but at least it’s one that will hopefully draw folks into a discussion.

Of recent months and possibly even the last few years if I’m honest, I have felt uncomfortable in ‘Church’ as we know it. I started my life as a good Catholic boy, was an altar boy for a while, knew my catechism off by heart, said my hail Mary’s and so on and so forth. Later on I wa to rebel against all things God and Church before finding my faith and returning to be Jesus follower and not a doctrine or theology follower. (more…)

I was in the Church yesterday showing something to my son when the pastor asked if he could have 5 minutes of my time.

I don’t know about you and your pastors, but it’s never just 5 with mine! Anyway, he says to me “if we had the money, what is your wish list within IT?” Well wow, I wasn’t expecting that. So there then ensued a manic few minutes whilst I came up with suggestions – but because I’ve got used to not expecting anything it has also got me into the habit of not thinking, or wishing, for what I’d want.

All said and done, the first words out of my mouth were “it’s not just IT I’m concerned with, however…” and then I ran off my top 4 needs, which for your delectation are:

• sort out the network cabling / move central kit to secure room
• memory upgrades for all Church PC’s
• get a vendor supported hardware appliance firewall
• setup wi-fi for Church / Visitor / locals

The pastor then added that just because he’s added them to the budget it doesn’t mean they will happen, but if they are there it is more likely that they will. What this has (re)taught me is to always be prepared and to stop my negative thinking in terms of my Church’s UT / Media spending.

My sidebar has gone walkabout ….

Scroll down far enough and you’ll find it beneath all the posts. At first I thought the theme had become corrupted but no matter how many times I re-copy it up, it remains that way. So I’ve tried sundry other themes including the classic and default – all with the same result.

Now I can barely html my way out of a paper bag let alone suss out the use of PHP (one day I’d like to fix that) so if anyone has any clues as to what I’ve done and can point me at the solution then please share.

My guess, for what it’s worth is either a dodgy plugin or some setting I’ve changed. So I’m off to fiddle with plugins to see what happens.

^{edit: Nope, not my plugins.}