Technology Stewardship and the PCA
If you google the word “Technology stewardship” you will find two major definitions 1) Technology used by churches to encourage financial stewardship or 2) groups speaking about using technology to advance their causes.
When I speak about Technology Stewardship I’m speaking about something of a mix of the two.
I would define Technology Stewardship by asking a question: What technological tools are you using to advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ?
I know that guys like Drew Goodmanson and even Mark Driscoll speak about using technology, but from what I gather, they haven’t spoken about technology from a stewardship perspective ( ie Matt 25:15-30).
Looking at my own denomination of churches, I see that technology is not used well. I’m not sure of the reason, and I do not mean to disregard or downplay the work that has been done. Ill be honest when I first went to the PCA website around 2001 I was impressed that a denominations site looked that good. But the site hasn’t changed much in the last 9 years.
I’m not simply talking about having a website. I’m suggesting that we see technologies such as: twitter, facebook, skype, ning, googletalk, flickr, vimeo, texts, blogs and many others as resources that God has given for the purpose of serving our King.
The PCA is a small denomination many churches are very far from each other, and yet I believe that God has handed us resources that allows us to overcome many of the geographic challenges that limit our connection and our development as a people with a purpose.
I understand that it is not a one-to-one application of the text but I do think that it merits a longer conversation on the matter to that end I propose three questions:
Should Technology be consider a “talent” or resource that God is calling his church to manage well, with the implication from (Matthew 25) that God is very upset with those who do not use it well?
How can people in the PCA help each other become better stewards of technology?
Is this just a PCA problem or are other churches and denominations not fully utilizing the resources we have been given?
I am the webmaster for my PCA church. When we ask people how they found the church almost everyone says “through the web”. I think it is probably the same with churches everywhere.
Our church proudly links to our denominational website (PCA) and encourages visitors to learn more about our denomination. It’s a shame the website they are encouraged to go to is so difficult to navigate, out of date and hard to find key bits of information. It would be nice if PCA.org, .net and PCAhistory would all combine, providing a wealth of helpful information.
Churches know the importance of web sites, hopefully our denomination will share that understanding.
A couple a resources that churches would find helpful are the Church IT Roundtable (a fellow PCA brother, Tony Dye, was one of the founders) http://www.citrt.org
and Geeks and God http://geeksandgod.com/
Agreed that pcanet.org needs an update, but in their defense the Stated Clerk’s office has felt the pinch of this recession as much as anyone else. They’ve had to cut costs and even reduce staff salaries across the board in order to avoid having to fire anyone. Couple that with the fact that attendance at GA is expected to be down this year, which they’ll have to eat the costs for, and it’s understandable why they have no $$ to put into website updates.
Great post Sam, appreciate your thought on this.
Well there are tons of guys in the PCA willing to help give them a better web presence.