Technology Vision (reponding to Jim Walton)

Jim Walton posted this morning about technology vision for the church.

My thinking on this rests on two important principles:

1. Mission/Vision alignment is more important than any clever statement you might create.

2. Too often, mission/vision/purpose statements are "we" centric. They talk more about "us" and what "we" do than they do about those we serve.

To illustrate, Church of the Resurrection's purpose is: "To build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally-religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians."

Correspondingly, our IT Department's purpose is: "To build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally-religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians. We do everything possible to fulfill this purpose directly and to help Resurrection's other ministries make effective use of technology as they also strive toward this purpose. Our users' mission is our mission. Additionally, we take very seriously our responsibilities for information security and high availability of all of the mission-critical services we provide."

This purpose is perfectly aligned with the church's purpose and it puts the priority on those we serve. Our vision for technology is to be excellent at fulfilling this purpose.

For church IT, I believe in serving first and leading second. If we start by earning a reputation for excellent, high-touch service, then when we are called upon to lead, we will be much more persuasive and effective.