A rubber band is useless unless it’s being stretched. A tire on a car has to be filled with pressure. Sandpaper doesn’t work without friction.
In ministry, though, we sometimes look at these sort of actions as negatives, instead of positives. It’s easy to get comfortable and flip things into cruise control, navigating the usual predictable tasks, day-in and day-out.
But if there’s anything that the last two years have taught us, it’s that the normal and predictable may not be around for the long-term. What used to work may not work anymore. What got us here may not get us there. What keeps me comfortable may not be what’s best for the organization.
As new technologies become more and more prevalent, our job is to educate ourselves as much as possible on what those new trends are.
Since we’re essentially the “tip of the spear” for our ministries, we have to be the ones to lead the way on implementation. Almost nothing nowadays is possible without some sort of confluence with technology, and there’s now an additional weight on our shoulders as technicians because of that.
I’ve always believed that our knowledge and capabilities should stay ahead of the pace of our ministry’s vision, so that as needs arise or vision becomes clarified, we are already familiar with steps that should be taken in order to make those things possible (or we at least know who to call and what to Google). After all, I’d hate for my ministry’s impact to become stunted just because of my own limitations: I wasn’t ready to take a certain step, or I didn’t know who to call for help, or I wasn’t willing to change my preferences or ways of thinking.
I often think of Paul’s exhortation to his protégé Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2 (NIV) to “… be prepared in season and out of season …”
While this can carry a broad application in many situations, I correlate it to our jobs as tech leaders like this: no matter what season my ministry is in currently, I still have to be preparing for whatever season is coming up next.
As John Maxwell, American author, speaker, and pastor, always says,
“Leaders are learners.”
We may not be multisite now, but when that day comes, I want to already have an idea of what to be thinking of. We may not be streaming now, but I still need to be familiar with that type of technology so that I’m ready to pull the trigger when the pastor requests it. I may not have a team to train now, but that shouldn’t stop me from thinking about how I’d train a future team and what I’d train them to do.
As John Maxwell, American author, speaker, and pastor, always says, “Leaders are learners.” For those of us in a technical role, where new things are constantly arriving in our industry, this is especially important.
So regardless of the season that my ministry may be in right now, I should have the mentality that I’m constantly in a season of learning.
Embrace the stretching and pressure. It’s a sign that growth is coming.
