Who to be angry at!

[Tom Stuart]

Perhaps I should wait and try to understand this better but I’m not going to.  I’m going to spit it out.   In the place where I am one of the ministers all sorts of wonderful things are happening.  It is wonderful to just go along for the ride.  I feel like I’m surrounded by people touched by God (Well I guess that is the way always!).   Anyway, one of the things that is happening is that we are finding whole new ways of helping little village worship groups become places of real hope, and life, and faith.   One of the components of this is that we have tried to help these groups with the “admin” that is the painful part of the church these days.   So, (and it happens to be my uncle who is doing this) one of the members of a larger centre is being the treasurer for a small worship group.  They don’t have the skills for all that sort of stuff and we didn’t want them to be leg roped by administration.   Recently we purchased (actually the presbytery purchased) MYOB.  It was my uncle’s hope that he could do all the treasurer tasks he is doing on MYOB.  BUT MYOB has this thing where you have to register, not just the software as a single user, but the company (or in our case the congregation).  That means that for our 6 member congregations they would have to pay $500 each (actually $800 when you include the proprietary church stuff).   Now, I don’t like complaining about the “synod office vs out there in the world” divide because it is all too often just avoiding responsibility on the person doing the crowing, but I cannot understand why we have gone head first into an arrangement with MYOB that is clearly inaccessible to the vast majority of congregations out there who might want to use it.   Let me put it plainly, I’m crapped off.  There are enough obstacles out there for the church … why do we have to face one more?  The synod screams for the lack of money but the BFP just forces places that don’t have money either to go and spend a $1,000 (if you add training) on to the rest of the cash strapped church.   Where is the imagination?  Where is the consultation?  Where is the thinking for out there in the real world of congregational life?   Tom   [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.milman.uniting.com.au Ph: 6862 5502  Mobile: 0427 625 502 14 Bushman St Parkes NSW 2870   'Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable'. I prefer to die living than to live dying! "War is a poor chisel with which to carve out the future." - Martin Luther King, Jr "There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible."  Henry Ford