Heya all,
Tom Stuart has written a couple of times in recent days about MYOB and I have been watching the discussion with a serious sense of detachment verging on apathy. Sorry Tom, nothing personal! :)
The Treasurer of my Church Council doesn't even own a computer, let alone fancy accounting software. In fact, she is quite proud of having acquired a manual typewriter! She is a book-keeper of many decades experience and efficiently meets the needs of the Congregation and of all its creditors. The only body that appears to be slightly unhappy about her performance is the Board of Finance and Property -- not because she doesn't get her returns in on time (she does, far more efficiently than the Board gets out its requests for the returns, but that is another story), but because she has dared not to bite the technological bullet. "But you MUST do it digitally or you will be a failure!" (OK, poetic license a little -- but only a little)
Although I have used computers for around 15 years now and regard myself as reasonably well informed on matters IT, I have a lot of sympathy for the so-called Luddites in the church. Matters ecclesiastic tend to go in fashions and we lose sight of the wider perspective. At the moment, unless you are running a machine with at least a couple of MHz and maybe even a dual processor, fashion says you are a dinosaur. Oh, and you have to have broadband too -- which I haven't.
Much the same goes for the current fashion of emphasising youth work. Unless your congregation has a thriving and throbbing youth group, you are antediluvian.
Do you know, the apostles managed to carry the Gospel to the ends of the known world during their lifetime without a single byte of hard disk capacity! And you will read nothing in the New Testament or in patristic literature about Sunday Schools, Youth Groups or even men's breakfasts! However did they manage to survive? I am told they were utterly ignorant of MS PowerPoint too!
<big cheesy grin!>
-- Tom.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tom Pardy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Coopernook Web site: <http://www.ozemail.com.au/~pardy> AUSTRALIA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
