Church in the clouds

For those Star Wars fans among you, you might immediately think of Cloud City, but strangely enough(?) that’s not what I’m talking about here (although I’d like to).

In these days of public and private clouds, 3G and 4G data, iPhones and iPads does it still make sense to for churches to have offices equipped with traditional PCs (Mac or Windows) for pastoral staff? Sure for administrative staff, that make sense, but does it for our pastors?

Here at Crossway I’m currently smack-bang in the middle of three IT projects of varying sizes. We’re upgrading our servers (and adding several tonne more storage space), replacing about a third of our PCs (and equipping our media & communications peeps with shiny new Macs), and expanding our Wi-Fi to cover the whole campus.

All of those projects have caused me to reflect, are we doing IT all wrong? Should we get rid of half our PCs and equip our pastoral staff with iPads and get them out of the office to where the people are?

What’s your church doing? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

IT and the small church office – Q&A

So, what are the other questions that you may have? I had a think about a few of them, but I’m sure there are more. If you have a question you’d like to ask post it in the comments

What about Macs?

Sure, if you want Macs go for it. I personally don’t have a lot of experience with them, but there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t use them. The price differential is getting smaller every day and Apple make a seriously machine.

Can my pastor (minister/priest) get his email on his/her iPhone?

Yes. Just about everyone seems to have a iPhone these days and it seems to me that clergy love technology. If you’re using Google Apps, then setting the iPhone up to access Gmail is a walk in the park. Similarly if you using MS Exchange with Outlook Web Access you should be able to set it up with your eyes closed.

Can you recommend any other free software?

I sure can. For CD/DVD burning have a look at ImgBurn, and for image editing you can’t go past Paint.NET.