Products/People

Throughout my day I read some articles on marketing, moving businesses forward, the need for technology, use of social media, and the decisions to strive forward as an organization in our digital age.

I also looked at the proposed budget for our church's next fiscal year, read two articles on technology and worship and looked to form my own un-biased (as in not team formed) opinion on what I believe the value of technology is as it relates to worship experiences.

There were a couple of things that stood out to me in my thinking, but the concepts that I boiled most of my thinking down to was a comparison of "products" and "people."

I've watched people study all the fancy products.  I've been instructed, pushed, convinced, debated, and had conversation about how the new technology will really help our experiences.  And for all intensive purposes (remember this is the opinion in my head), I'm actually pretty technologically savvy and enjoy technology.

I've seen numerous technologies sit around wasted because nobody knows how to draw the value out of them.  Or people don't recognize that a high price tag and high function doesn't mean low work.  It usually also means high training, high knowledge and lots of planning.

Many experts in most technology fields continuously argue that a person with expertise and sub-par equipment is far more valuable than high-end equipment with sub-par knowledge.  This is most frequently seen to me first hand with the use of golf clubs.  Clubs help, but a good swing is far more beneficial than high-end clubs.

So how should an organization or in my case a church move forward?  Should limited resources (i said church remember) improve expertise first or equipment first?  Spend money on cross training and new hiring, or on upgrading and new function?

I formed my opinion today (in the choice of product or people), but fortunately don't have to worry about it since I don't control any of that money for our church.