Patterns and Anti-Patterns

Recently, Tony Dye has been asking questions related to use of volunteers, specifically for IT development purposes. I had already been planning for a month to start a series on patterns that seemed to work for my church, as well as patterns to be avoided (anti-patterns).

Background: These patterns were grown from a variety of sources, including a number of leadership books, wisdom from others within the church, and good ol’ trial-and-error. Our church has only a handfull of staff members, primarily focused on church execution - a Senior Pastor, a Programs Pastor, a Worship Pastor, and a couple of part-time staff that assist with other areas. Our church has always been early technology adopters, but, as with many churches, there wasn’t much of a process. I entered into service with the church to upgrade the website in 2000, and found myself the lone servant. Oh, a few others had joined up on a list, but they never really showed any interest after that. I spend many long days and nights working on retooling the website, and eventually rolled it out. I then spent a good deal of time fending off hackers, upgrading the network, and upgrading from PC-class to server-class machines (yes, there is a difference!). It was after this point that we really pushed for a true IT ministry, and began to look at utilizing Fellowship One to improve the check-in process for the children’s ministry and improve the financials process. We needed a PC support team to ensure that all of the printers, check scanners, and touch screens worked - and call Dell if they stopped working. I knew I couldn’t do it all myself, so with the wisdom of books and a great mentor, I set out to build a complete team. In the end, I had 3 sub-leaders (PC Support, Web, and Network/Servers), over a dozen servants across all 3 areas, and eventually transitioned the IT ministry to a new capable leader so that I could pursue my next calling. I’m a technical person more than a people person, so I believe that God took me through this journey for a reason and in the process, taught me a lot about serving in a church and ministering to others.

I hope that these patterns and anti-patterns will be a blessing for you, and will assist you in the growth of your ministries, technical and non-technical alike!