Proclaimer Blog
What helps the preacher helps preaching
Our raison d'être is to champion the cause of preaching and, of course, we primarily do that through helping preachers with…..preaching (radical, I know!). But the reality is that if we can point people to resources that reduce or alleviate pressure in other areas of a preacher's life, then his preaching may well be (and should be) helped. Once such area for anybody in church ministry is the dreaded a word. Administration.
Service sheets. Projection slide. Members meetings. Emailing prayer lists. Sunday School. Mid week groups. Mission Partners. Room Bookings. Etc Etc.
I'm not saying that a preacher should be doing any of these things, but keeping an eye on them (however good an administrator you may have) takes time and energy. So, it was great last week to visit John & Katie Croft, themselves active members of St Mary's Maidenhead. They have developed some really clever web-based software called Church Builder which takes care of an enormous amount of the admin that goes along with church.
My good friend, Sam Allberry, says, "The Church Builder program has been a fantastic tool for me. I have no doubt that it saves us dozens of man-hours a week as a staff team. Planning services and meetings; organising rotas; looking up songs, creeds, addresses and phone numbers: all done at the touch of a button. Its user-friendly for a non-techie like me and, quite frankly, I'd be in the tall grass without it."
You can see the Church Technologies website here, but best first to go and see the Church Builder in action at St Bob's (who he?). If you're still not sure of the concept, imagine this:
You plan an order of service online dragging and selecting items into a list. The preacher (let's say it's not you) can review it online and finalise it. When it's finalised, emails are automatically sent to the person on the reading or prayer rota. Video slides are sent to the projectionist. A service sheet is created. Musicians on that weeks music rota are sent pdf music packs automatically compiled. That's neat! And time saving.