5 “Strong Suggestions” for Stewarding Technology in the Church

As I have mentioned here before, I am not naturally a “tech guy”. I’m not incompetent or helpless, but I’m also not a gadget freak either. And as a pastor/church planter, I am usually too busy to spend a lot of time learning new technologies.

When we launched St. Paul’s Collegiate Church almost exactly one year ago, we spent a lot of money on technology. In fact we spent over $35,000 on technology equipment our first year (about 17% of our total first year budget). I think we made generally excellent choices in our purchases and high-quality technology has been an important component to our church.

I have few regrets and believe that overall we have been excellent stewards of the resources God has given us. I am very proud, in fact, of how seriously we take stewardship of money, equipment, and people at St. Paul’s.

But we also made some mistakes along the way.

As I have mentioned here before, I am not naturally a “tech guy”. I’m not incompetent or helpless, but I’m also not a gadget freak either. And as a pastor/church planter, I am usually too busy to spend a lot of time learning new technologies.

When we launched St. Paul’s Collegiate Church almost exactly one year ago, we spent a lot of money on technology. In fact we spent over $35,000 on technology equipment our first year (about 17% of our total first year budget). I think we made generally excellent choices in our purchases and high-quality technology has been an important component to our church.

I have few regrets and believe that overall we have been excellent stewards of the resources God has given us. I am very proud, in fact, of how seriously we take stewardship of money, equipment, and people at St. Paul’s.

But we also made some mistakes along the way.

We spent about $400 on some piece of equipment on our sound rack that I have no idea what it does, as far as I know we have never used, and several people have told us is unnecessary—but our volunteer music guys insisted that we needed one. This was a mistake.

I assumed that when a couple of volunteers told me that (a) they knew how to run a sound system, and (b) enjoyed running a sound system—I believed them. This was a big mistake.

I allowed a volunteer to make a significant purchase decision. They bought a piece of equipment that did not meet the specs we needed and turned out to be useless to us. This was a decision made to save money—but it ended up costing us over $1000 when we had to replace the equipment six months in. This was (quite obviously) a mistake.

We spent lots of money on equipment but did not develop a plan for maintaining the equipment, training people on the equipment, or even how to store all the equipment. This was also a mistake.

Let me offer you five “strong suggestions” for the stewardship of technology equipment in your church:

1. Seek value
I know it is a cliche, but it is true: you get what you pay for.

Many churches I know make one of two kinds of mistakes in purchasing equipment. They either simply spend as little money as possible or they mistakenly assume that spending tons of money is the answer.

We need to think about overall value. Value includes a combination of initial cost, ongoing maintenance and supply costs, expected longevity of the equipment (and of the usefulness of the technology), quality of the equipment, and how important the equipment is to the life of the church.

For example, our Sunday service uses both a sound system and a video projection system. If either of these systems does not work, we are in trouble. High quality and reliability are key components in measuring value when it comes to this equipment.

Another part of the “value equation” is how everything goes together. For example, to have amazing $500 each microphones running into a portable $800 fender sound system makes no sense.

One church I worked for refused to spend any money on any technological equipment or upgrades—not printers or computers for the office, not equipment for worship, not anything. This value of “cheapness” became pervasive in the church. It also compromised the quality of the ministry. They were saving money, but not getting value.

2. Don’t buy anything unless someone has committed to being accountable for the equipment.
This is a big one.

The care and maintenance of equipment is critical to good stewardship. The term “accountability” comes from the idea of “stand up and be counted”–in other words, who is willing to stand up and be accountable for the equipment. Who will take the responsibility for the care and maintenance of the equipment?

Here is the truth: if someone is not accountable for the equipment, you (as pastor) will end up spending huge amounts of time “pastoring equipment” instead of shepherding people.

I think that before any church makes a major purchase someone needs to be identified as the person who will be responsible for caring for the equipment, learning how the equipment is used, and training others on the equipment.

Everyone (especially volunteers) loves playing with high-end equipment–but few people are willing to really be accountable for the equipment.

When we spent about $25,000 on sound equipment, I assumed that a few volunteers, who claimed to know how it worked, would run it. It turns out that these people (whom God loves and I love too!) did not know as much as they thought and were not that interested in learning (and by learning, I mean “read the manual”–a surprisingly effective method of learning). This created a lot of stress and headaches for everyone involved, especially me and our associate pastor.

The key is to think through this before you purchase and be very clear about who is accountable for what in advance.

3. Get professional help.
Often in our desire to save money, we skip the step of getting professional advice and consultation on major purchases. The best decision we ever made in terms of technology was to seek out professional guidance in each area (sound, video, web, video, office equipment, etc).

Take the time to talk to people, to listen, to ask questions – and be willing to pay a little bit more to work with good people who will take the time to understand your needs, understand ministry, and will be there when you need help after the purchase.

4. Develop relationships with experts.
We didn’t buy most of our equipment locally. Our church is in Connecticut and we bought all of our sound equipment from a firm on the West Coast (AGI Inc.). No problem with that–they did a great job. But we also needed to find some pros locally that could help us with training, maintenance, etc.

In another church I worked for, they had a (what I was told was) a good sound system that could also record sermons. No one in the church knew how it worked. They spent a fair amount of money on it. As long as I was there, it never worked – and no sermons were ever recorded (which, in retrospect, may be best for everyone involved).

All of this is to say that it is essential that you find local people, develop relationships with them, and be nice to them.

5. Budget time and money for maintenance, training, and upgrades.
A major mistake I see made all the time is churches and ministries that spend all their money on the initial purchase of equipment (often considered a “capital expense” or is purchased through a “designated gift”) but fail to budget funds for long-term maintenance, training, and upgrades.

All equipment will need some maintenance. Make sure money is available for this. Often, simply maintenance and care will save lots of money over the long-haul. Just today, we had a pro guy come in because we were having trouble with our monitors. It turns out that some of the soldered connections inside the sound board were loose. He had to re-solder them. Only a professional could have figured this out for us. No matter how often we troubleshooted, switched chords, etc, it never would have occurred to me check that.

While here, we had him look at some of our other equipment. Did you know that most video projectors have air-filters you are supposed to clean and check routinely? Yeah–I didn’t either, until today. Another reason why it is important to get some professional training and help.

Training is an area that too many churches—especially young and small churches—skimp on. This is a huge mistake. The smaller the church, in my opinion, the more important high-quality training becomes. In large churches, we can often hire out for sound guys or we have a huge crop of people willing to serve in technology ministries. In a small church, there may only be one person who can run sound, run MediaShout, or use the video equipment. Spend some money, bring in a professional, run a workshop, and train people.

Upgrades are inevitable and necessary – don’t make the mistake of assuming that once a purchase is made you are done. Build a long-term strategy to upgrade equipment, computers, printers, etc. Most businesses and schools do this pretty well—there is no reason that the church shouldn’t as well.

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Ben Dubow is Lead Pastor of St. Paul’s Collegiate Church in Storrs, CT. He is pretty bad at tech stuff, but a very good cook.