The Office Curmudgeon

This week I had the honor to attend RefreshCache, the first annual Arena developers meeting. It inspired me to post on my blog after a long, long hiatus.

Inspired
Having the opportunity to interact with some of the most talented and God loving software developers and thinkers is beyond words. The event was inspiring in of itself, but there were some great highlights.

I was inspired by the hospitality of Nick Airdo and his family, and Nick’s leadership. Nick talked me into staying at his place rather than holing up in a nearby hotel, and I was blessed by that. Nick’s leadership within the Arena community impacts people deeper than he realizes, and we are all thankful for the spirit and energy he brings.

I was inspired by Jon Edmiston and the vision he brings to community software development. His gifts as a visionary are a blessing to this band of developers, and I wait in anticipation for the fruits the upcoming projects will produce.

I was inspired by each individual that attended, and by the sheer fact that God has stationed every one of us in this particular community, and with individual skills that combine to create something greater than each of us.

Learned
It was impossible not to take away a great deal more knowledge than one came with. One can not replace the power of physical presence and person-to-person interaction and learning. The off-the-cuff topics that spiral into deep learning opportunies are highly valuable. I enjoyed the ability to commiserate with my peers about common frustrations, as well as celebrate in successes. This was invaluable.

Thankful
I am thankful for the blessing and direction God has provided in my life, for how He has brought me across a path to this place, gifting me uniquely in the circles I now find myself.

I am thankful for the Arena developer community.

See this post by Tony Steward, and the accompanying TED video. That has essentially been my argument for building services that fit a younger demographic better. Churches are horrible at this though because:

• They are staffed and driven by people that can only reach their own demographic really well
• New services means more time commitments, more staff causing more expenses, or stretching thin of existing staff
• Sometimes new ‘hip’ services are seen as threats which must be contained or jettisoned
• Leaders are overly concerned with breaking from traditions that seem to ‘weaken’ or ‘water down’ the spirituality of the service in their eyes

In Howard’s terms, they are building plutonic services. “This is the best way this church can do worship services.” That could be completely true. Then again, the church as a whole in the US dies massive deaths every day. If your church is declining, hey – thanks for doing your part.

Thankfully, the body of Christ is compromised of lots of church flavors and the new flavors are more and more readily available. I wish more young Christians had a calling to ministry. I am begining to settle into the belief that energy is better spent lifting up new young pastors, or new effective pastors of any age, than trying to turn around a declining church.

A couple weekends ago we were driving home after a late dinner with friends, and we drove by a church which had a tell tale, hand-written sign on the edge of the church property, facing the street. (I wish I had a picture, but I was driving at the time.) The sign was a white backboard with large, black, hand written text that read, “Thinking about becoming Catholic? 816-123-4567″

<sigh> I instantly knew this was wrong in many ways, but after actually putting some thought behind it, here is why:

There is NO Audience for this Sign
C’mon. Seriously, who walks around with the thought, “I’d actually like to be <insert denomination here>. I wonder how I can do that?” No one does. This sign better targets squirrels, because squirrels like to sit on signs. Squirrels can’t even read.

The End is Near
More likely, this sign is a visible cry for help. Please be a part of our church, or we’ll die! Help!

You Will Talk to Us
Rather than provide a site url, which someone could expose themselves too before attempting anything, they provided a number. That means even if I was interested, I’m gonna have to talk to someone and say, “Yeah I saw this sign with this number … so I called it.” Hmm.

That’s Some High Quality
A hand written sign plopped in the front yard? Oh no – you didn’t?! Printing out banners on 8×10 sheets of paper, splicing them together, and and covering the whole thing with clear tape – would be a step up from this. Think about that. How serious is this church about welcoming someone, if they either A. will not pay for a printed sign, B. don’t have the motivation to go through that trouble, or C. do not have the money. If C – then close the doors.

Please, please, if you are someone in a church that has this or other similar sign – take it down! Please don’t advertise like this. Squirrels appreciate it, but you are making rational people laugh, cry, or both.

As a follow up to my last post, I thought I’d explain when I use electronic payment options over paper options. This is in answer Laura’s comment, because my comment got too long.

My wife and I regularly attend Living Water Christian Church, where Laura Guy, wife to my boss Clif Guy. We also give regularly, by check, even after the option became available to use PayPal. Honestly, I had told Clif that we’d be one of the first people to sign up for electronic transactions at Living Water. We haven’t yet, because of the reason Laura mentions in her previous comment.

My lifestyle, since I can remember having to pay bills, is to use electronic transfers. I haven’t paid a utility bill by check since about 1998, excluding the one or two months between moving and signing up for electronic transfer once again. The main reason is that I’m horrible at remembering to pay bills! Send me the statement or invoice, and I’ll make sure it is free from mistakes before you hit my account with an EFT, but don’t expect me to remember to send you a check at the right time. I want to pay it on time every time, and I feel horrible when I’m late to pay, but I’ll miss it many times per year.

The other part of my lifestyle, strangely enough, is that I’ll always pick the cheaper option. I refuse to pay $5-15 to electronically submit my income tax, when I can print everything out and mail it in for cost of First Class mail, currently 42-59 cents. (As a side rant, leave it to government to make what should be the less expensive option for them, more expensive for us! How about no? Process my paper!) I have a printer; I have envelopes, and when I go to the post office they sell me postage. I only use electronic submission when it’s roughly equivalent to the cheapest option, because only then does convenience begin edging out price.

So after I got the e-mail from Laura stating that PayPal was available, I thought, “Excellent. Lets do that.” Then it hit me. I paused. The reality that it was my money that was about to be trimmed, three to four percent plus a transaction fee going to PayPal, rather than all of it to the church; I suddenly didn’t want to do it. I had always known that fee was there, but when it was my money I thought about it a great deal more. We’re there every weekend we can be, and we have checkbooks, and when we fill out a check and put it in the basket, it fulfills our contribution.

Just this week, I was surprised to learn that Resurrection is stopping remote deposit because after using it for some time they’ve found that sum of labor, time, and frustration of remote deposit is greater than the ease of letting the paper check do its thing. This is mostly due to the inefficiencies and duplicated efforts of the process we are currently locked into, but it examples how electronic solutions are not inherently easier and cheaper.

Now I will openly admit that this is where Laura may trump my position on this. If the cost of business though PayPal is less than the overhead it takes to manually process our check every month – my bad, I’ll sign up today.

Well, I’ve been back from my mission trip for four days now, and I haven’t had a moment to post about it yet. I last posted that I would live blog if I could, and I failed! There was cellular service, and I picked up the wrong cable before I left! I left behind all of the connectivity tools I needed to get online! I was so mad …. Anyway, I hope to write up my posts about the experience this week. I have something else to say first though, in my next post.