[Linux4christians] Technology Ministry Vision

[Howard Coles Jr.]

I haven't shared this with very many people, because I have been concerned of 
what might be done with it in certain circles.

However, now that I'm no longer Pastor of Missionary Ridge, I think I would 
have more time to devote to this ministry.

Here's my thoughts:
Many Churches are too small, and too rural even today to have much of an 
internal support system for having a PC or even internet connectivity.  The 
Church I pastored had no one for years who had their own PC besides me.  Now, 
there are two of them.  The problem is that most older folks are afraid of 
Technology, and smaller Churches just can't afford it, even if they have 
people who could support it.

So, My idea was to setup a group of volunteers who would work on setting up a 
standard set of Church Management applications, and offer the services to the 
Church for the cost of the PC or for a small monthly 0% payment for the PC.  
The Volunteers would train the people at the Church on each application they 
would use, and one volunteer would be "on-call" every so many days, weeks, 
etc. to answer emergency needs or questions.  Obviously the number of 
Churches supported by any one group would depend on how many volunteers and 
how large the Churches are.

Also, in my Case our state Convention (Southern Baptist) has a well 
established DC with domain names etc.  We could offer some web based 
services, collaboration, etc from servers hosted at local / regional offices 
for a very small fee.  As the Church grows they could take on more and more 
of the support themselves until they no longer need the volunteers.

The PC's would be low end, setup with Linux of some flavor (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, 
Debian, Fedora, etc.) so they would not require as much maintenance as a 
Windoze box would.

This could help Churches in so many ways.  I just need ideas along the way of 
structure and possible applications to use.

-- 

See Ya'
Howard Coles Jr.
John 3:16!