How Technology has Affected, and is Affecting, Mission

Part of Issue 31 – Technology and Mission

Author: Tim Young, field consultant with LightSys Technology Services, Inc., a US-Based computer consulting ministry.

Abstract:

I am an American computer consultant who trains missionary IT people how to set up and deploy computer technology. I have worked with over 100 mission offices in 13 countries, and consider myself having seen a good overview of how missions use technology.
Recently I attended a prayer-time at a mission organization with whom I was volunteering. They introduced the morning by announcing that, over the previous weekend, one of their pilots and a passenger were killed in an accident. They shared a lot of information about how the plane went down, how two of the four people on-board were alive, and about the desperate attempts of some bystanders to rescue the pilot and passenger (both of whom ended up perishing). Everyone there knew the pilot and their family, and so the prayer-time was intense and heart-felt. As an outsider, I thought this was an excellent example of technology in action. Nobody paid any attention to the fact that the first announcement of the plane going down went out over email, that half of the information came by reading the African newspaper on the Internet, or that the desperate fight for the lives of the pilot and passenger was captured on YouTube. The focus was on ministry, not the technology that enabled it to happen smoothly. Most missions do not know how to express the impact technology has on their ministry, simply because technology is so ingrained that they take it for granted.

Full article PDF:
How Technology has Affected and is Affecting Mission

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