INFORMATION, INFORMATION

Today I am going through my "office box." Why is it called a box anyway? I guess because it is square. It should be called "the place for 3 things I need to know now and a bunch of other information I may need later."

Take for instance one piece I got titled, "Handling Funerals." As a pastor I oversee funerals, memorials and ministry to families who encounter loss. This information would be perfect in the event that I could access it the moment I got a call that I was needed for a family who suffered loss. But this particular piece isn't electronic, it's paper. What am I to do with it? It's good information, it is important; so much so, that I will reference it. One problem, I don't know if I will be able to find it at the moment I need it. There it goes, onto that pile that sits on the edge of the desk waiting for a round "box"with a poly-based liner to get close enough to accidentally push it into the oblivion.

What I need is information that is accessible when I need it. I need a lot of information, but I don't need all of it today. In fact, the information I could use today has to do with dealing with all the paper from the "office box," but nobody sent me anything like that.

Thought: People don't care about information until they need to care about information.

Perhaps that is an important piece of strategy to consider when I build, lead and direct the church. It's one thing to talk about good information on a Sunday morning, but what is needed this Sunday is something that addresses this crazy world we live in where the Pope meets with victims of child molesting priests and the Texas courts try and figure out what to do with 416 kids from a polygamist ranch. What I need right now is information that helps the message of Jesus Christ get louder than all the other religious noise coming through my "mail box," "cable box," and "inbox."