Michael Whittle@michaelwhittle
I get hit up a ton by really smart folks building new technology for the church and here’s something I’ve found…
Everyone claims they’re building for the church, and most genuinely mean it.
Here’s the question I always ask…
Did you actually talk to a pastor?
Not a podcast pastor or a thought leader at a para church org who has a platform and a book deal.
But an actual shepherd of an actual congregation. The guy running 150 on a Sunday in a mid-size city who hasn’t had a raise in three years. Who is doing pre marital counseling Tuesday night, a funeral Thursday, and somehow shows up every Sunday with something new to say.
That guy. Do you ask him anything?
It’s really easy to get fluent enough in the language (kingdom, mission, redemptive, faith-driven) that many have stopped doing the slow relational work of actually finding out if their ideas are useful to anyone in a normal local church context.
Many have learned to speak church well enough to raise money and build an audience without ever submitting our assumptions to the normal pastors actually pastoring normal churches.
The church has always moved at the speed of relationship. Slow, inefficient, and completely irreplaceable. This act is irreplaceable in the thing you are building. It’s your version of “doing things that don’t scale.”
The average pastor is carrying things that would cause most of us to fold under in a week. They do it for not enough money and not enough support, but because they are called.
If you’re building technology for the church here’s my encouragement for your next move… find a pastor. A local one. A normal one.
Sit with him.
Ask what’s actually hard. Don’t pitch anything or lay out your grand vision for the next “game changer” solution you are building.
Just listen, and let that inform what you build next.
