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Linking Parish Offices
Business today is cautiously excited about Home Offices. Not just the Home Offices of small entrepreneurs, but Home Offices of employees of large corporations.
That latter is a significant change in attitude. For decades, “big business” has assumed that all their employees should be under one roof, able to walk easily from desk to desk to communicate, under the watchful eye of a supervisor. Downtown areas became overbuilt with tall office buildings, at great expense, so that all the employees could be housed together. When computers became ‘derigeur’, monitors and keyboards replaced typewriters on the desks of office employees, allowing the business to link each of their employees together in a Local Area Network. Such a LAN allowed employees to receive information from head office, to send in sales and other reports, and to communicate easily and instantly with fellow employees.
But now, there is a trend to reduce the size of the downtown buildings. Such trends may be driven by cost --- the cost of occupying downtown buildings for only 8 hours per day, the environmental cost of rush hour travel, and the cost of parking --- but they are also driven by the desire of some employees for more freedom, closeness to family, and a desire to both live and work in their home location, on their own time schedule. “Big business” found that by linking the computer of the Home Office employee to a Wide Area Network using the Internet, the employee could continue to receive company information, business plans, sales updates, and keep in touch with other employees. In other words, the employee was still effectively connected to the central office for business purposes, without the high building or environmental costs. Big business already had a Computer Communication System in place --- what they needed to do was to encourage employees to work from a Home
Office.
The Church, for better or worse, already has its employees in Home Offices. For purposes of discussion, Parish Churches can be considered the Branch Offices of a Diocesan Organization; each church has its own office, with a priest(s), often with a secretary, or other personnel. The challenge for the Church is not to encourage its employees to move out of a downtown building to Home Offices --- the clergy are already there --- the challenge is how to link these virtual Home Offices to the Diocesan Structure and with each other, in a simple easy to use Wide Area Network. The best Wide Area Network, approved by the Quest Committee of Lambeth, is a FirstClass Client/Server System.
The FirstClass Communication system provides a channel for Diocesan Information to be sent directly to the virtual Home Office of each parish church. It provides email so that the priests can connect with each other, and to the rest of the world. It provides private Conferences for members of Committees to share with each other and discuss ideas between meetings. It provides Sermonshop and International and National Church News. It provides private secure methods for the Bishop to communicate either with a select group, or with all the rest of the clergy.
Further, a FirstClass Communication System is flexible enough to include key lay people of the diocese, giving them access to information, while allowing information for clergy or committees to be kept private. The FirstClass System provides Calendaring for the whole Diocese, or a parish or a committee. A FirstClass System accepts illustrations and pictures within any message. And if the FirstClass Intranet is located at the Diocesan Office and connected to the Internet there, it can provide a unique messaging Local Area Network for all the diocesan office computers.
So why is it not happening? Instead of using an collaborative FirstClass Communication system that would network all the parishes and the Diocesan Office together, most dioceses continue to assemble and mail vast quantities of paper (augmented with myriads of diverse email msgs posted to clergy mailboxes). In a medium size diocese of 80 to 100 parishes, the annual cost of sending monthly Parish Mailing can be estimated as between $10,000 and $20,000. Such a cost includes the paper, copying, sorting, assembling, envelopes, postage, and labour costs. Since the cost of sending diocesan paper mailing continues to escalate far above the cost of using a FirstClass Intranet communication system, the reasons for
continuing has more to do with psychology than with efficiency.
There is no doubt that a Diocesan FirstClass Communcation system would increase collaborative communication. By its very nature, it creates forums for sharing, for questioning, and for discussion. If diocesan staff are “stuck in hierarchical thinking modes", they will react negatively to the use of a Diocesan Communication System, and will simply refuse to use it efficiently. Those whose thinking tends to be, "I send -- you receive and do", will be unhappy with a communication system that allows interactive sharing and discussion. Unless diocesan personnel are prepared to give up an element of "control", and truly want to communicate efficiently, instantly, and inexpensively, practical experience
has shown that the use of a diocesan FirstClass Intranet will not work.
Alternative methods of information distribution may also be considered.
a) Faxing information, instead of mailing, would cost less than the postage, copying, and assembling. However, Faxing simply transfers the cost to the parish churches, and does not allow for any employee communication or committee interaction.
b) Websites can also keeps costs under control, but have the same disadvantages as the Fax machine --- not allowing interparish or intercommittee communication. As well, parish office personnel must become skilled with extracting information from a private area in a website, as well as dealing with html codes if local changes are to be made to the information. Diocesan workers would need help in learning html coding, and how to post material to the website. It is most likely that a part-time diocesan employee would need to be hired to post the information to the Website, at an increase in cost that could easily surpass $10,000. Instead of having a separate Website, it is good to know that the FirstClass Diocesan Intranet can host the Diocesan Website, and also includes free
Websites in the system for every parish church.
However, after considering each alternative, the use of a FirstClass Diocesan Intranet is simpler, easier, faster, cheaper, and provides many more features and flexibility. It is time for the Church to seriously connect together its existing Home (parish) Offices into one Communication Network, for the benefit of the Church, and of the Diocese.
For further information, contact Fr.Ron Barnes, of CCI-Church Consulting Inc., ronb@nwnet.org or 250-718-7182
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