About Us
Welcome to our Community
This community was established 5-Mar-2017.
Firstly, let me be quite clear - despite the use of the name "Diaconate", this community has no formal standing as such with any denomination or religion. The name was simply chosen as some friends and I thought it had a good ring to it and in the context of the state 21st Century church technology, seemed to have some relevance to how technology is used / can be used for mission.
The term deacon comes from the Greek word diákonos meaning servant or minister. It appears at least 29 times in the New Testament. The role or office of deacon was developed in the early church primarily to minister to the physical needs of the members of the body of Christ. In the ICT and AV technology fields we may not be as focussed on the individual members of the body (though that should not be far from our minds) so much as we focus on the needs of the corporate Body of Christ as expressed in our local community, denomination or nation.
The effective deployment and use of technology to promote and facilitate the mission of the church is an area often pointed to as a critical enabler to making the church more relevant. The caveat is that "it should be done well" - technology is a notoriously fickle medium that presents anything less than adequate as a fraud. Doing technology "well" requires a commitment to a degree of funding, professionalism and skillsets that are often beyond the reach of the mainstream church.
What the church does have, however is a body of people dedicated to making a difference.
This community is dedicated to the cadre of volunteers who turn up on Sundays (and spend lots of other time) to run and maintain sound systems, projectors, computers, telephone systems, streaming, video-conferencing and the myriad other pieces that make up the ICT infrastructure so that the mission of the christian church is facilitated and supported.
We hope that this platform will lead to opportunities for networking (people, not computers), provision of education opportunities, common repositories of resources and many other opportunities for making technology use better.
So, join the diaconate, tell us what you have been doing, ask us about what you have been having problems with and come with us on the journey to the future.
Some common sense rules to start with:
- Don't share anything illegal, threatening, or offensive.
- No spam. Don't post anything that inappropriately promotes a business, product, or service.
- Don't stoop to insults. If someone upsets you, respond to the issue rather than questioning the character of the person.
- Respect people's privacy. Don't share anyone else's personal information. Don't post messages from other people or share their personal communications without their permission.
- Respect other people's and company's intellectual property. Our default rights policy is Creative Commons with Attribution.
Help make our community a great place for everyone.
If it all goes pear-shaped:
Hopefully, it won't get to that, but if you really must contact one of the Moderators, or email Peter at lanepr@acm.org and we'll see what we can do.
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