For years, I resisted the popular theory that a computer would make me more productive. Finally, I capitulated, creeping into the slow lane of the information highway like a blue-hair in a lumbering land yacht. Let me tell you, it’s a dangerous place to be.
Right after getting a new computer, I finished my sermon by 5 p.m. on Thursday-as rare a phenomenon as a Super Bowl win for the afc. I actually had all day Friday and most of Saturday to unwind, recharge, and fix the leaky sink in the bathroom.
Friday morning, I glanced over my manuscript after a leisurely breakfast and found a typographical error. No problemo. I popped the top of my laptop and fixed it on the spot. Three hours later I was still fixing it.
Saturday morning-same thing. I decided to change one illustration-just a bit. I put everything away at noon, but after supper that evening, I was at it again, confident I was painting the final strokes of a homiletical masterpiece.
It was pitiful. I tweaked the life right out of that puppy-with a hyperactive thesaurus, canned illustrations about dead English guys from the data base, and not enough quiet reflection. This heartless machine enabled me to turn a solid double into a pop fly.
Sure, it’s nice to be able to move paragraphs around, but a lot of us pastoral types are obsessive enough without a computer luring us toward sinless perfection.
Guilt producer
My next brilliant idea was to utilize an activity manager like salespeople use to track tasks and contacts. It’s like the Day-Timer from you-know-where. Let me simply warn you that this type of software is designed to motivate by guilt.
Most of us live continually with the painful reality of too much ministry left at the end of the day. The last thing we need at quitting time is a computer screen flashing vivid reminders of our shortcomings. If by some herculean effort we were able to clear our to-do list this week, there would be no time for prayer, no time for sleep, no time to read the cartoons in Leadership. I say, do the best you can, then call it a day.
Among the more tempting diversions on the information highway are the online services. My denomination has gone online and makes available all kinds of stuff I would never bother to read in hard copy. Put that same periodical online and I’ll rack up the minutes and dollars reading it.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of frequenting online services is that it’s a major symptom you have crossed the line from computer user to techno-nerd. Once that happens, your friends and family will start avoiding you like an all-day denominational meeting. It’s too painful for them to watch a person degenerate like that. They would rather remember you b.c. (before computer) as a witty person, fun to be around.
At first, you won’t know what’s going on. You’ll say, “Let me show you this neat, new thing on my computer.” (It’s hard to believe, but most people have a life and don’t care that you have four kinds of Solitaire in your game file.)
Get help, or soon you’ll be cruising for software and finally buy some bad megabytes from a stranger on a dark, lonely street.
I wonder if our pastoral predecessors had to deal with the distraction that accompanies newly discovered technology. Did Pastor Dudley play with his new telephone until the deacons came and took it away? Don’t think so. Did ol’ Reverend Johnson tinker under the hood of his Model A so much that he got the boot? Naaah. When he needed it, he’d fire it up, drive to where he was going, then park it. That, my friends, is what we must do with our techno-toys, lest we become roadkill on the information highway.
Ed Rowell is assistant editor of Leadership.
1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
