Archive for May, 2009

 

Don’t Forget the Personal in PC

Posted on: May 22nd, 2009 by Hayim Herring

The acronym PC originally meant personal computer. This represented a revolution, putting powerful computing tools once only used by corporations into the hands of individuals. But personal should have another dimension. We shouldn’t forget that technology must be a reflection of the personal touch that a church or synagogue aspires to provide.

In the prior post on technology, people noted that technology should be thought of as just another way to reach and teach members in the community. If you have people leading the technology team in your congregation who are easily attracted to the latest trends and toys in technology, take caution. Make sure you also have people who know less about technology, and more about building community. 

For example, many congregations have four generations of members.  Let’s assume that the majority of members at least access the congregation website, which you’ve just redesigned.  Did you ever think about the font size used for text? For some who are older, trying to read it is like trying to hear from an inadequate sound system in the sanctuary.  One of the ways you can help people into your “electronic front door” is to have a button which enlarges the size of the font.  This sounds like a small matter, but if older members have difficulty reading the website, what message are you sending to them? You’re implicitly saying that your congregation doesn’t understand their abilities—not the message we want to send to our elders, who have often been loyal supporters of the congregation!

Another example: how easy is it to use the automated voicemail system. Is there a long message before an option to get information? Is the staff directory accurate? (I often find that trying to locate the extension of a Rabbi after hours is especially difficult because some directories consider “rabbi” a part of the name!) If you get caught in the equivalent of voicemail devil’s triangle, you’re again sending the unintentional message that you’re not attentive to your congregants.

So here’s a suggestion. If you have an adult education committee meeting, invite people to come in 15 minutes earlier to give feedback on the adult learning section of your website.  You can do the same if you have a sisterhood or brotherhood meeting—ask members to review their activities page and the website in general. You can follow a similar process for getting feedback on your voicemail system.

As you review your technologies, try to keep the following questions in front of you:

  1. Do your communications technologies serve your members’ needs, and how do you know that’s  true?
  2. Are they consistent with each other so that key information is easily accessible and accurate?

If you do try to solicit feedback from committee members please share what you’ve learned.  Additionally, let our readers know what simple changes you have made to help better connect members to you’re congregation.

Thanks—and looking forward to your responses and experiences!

Rabbi Hayim Herring

photo from flickr.com, Kaptain Kobold

Terrific or Terrifying? Technology’s Impact on Your Organization

Posted on: May 12th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

Item: in 1986, I purchased a desktop computer manufactured by Leading Edge (which would now have to be called Dead Edge—the company didn’t last long) and an Epson dot matrix printer for about $2200. The computer was state of the art, came with 2 megabytes of RAM which I upgraded to 4, a monitor on which amber-colored words appeared and, when I inserted a second floppy disk, a fairly sophisticated spell-check program. As I write this entry, I am sitting on an airplane, using a laptop. One person is watching a movie on his handheld device, another is listening to songs, and although it’s dark, the cabin is aglow with other laptops or net books. All of these small, portable devices are exponentially more powerful than my first electronically tethered desktop, which didn’t move more than a few inches because it was plugged into a wall outlet.
 
My point? As much as we may sometimes wish it, technology is not going away and is literally embedded in most aspects of life already. In fact, it’s literally embedded in many bodies—insulin pumps, pacemakers, replacement parts (we are just seeing the beginning of how technology will allow for body-morphing for the masses for non-medical purposes).  So while hardware and software applications will continue to change and mature, the communications environment in which we live is here to stay.
 
From what I observe, there are many digital addicts who are always on. That means that they expect near-immediate responses when they send you a question, want you to help them solve a problem or simply want to send a greeting. The ding of an email or voice mail notification can create a near-Pavlovian response on our part, we feel like me must acknowledge the email moments after it comes, perhaps at the expense of deeper thought. 
 
I’d like to start a conversation with you now by asking two questions:

  1. Are you satisfied with how your synagogue manages to keep up with the rapid flow of technological changes?
  2. What technological changes has your synagogue made within the last five years, and have these changes delivered what they promised?

Thanks for what I’m sure will be another provocative discussion!

Rabbi Hayim Herring

image from flickr.com  leo.prie.to 

Personal Confessions: Spirituality Lost and Found

Posted on: May 4th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

Before we leave the topic of spirituality, we’re going to take a look at a critical factor in creating spiritual communities: the Rabbi. I’ve tried not to be blatantly biographical, but I’m making an exception in talking about spirituality. Why? I can generalize about congregations, but I can’t generalize about “rabbis and spirituality,” because each rabbi has a unique path and story.

I wonder, is spirituality a generational issue?  I don’t remember my rabbi, of blessed memory, using that word when I was growing up in the ‘70’s. Nor do I remember him often mentioning God (I could be wrong on that last score but don’t believe so.)  I attended The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) from 1976 to 1985 (undergrad and reb school), and again don’t remember the words spirituality or God mentioned all that much.

I loved my education at JTS and remain grateful for it to this very day. But the approach to Jewish living in those years generally excluded discussions about God, faith and spirituality from the curriculum, except in the most abstract academic manner, although some of us frequently discussed those issues well into the night as students, especially over Shabbat evening meals. We had no or few role models to raise these issues with and we really felt that not too many of our faculty members concerned themselves with the exploration of their own life of faith, or if they did, they didn’t seem very willing to share these issues with us. In fact, I would even say that our education undermined the cultivation of spiritual feelings.  Pretty sad, considering that many of us entered school with a serious belief in God, even if it wasn’t the most sophisticated theological understanding of the Divine.
 
I can’t detail my encounters with spirituality during 10 years of Congregational life, seven years of Federation life and seven years of Foundation life. And of course, a lot in life has happened during these years outside of work.  While I periodically experienced spiritual moments in all of these iterations, I felt that I was undergoing a slow, spiritual death.  In retrospect, I don’t fault my work environments much, although none of them were conducive to intentionally cultivating spirituality. 

What I realized is that I had allowed myself to drift from my own spiritual moorings to the point of cynicism. As spirituality became more of a buzzword, I felt that spirituality was another form of narcissism clothed in religious vocabulary.

For whatever the reasons, I am grateful to say that I have felt the resurgence of spiritual feelings.  For me, that means paying greater awareness to those around me, to what I do and how I do it, to learning from those who have spent more time on doing their own spiritual work and reading more about spiritual masters.  Prayer feels richer, relationships feel deeper, the meaning of everyday moments is greater, and my questions about existential meaning are more insistent.  So that has been my path of spiritual enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment.

What’s your story?

Rabbi Hayim Herring

image from Flickr.com, Image Zen