Church Politics Summer 1983

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It is a typical Monday morning at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Yorba Linda, California. A secretary has just finished adding names to what is now an updated church directory of the 3,000-member congregation.

The directory is not just your average church directory, however. Besides the names of everyone who's involved regularly in the church, it categorizes members by age, occupation, marital status, number of children and their ages, interests, spiritual gifts, and potential involvement in the ministry of the church.

Despite the complexity of the directory, its weekly maintenance is just one of this secretary's many responsibilities. It took her less than an hour, using a personal computer. Now, if anyone needs a volunteer to help with a specific need, a complete list of possible people can be produced in seconds with the push of a few buttons.

After she has finished updating the directory, someone else may use the computer to finish compiling a complete record of giving by Vineyard members, thus simplifying considerably the task of issuing receipts at tax time.

Later on, another secretary will revise the draft of an outline that Pastor John Wimber will be using in a class he teaches at Fuller Seminary. Despite the complexity of the material, she'll type the basic draft only once. A sophisticated word processing program does the rest, allowing editing and re-editing without retyping.

Several months age the Vineyard divided itself into small-group ministry sectors. Postal Zip Codes were used as a guide so that people who live in the same neighborhoods could be ministered to with convenience.

Using Zip Codes for sector boundaries makes it easy to send bulk mailings of upcoming events of interest to specific small groups. ...

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