Feature: The Microcomputer: A Pastor's Friend?
Edward A. Thomas
by Edward A. Thomas, pastor, West Harpswell Baptist Church, South Harpswell, Maine
Yes, I know the host of concerns: What fellowship hath light with a flickering VDT? What concord hath our firm foundation with a floppy disk? And what communion hath Christ with Qantel? Will the eternal Word be mangled by word processing? Is apostasy certain once the church, like Eve, succumbs to the lure of the Apple? A recent booklet from my mailbox in this quiet coastal town urges me to touch not the unclean thing: "Could this be the mark of the Beast?" it thunders over a cover picture of a microchip. Unfortunately, I had already brought the unclean thing into the bosom of my pastoral study four years ago … and I smile as I notice that the pamphleteer found me, tucked away at the tip of this craggy 10-mile peninsula, with the help of a computer-generated mailing label. (So, incidentally, do my Christian magazines.) To get started, I sold my coin collection back in 1978 and purchased a simple cassette-based system; and yes, my wife thought I was crazy. Although I missed the gold and silver rush, my investment has paid off rather well for both me and my small congregation. In the beginning, I had no printer, so I used the computer with a word processing program to write and edit sermons and letters—and then copied them off the screen onto paper with my manual typewriter! Even that cumbersome method reduced my preparation time and the amount of paper I used. My cassette-based system was slow, and often while loading a program, I would spend the minutes getting something else done in the study. It was not until I expanded my system by adding more memory, a letter-quality printer, and a disk drive that it began to be truly practical. The additional memory ...
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