Leader vs Geek – Church Communication Breakdowns

As I mentioned last week, Kurt and I spent Friday and Saturday at the Interactive Church Conference in Daytona which was led by Matt Farina and Bob Christenson who do the Geeks and God podcast.  We originally planned to blog life from the conference, but then figured most of you probably had something better to do than read a dozen geeky blog posts Friday afternoon and Saturday.  So, we decided to post notes and thoughts on the conference throughout the next 2 weeks.

One of the first sessions touched on communication problems between church leaders and the tech staff/volunteers responsible for the church website.
Notes

Why talk about this?  It’s a barrier (to ministry, community, and a good church website)

Characteristics of most leaders

• Non-technical
• Time is focused on ministry
• Goal-oriented,
• Lots of contact w/people
• Is accountable for result

Characteristics of most tech people

• Skilled in technology
• Love for technology
• Talks tech
• Not the primary user of the website
• Easy to forget why they’re doing what they’re doing.

The difference between leaders and tech people boils down to vocabulary and worldview.

Vocabulary (Leader vs Tech person)

• Talk Churchy vs Speak Geek
• Macro vs micro
• Outside the box vs tools they use
• Trained in communication vs introverted
• Lack tech vocabulary vs less understanding of ministry issues
• Afraid to say “I don’t understand” vs talk down to people who don’t get it

Worldviews

• Talk in abstracts (lack of details) vs can’t grab the big picture

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to resolve and avoid communication breakdowns.

Until then… Do you agree or disagree with these descriptions of the differences between leaders and tech people? Have you ever experienced tension or a communication breakdown in your church because of these differences?