P
eter Pan was the boy who never wanted to grow up. In Neverland, the fantasy of remaining a child and seeing life as a fairy tale is desirable. However, in the real world, immaturity can bring irreparable consequences.Broken relationships, needless suffering, wrong decisions and a tendency toward detriment are the hallmarks of immaturity. This can happen to your technological programs if you do not have a maturity plan.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
1 Corinthians 13:11
Your technological capabilities need to mature. There are many models on technological maturity available. A search for the phrase “technological maturity model” in Google returns about a half million results. Each model adapts the principles of maturity to a given industry or common human endeavor.
No model had been adapted for the maturity of ministerial technologies until the publication of my book Cibermadurez: 7 pasos para que las tecnologías ministeriales den mucho fruto. The following 5 principles that will drive your technology maturity forward are an excerpt from the book. Only available in Spanish on Amazon.
The Substitution Principle
Maturity is reached by replacing growth alternatives where there are negative attitudes. This is living with aspirations. The best way to mature is by substituting things that you do in the present with things typical of he next stage of maturity.
We do a better job embracing the new than letting go of the old. Substitution allows you, for example, to utilize your website and email system as the primary means of communication in place of 10-15 minutes of announcements during worship. Another idea could be to pre-record announcements on video thus enabling ministers to plan ahead what they want to communicate.
The Transformation Principle
Maturity seeks to change human behavior in its interaction with its environment. Technology is one of the main ways in which humans utilize their interaction with the material world, hence making technology so transformative.
When we adopt a new model, and cease the old one, there are repercussions in other areas of technology. People need to change their habits, systems need to be redesigned, processes and policies to be adjusted. Teams are let go and new ones arrive on the scene. Keeping with the previous example, perhaps there is a need for an email marketing system instead of installing speakers in the hallways.
The Vitalization Principle
Maturity invigorates. To give life is a trait exclusive to human beings. Technology does not have this capability to reproduce life, but it can promote it, protect it, and prolong it. This is the reason why technology can become a vital agent.
It is obvious that technology works as a vital agent in cases of health technology: a pacemaker, a device to measure blood pressure, or a respiratory system to keep a person alive. In your ministry, there is also a need for essential technology. It is your job to identify the ways in which technology can fulfill a vital role in your ministry.
The Reproducibility Principle
Maturity has to do with reproduction, to bear fruit in character, amount, and quality. Technologies should create mechanisms that invite creative capabilities, multiplication, and excellence of ministerial functions.
It might be obvious in our minds, but not so obvious in our practices. At times, we stay married to inefficient technologies that limit our reproductive capabilities. Certain technologies facilitate reproducibility through collaboration, communication, and teamwork. We know these as productivity technologies.
The Spirituality Principle
Maturity is guided by the Holy Spirit and has spiritual purposes. Spirituality has always been measured by technology since ancient, biblical times, until our present time. Technological maturity can facilitate and encourage spiritual maturity to help your devotion, find your purpose in life, your calling, your vocation, and serve your neighbor.
There are several mobile applications that can guide your spiritual growth, help you stick to certain spiritual disciplines such as prayer, reading, and Bible meditation, instruct you in the doctrine of the Christian faith, and even connect you to accountability groups in areas of temptation or weaknesses.
These principles do not apply for all technologies. Technology cannot be spiritual. They apply to any maturity model in such a way that technological maturity can incorporate them.
These five principles form a hierarchy that goes from the base of substitution to the apex of spirituality. Substitution produces transformation. Transformation produces vitalization. Vitalization produces reproducibility. And, reproducibility produces spirituality.
Think about this for a moment: is it possible to become a mature person without substitution? Initially, this consists in repentance; in substituting the focus of your life centered upon yourself and beginning to center it upon Jesus Christ.
Well, the same thing happens with technological maturity. You can center your efforts in technology itself, or you can focus them around the mission of Jesus Christ. At the end of the day, focus is everything because if you see where you are going, you are going where you see. If you change your focus toward spiritual life, you will go toward it.
I hope that you can incorporate these principles into your technology practice and take advantage of them. Please continue the conversation. Comment on this article in the blog and on social media. If you don’t know what to say, you can start by answering:
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