The Knowledge Manager

All this technology and writing may be daunting. Though a leadership team may be really excited about making the Web a powerful tool for church ministry, there’s a lot of work. Webmasters manage the church website and email, usually doing double duty as the staff technical expert for everything from the phones to the sound system as well. The more complex your technology becomes, the more your staff is going to need to get up to speed and deepen their understanding of how things work together.

A resource that is not commonly considered is the Knowledge Manager. This person is one who is not necessarily involved in the electronic workings of ministries, though it is often the Webmaster who works in this capacity as well. knowledge managers are specialized in the gathering, processing, publishing and conservation of information. The church can have a mass of information, history and teaching collected over time. Much of it is either valuable for current events or of historical use.

Many times, files are pigeon-holed and stuffed in a back room until someone needs it or the janitor finally gets fed up and puts everything in the circular file system (trash can).

Consider for the budget the purchase of digital storage, either physical or web-based and putting a knowledge manager in position to work with your church’s media products. Organizing, editing and storing information is a tedious task that probably intrudes heavily on the regular missions of pastors, other leaders, secretaries and even the janitor. Someone dedicated to the task of organizing and making use of your output can really streamline internal information as well as public and web-based media.

Knowledge managers can take sermons, sermon notes, announcements, records and just about everything else and develop electronic filing systems that are organized and consist of cleaned-up, ready-to-use information. Ever wonder what happened one year ago today? A knowledge manager can have that information right where you can find it. No more calling up ten or more church members who might barely remember.

Use a knowledge manager to transcribe sermons to documents so those who prefer reading to listening can download or enjoy a re-run of teaching online. Valuable discussions or classroom sessions can also be recorded or transcribed for publication online. Depending on the quantity of production at the church, a part time or even unpaid volunteer position could handle most knowledge management tasks. There are a million bloggers out there who manage to put multiple posts up in a day. There is probably one in your church. Perhaps someone who has been wondering about how to serve in their local church.

There are calendars, archive systems, weblogs and much more that simply need to be configured and turned on by a capable manager. Unleashing the information age on the infrastructure of a local church can have immense benefits. Consider Logos Bible Software, said to be the top study system around. Imagine having a cross-referenced, organized information product for your church that is just as in-depth as Logos is for Bible study.

There isn’t an all-encompassing piece of software out there for managing everything all together. Yet. But in the meantime, a knowledge manager can get products and particulars collated and ready for instant recall with little effort. Knowledge managers should have a purpose in mind that gathers the events of the congregation, the messages and learning material, fusing them into a resource that, with the right settings, becomes a living center of media where the people can interact with it.

Imagine the increased integrity and intimacy that can be forged by combining use of the weblog, church calendar, resource links and all the other connectedness of our online world. Building unity and commonality between members in the Body of Christ can continue, through the Net, every day of the week. The knowledge manager can moderate and coordinate member boards at the church blog, work with the secretary to ensure dissemination of correspondence between members and leaders and keep podcasts and other resources up to date and ready to use.

Rob Hickok serves in the U.S. Navy and has been involved in information management for 15 years. He has worked on private Web publishing, graphics, design, networking technology since 2002. Christ called him to repentance and salvation in August of 2003 and he has been blogging about this event ever since. He lives in Southern California with his Wife and four children. He writes at www.lordandhearth.com.