Speaker 1: Welcome to Modern Church Leader, a short daily show to help you grow your church, be more effective and efficient, and powerful for the kingdom of God.

Speaker 2: So, how do you stay tech competent when you're over 50? Newsflash, I am over 50. So, let me just first say, if you're 50 plus, this can all be very intimidating. You got these young people running around, they got so much knowledge at their fingertips. I look at my five-year-old grandson and how he handles a mobile device is actually a little bit frightening. So, all these kids have grown up with technology and it's coming, it just comes on you. It's unavoidable. And so, there's a few things I think you can do if you're 50 plus. First thing, you got to, in your mind, you got to think, I'm not shying away from this. I am going to embrace technology and I think you can do that in a few ways. Number one, you get around young people and see what they're doing and you be inquisitive. I always love to surround myself in the church setting with younger leaders and for many years I found myself as the young leader and then one day I wasn't. And all of a sudden, now I'm the elder leader and I think to stay young and to think young, you got to be around the young. So, I would encourage, if you're plus 50, to get around young people. They understand technology, they've grown up in school with technology and they're just really, really, really good at it. So, that's the first thing I do. I'd also ask them for help. I'd reach out to them and it's like you can let your ego get in the way, you got to throw that out the door and you can actually get around and ask them how to do stuff. You know, these days you can take video, edit video, edit sound, all within the mobile device and then post it and create a story. And these, you know, kids are working on these works of art that take kind of minutes and hours and they post this 60-second story on Instagram. My goodness, what is even a story? I'm just catching up with putting photos on Instagram, right? Ask the young people, see what they're doing and let them help you get competent in the world of technology. The next thing you can do and this, I'm a huge proponent of this, is read blogs and listen to podcasts around technology. So, there is a million and one different ways that you can consume some great content around technology and get a great kind of podcast and blog aggregator like Flipbook is one I use where I can go and get a bunch of blog content. I can put it all in one spot and I can just flick through like a magazine. And even if I'm just reading the headlines, most nights I'm gonna look at 50-60 articles, five or six of them, I'm gonna go in there and read a little bit more about what's going on, all in the realm of technology. So, educate yourself with blogs and podcasts. That's something that's really, really easy to do and something that you should be doing. The last thing, and I think this is pretty critical, is get in the habit and make a discipline of trying new things. Might be technically based, it might not be around technology, but you should always be trying to challenge yourself, doing new things, things that you've never done before. New hobbies, new places, new people. Just get out there and try stuff new and create that mindset and then the technology thing won't be such a giant thing. You'll be able to embrace it, roll with it and use all of its benefits. I think obviously the smartphone changed the world, I really do believe that, in most ways for good. And I think that was the thing that I think we take for granted today. New phones are coming out every 12 months, chip speeds are getting faster, just like our old computers did. They're just getting faster and faster. We have more technology in our hand now than launched the moon mission, right? It's just incredible. So, I would always have a budget to be able to get new technology in your hands. I don't think it's super expensive nowadays to stay up. If I see, you know, kind of church leaders with like six, seven year old phones in their hand, it's not to keep up, it's not to look, whatever. It's just to have the greatest technology at your fingertips because it's really, really powerful. So, I would make sure that you're always on the cutting edge of mobile devices and understanding how they work and get the most out of them. So, if there's one piece of technology you must get a hold of and must understand is a mobile device. The mobile smartphone is the one piece of technology that, as a pastor, you've got to be competent in and understand the benefits that it gives you. Mobile is the future.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Please review Modern Church Leader on Apple Podcasts and visit our website for more resources at tithe.ly or follow the links in the show notes.