Every Church should have a plan for protecting Information Technology (IT) resources. This may simply be making backup copies that one of the Trustees takes home with them every week. Or it can be an automated system that backs up computers to the Cloud (Internet). The point is to protect these resources against various hazards. This helps make these systems more reliable for worship and operations.

There was a time when computers in the Church were a new thing. Everyone took care of them like they were their own; and many times they were donated by members not too long ago! Nobody thought of stealing or harming them, for they respected the Church. But times have changed. Church staff can be duped by phishing attacks into giving up passwords, allowing malfactors to get into Church networks. Volunteers can unintentionally download malware onto Church computer systems. And hardware does go down occasionally. The Church needs to plan how to mitigate these issues, just as businesses do.

What happens on Sunday morning if the computer that runs the lyrics for the service goes down? Ideally, you would have another system that could be hot swapped in to run the service that day. Or what happens if the Internet connection goes down? Can you still stream the worship service via a hotspot on a cell phone or another device? Or what if the lighting system goes down, so the sanctuary stays dark? Is there an emergency setting that will at least provide some light to see by? This author has seen all of these circumstances, and scrambled to find workarounds.

Worship can and should go on in spite of these technical problems. The Holy Spirit will still be present if we are singing a cappella by the light of candles. And most preachers know how to project their voice to the last pew so the congregation can hear them without a PA system. But with some wise planning, we can have systems that are reliable to work around these problems and have regular worship. A lot of times, the congregation won’t even notice; and that’s the way it should be with worship. We focus on glorifying God!