I subscribe (online) to a Chritstian magazine whose subject matter is computing and technology. It has been around for quite a while and is full of great resources for anyone and especially churches and ministries.

What seems strange is that their online distribution and email newsletters are quite lo-tech—it’s like so early 2000’s.

I get an email newsletter with intros to a variety of articles with a “read more” link which, when clicked, take me to a blank page on the web and begins downloading a PDF for me to read. And these aren’t even on-screen-friendly PDFs horizontally formatted with links either. Each one of these averaged about 500K. You can also download the entire magazine for a wopping 1.6MB. The PDFs were made from files that I presume would have been sent to a printer. And, if you happen to find the link to their website—where you would expect to see a full online version—watch out as it is riddled with dead links.

I wouln’t be so critical of this expcept that this is supposed a magazine who is pushing churches and ministries to use the latest technologies, but they are not up to speed themselves.

I think as Christian organizations we love to talk about how relevant we are, or how hi-tech we are, or how cool we are. When we have to say it we usually aren’t.