Quite frankly we were surprised that our engineer didn’t simply burst into flames when crossing the threshold at this site for the first time, but it turns out we have a lot more in common than you may think. We’re impressed that our stereotyped ideas of Churches aren’t realised here. It’s a happy place with a focus on community.
As you might expect, this environment poses some unique challenges. For instance many of the staff are volunteers, and not familiar with the Mac OS X operating system. There is also quite a turnover of people- changing roles, sharing jobs etc. And being a not for profit institution there is also challenges around budget.
Another surprise was the size of the operation. We tend to think of Churches as small arms of a much bigger parent, however St Matthews requires huge amounts of work to keep things running smoothly.
Darryl Sessions, Business Manager explains ‘I inherited Servicemax with my job, but they keep the IT side of our work running smoothly- allowing me to concentrate on other aspects of my work’
For St Matthews we perform like an outsourced IT Department, consulting, recommending and sourcing hardware and software. We’re also responsible for making sure it all works and that users have access to help when they need it.
Senior Minister Bruce Clarke had this to say ‘Much of our face to face work with the community is done on the weekends, so it’s nice to know that Servicemax are flexible enough to work with our deadlines. Servicemax give us the most professional IT support we’ve ever had’
It’s an impressive setup, and even more so when we consider the ways that St Matthews have integrated technology into their interactions with the congregation. Much of the data they need is stored in a cloud based system, and many sermons are delivered complete with multimedia- and uploaded later to the website as podcasts.
We’re proud of the work that we do for St Matthews, and if you’d like to explore what we can do for you, please contact us here
If you’d like to see more of what St Matthews does, please click here