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What Makes An Expert… Or Where Have All The Experts Gone?
By admin | December 5, 2007
I was talking with our Tech Guy earlier and he mentioned some forums on lighting in churches he ran across. It resurfaced a lot of issues we’ve had with so-called experts (I’ll explain why I say so-called in a minute).
Basically what we have seen on the tech side of things are experts saying, “Don’t go with that stuff it’s a bunch of crap. Instead go with this stuff because it’s the best.”
Now, that comment is surely true to some extent, item A is probably inferior to item B. But item B is usually 50x more expensive than A. For instance, in conversation with a professional outfitter about our lighting system the expert wanted to steer us away from the equipment we were considering. He gave his spiel and then gave the price. And I’m not kidding you, his quote was 20x more than we could possibly spend.
When I told him this he said, well you could get that other stuff but we can’t support it. He said he’d get back with me “next week” and you can guess what happened. He never called back. See ya later expert.
The thing that these so-called experts don’t have expertise in is helping real people. Anyone can say buy the top of the line stuff and you’ll have a great system. It takes a real expert to say “for the money you can spend here’s the best route to go.” The former is easy, any idiot with unlimited resources can do that. The latter is difficult. And the person who can do so, in my opinion is the real expert.
For instance, a guy I’ve gotten to know, Cory Miller, is someone I think is a real expert. He has developed some great work on utilizing wordpress as a platform for ministry sites (LifeConnection uses wordpress because of this). And he’s doing so in such a way that demonstrates he understands the plight of smaller churches. (I get no income from pimping his services… you should check out his work. His new Dark News Theme is stunning. If someone is looking for a Christmas idea for me there you go…). 
This is far different from the person who has unlimited budgets to spend $200,000 on LIGHTING alone. Shoot, just about anyone could develop a solution with that much jack. But what can you do with a budget? If you can’t translate your “expertise” into terms for the average Joe then you’re not an expert, at least not one who’s worth much.
If you’re an expert then I hope you think about that the next time someone hits your forum for some honest advice. Don’t make fun of him b/c he’s unable to buy the latest greatest lighting rig. Help him out. In the same way that I’m going to be held accountable before God for my teaching, Mr. Expert, you’re going to be held accountable for how you doled out your “advice.”
Topics: Church Planting, Leadership |
December 5th, 2007 at 8:42 am
I kind of have a hard time imagining a time when spending $200,000 on lighting is a good thing for a church to do. Like you say, there are always creative solutions, and when I hear that that much was spent on lights, I’d be thinking small football stadium, not church.
I dunno though…just seems that a lot of that chunk of money could be saved to give to people in need. I guess it’s that balance we need to find as a church between excellence in all that we do, because God is worthy of such worship, and using money wisely to be generous.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:24 am
[...] laments the worthlessness of so-called “experts” who fail to meet the needs of clients with a budget smaller than Bruce Springsteen’s. [...]