Our children (daughter Angela and son-in-law Roy) and grandchildren (Nathan and Luke) live in Naperville outside of Chicago. Roy has worked in the hospitality industry for almost all his working life. Now he works at the Corporate Office of a large International Hotel Networking Group. He is their Intranet Service Manager (Service Now). Before I tell you the story, let me get you up to speed as to what “Intranet” is all about. I found the following on Wikipedia here.
An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in contrast to public networks, such as the Internet, but uses most of the same technology based on the Internet Protocol Suite.
A company-wide intranet can constitute an important focal point of internal communication and collaboration, and provide a single starting point to access internal and external resources. In its simplest form, an intranet is established with the technologies for local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs). Many modern intranets have search engines, user profiles, blogs, mobile apps with notifications, and events planning within their infrastructure.
An intranet is sometimes contrasted to an extranet. While an intranet is generally restricted to employees of the organization, extranets may also be accessed by customers, suppliers, or other approved parties. Extranets extend a private network onto the Internet with special provisions for authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA protocol).
Increasingly, intranets are being used to deliver tools, e.g. collaboration (to facilitate working in groups and teleconferencing) or sophisticated corporate directories, sales and customer relationship management tools, project management etc.
Intranets are also being used as corporate culture-change platforms. For example, large numbers of employees discussing key issues in an intranet forum application could lead to new ideas in management, productivity, quality, and other corporate issues. …
Most commonly, intranets are managed by the communications, HR or CIO departments of large organizations, or some combination of these. …
Intranets can help users to locate and view information faster and use applications relevant to their roles and responsibilities. With the help of a web browser interface, users can access data held in any database the organization wants to make available, anytime and — subject to security provisions — from anywhere within the company workstations, increasing the employees ability to perform their jobs faster, more accurately, and with confidence that they have the right information. It also helps to improve the services provided to the users. …
Intranets can serve as powerful tools for communication within an organization, vertically strategic initiatives that have a global reach throughout the organization. The type of information that can easily be conveyed is the purpose of the initiative and what the initiative is aiming to achieve, who is driving the initiative, results achieved to date, and whom to speak to for more information.
On Saturday 12 September, Roy started work at 4am as a contractor was doing an upgrade to the project management system in his portfolio. The idea was that after a few hours the upgrade would be completed and all systems operational. Well … things did not go that smoothly. The contractor needed to produce “patches” for the upgrade as faults started to manifest themselves. It was sleepless nights from Saturday the 12th. Eventually, Roy started asking questions as he needed to provide his superiors with updates as to what was happening. As soon as he did, someone took his question and created an “escalation query” to their head office.
A lady based in Florida called Roy saying she was the Escalation Manager of that firm … “how may I assist you?” Once Roy explained what he needed, she responded: “I am not here to get the job done quicker. I am here to communicate better!” On Thursday 17 September at 11pm the Project Management System was working fine.
I am certain that most pastors have blown sermons and Bible Studies at some stage of their pastoral career … yet their task is to “communicate better!” Remember a pastor, like his congregation, is a sinner saved by grace. He will have bad days. Some messages might not do what is intended … but largely and mostly, he is to communicate better.
Let me tell you a secret … after 40 years of preaching I’m still learning how to preach. I have many, many commentaries on preaching written by great men who were great preachers … yet with the greatest respect … as helpful as these commentaries are … something else is by far more important when it comes to preaching! That something else is nothing other than the Bible. You see, as helpful as books on preaching are and as helpful as commentaries on books of the Bible are … nothing beats the Bible when it comes to explaining what it is saying. Naturally, one needs helps like Hebrew and Greek dictionaries and reference materials … but we cannot get above the message without the Bible.
So, from my experience as a retired pastor–and this goes for all Christians–you need to study the Bible. You need a note book and a pen. You need to read a passage over and over watching for nouns, verbs, adjectives, comas, full stops, exclamation marks, etc. In your mind you need to get the context of the verse or passage as it relates to the chapter, the book and the whole Bible. Remember, all Scripture points to Jesus. You study to understand and then you work it in your heart so that you practice what it says through personal application. Then you can preach it because then you will be able to communicate it better!
2 Tim 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
Lord Jesus, there are many Pastors, Preachers, Youth Leaders and Sunday School Teachers who are clueless as to what Your Word is saying. Help them to study the Bible to communicate it better. I pray in Your Name. Amen.