Article: The Virtual Office

“Virtual Office”? What’s that? A new game or maybe a competing product for Microsoft’s Office? No, but it is a technology concept many pastors are becoming more familiar with.

It used to be that a pastor had an office at the church and was able to arrange appointments and meetings by having people drop in. Nowadays, especially with the prevalence of the bivocational pastor and shared spaces, pastors find that they must be able to work in some unusual locations. Perhaps they are meeting with someone at the local McDonalds, or in StarBucks. Maybe there is a public library close at hand or even a rest stop along a highway. So they have to carry their offices around with them, so to speak.

The first time I really remember encountering this concept was in the late 1990’s at a conference in New Hampshire. The guest speaker was Rev. Ralph Moore, of Hope Chapel in Hawaii, a prominent authority in Churchplanting. I had the privilege of sitting with him at lunch and he explained to us that he was never absent from his pulpit on Sunday, but that he used a PDA to write his sermons while on the road. He would email the completed text to his secretary in Hawaii, who would print it out for him, When he arrived back in his office a the end of the week it was sitting on his desk waiting for him.

What does it take to do ministry today? What tools do you need? How much space does it take up and how difficult is it to set up and take down? In my situation I have an old AST soft-sided laptop case which has the following items in it.

My PDA, a Palm Tungsten. The Infrared Wireless Keyboard for the PDA. Extra AA batteries and device chargers. My cell phone and Bluetooth earphone . A hymnal and my Bible. A notepad, business cards, pencils and a pen. A small selection of cards, envelopes and stamps. There you have it. An office which weighs under 5 pounds, fits in a small laptop case, is quick to set up and quick to take down.

The typical tools a pastor might use are growing smaller and more convenient. This has ‘saved my bacon’ more than once. On one particular occasion I was bringing our teens on a Saturday to a Bible Quizzing Tournament about 45 minutes away, and was intending to swing by home and work on finalizing arrangements for Sunday, then coming back to pick them up. Upon reaching our destination we literally had a blizzard, and I knew that my plans were not going to work. I had my virtual office with me and all my files loaded, so I found a quiet corner and got to work. By the time our tournament was done, all my work was completed and I just had to go home and print off a few documents.

Some of the newer tools are becoming even more useful and more powerful. Netbooks are increasing in popularity (more on these later), allowing easy connection to the internet through WiFi, a built-in keyboard and more laptop-like power and speed. Laptops themselves are smaller and more powerful. All-in-one handheld devices like the Blackberry are evolving into more useful platforms. WiFi hotspots are, in some areas, almost universally available to allow easy connections.

Do you have a ‘virtual office’? What do you see as being necessary to life on the road?