The recent flooding here in Nashville and surrounding areas has hit us hard. There has been loss of life, property (both personal and business), historic buildings such as the Grand Ole Opry have been flooded and the list goes on and on.
The reason for creating this blog is to reflect on our ability to function as a church should during and after disasters, specifically the technological aspect.
On Saturday, May 1st I watched the news as the interstate close to the church located at I24 and Bell road was being flooded. The news showed a building floating down the interstate beside cars and trucks that were submerged in water. I live about 45 miles from Christ Church Nashville and we were having flooding in our area as well. Although I do live on a road with a creek, luckily we are on top of the hill.
Sunday morning I got a call from the church Administrator requesting that we put a link on the front of the web page to a video that was recorded of the Pastor making an announcement concerning the fact that the church would not have services, among other things. My hands were tied. I have satellite internet at my house, which is the only thing I can get with any speed to it at all. When it rains or if there are storms in the area the satellite internet simply does not work. I tried calling the media guy to see if he could get in my office so I could walk him thru making a change. He did not have a key to my office and nobody was at the church that does. I have just asked maintenance to make a key for him. Luckily, I had setup the front of our web site to display our twitter postings. Our media guy posted the video to youtube and our Communications Team Leader was able to post a link to the video on there. Since currently I am the only one that knows how to make changes to our web site, I think it would be wise to have another computer and person trained to do it.
My limitations to internet connectivity from my house has many implications, including not being able to do things that I can do quickly normally. This has brought to my attention the fact that it is not good that there are things that only I know how to do. We should have a few people who know how to make changes to the web site, send an email to the congregation, send text messages and create and send a recorded phone message to the congregation and staff. Our congregation should be polled as to what means of communication they prefer to get and the information collected accordingly. (email address’s, phone numbers, etc.) The web site should be setup to collect this data. Also, the bulletin and screen announcements should have information regarding this subject. As part of becoming a new member, this type data should be collected at that time as well.
Currently we use OneCallNow for phonetree messages. We have not used the product in over a year, so the database is not up to date and to my knowledge there is no way to automate this information with our Shelby Database. I plan to find out what our options are in this aspect. An internal setup of a phonetree system may be the way to go financially. Possibly an Asterisk system will do the trick. However, should our phone lines be down in an disaster situation it would be good to have an external solution ready.
We use txtwire.com for our text services. We have not set it up for anything other than Wednesday Night Dinner polls and menu texts currently. I plan to go ahead and set this up for congregational alerts soon! A page on the website that lists contact preferences may be in order here as well.
Monday I was able to post the video on our website in our normal streaming video portion of our website. Michelle and Mesa put together a Flood Relief graphic to add to our rotating Flash graphics on the front of our webpage. Also, they created a specific page on Facebook just for volunteers and flood victims. A link from the graphic takes people to the Facebook Flood Relief page. I also setup a mailbox for servolution@christchurchnashville.org for use on this project.
Flood Relief – Christ Church Nashville Facebook Page
As the work week progressed volunteers were showing up and looking for places to setup shop. We have eight computers and phone lines setup for CareCalling in a house on the premises that we call the White House. Many of the volunteers have been using their personal computers and cell phones to assist. We found that with the volume of incoming calls along with the volume of outgoing calls, our 10 lines were being used up. I asked for ideas to get around this situation on citrt.org (Church IT Round Table) chat room. There were a few ideas that I am in the process of evaluating. One was to get a Google Voice account. I requested an invite from Google but have yet to receive one. Someone in citrt.org offered to send one and I may take him up on it. Until I get one, I will not know exactly how this will help. The one thing I see that might be helpful is visual messages and numbers for missed calls. Another suggested seeing about looking into RingCentral.com offerings. This is Wednesday and I haven’t heard of phone lines being an issue recently. Still, it is worth looking into for future reference. A VOIP solution should be in the works soon anyhow.
In my opinion, the biggest void we currently have is the ability to communicate with our congregation. Especially Sunday when the only means of letting members and attendees that our services had been canceled was via Twitter (which is on our homepage) and Facebook.
All in all, I am very proud of the Nashville for its impressive response to such a devastating set of events. Also, Christ Church staff has really risen to the occassion.
Church Related Information Technology Blog 