I cover a lot of digital Church issues. I admit, it is a particular soap box of mine. Why shouldn't it be? The Church has designed some phenomenal digital tools that members are not using.
Consider the following points:
- Church members who would never refuse implementing new hard-copy procedures seem to feel that digital tools are optional and can be safely ignored. How is this? If the Church develops a tool and instructs us to make the best use of it we can does it matter what media it is contained on?
- Digital tools are not the future, they are the present AND the future. The Internet has been around since 1991. Local unit web sites have been around since at least 2004. We have generations coming of age that have never known life without the digital component. Stop living in the past.
- A common argument is that not everyone has access to computers or the Internet. This argument is so flawed I can hardly believe people still proffer it. Some people don't have telephones, should we not use telephones just because everyone doesn't have them? Should we wait until everyone in the world has computers before we make use of digital tools? This is nonsense. Digital tools can be an added component to the existing system. Frankly, they would take less time and make the present paper system work better. Isn't that reason enough for using them?
- The paper system augmented with snail mail and telephones has always been inadequate but it was all we had. Haven't we all longed for a system that had the potential for being all-inclusive, accurate and timely? We have one now. Why isn't it being better used?
- Should you hamper the Church's operations just because you are stubbornly non-digital? I think we have a moral duty to make use of every tool the Church develops whether we personally like it or not. If the Church has spent this much money and this many work hours developing it we must consider it important.
- We've all assumed that taking the gospel to the world involved physical missionaries traipsing over physical land. I don't think Heavenly Father has ever stipulated that. What if he intends world wide gospel sharing to be digital? If you haven't considered this then Satan certainly has you duped.
- This brings up something that should be obvious but apparently isn't. If you are hindering the gospel message then you are part of Satan's minions. If you are preventing the gospel or full gospel fellowship from being extended to everyone you need to reassess your actions.
- No one would seriously argue that people should continue using the hard-copy paper system to do family history/genealogy work since FamilySearch.org exists. Similarly, we should not continue relying on the hard-copy paper system when the Local Unit Web Sites (LUWS) exist.
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