A Symbol of the Mainline Church

Last night the clergy and lay deputies and alternates to General Convention were invited to Bishop and Kathy Duncan's home for dinner. It was a lovely evening: good beer, good conversation, and an excellent meal. As the evening wrapped up our Diocesan Administrator, who we also think happens to also be the longest tenured deputy elected to the 2012 Convention gave us a brief overview of the next year's worth of prep work.

He handed out to each of us a 1GB flash drive (some call it a thumb drive, he called it a pig drive containing three pdf documents: a list of contact information for deputies and alternates, the outdated draft schedule for the Convention, and a copy of an email sent to all of us regarding a June Synod meeting that most of us will not attend. I chuckled at the flash drives, and told Cassie how excited I was the Diocese had nearly reached the year 2000 with its technology. At least they are trying, though, and I have to give them credit for that.

Well, I went to plug in the drive this morning, and after my PC went through the usual machinations to install the drivers, it told me I had to restart my computer for the software to work correctly. At the very same time, it opened a window showing the contents of the drive: the three pdfs I mentioned earlier. I tried to open them, but to no avail, they were either corrupted or not found, which I assume meant, "follow the restart instructions, hot shot!"

I restarted my computer, and tried to open the drive folder again, but now my computer is recognizing it as either a floppy or CD drive and telling me to insert a disk into drive e:. I went to the website of the brand name on the thumb drive but all the FAQ pages are bad links. And so, here I sit with a 1GB piece of useless plastic.

And I thought to myself, is this a symbol of the Mainline Church?
We try.
We over buy.
We aren't quite sure how to make it all work.
And our FAQs have as many answers as we do members.

Are we stuck with over-sized structures that are essentially useless? Or, is there a way to format what we've got in such a way that it is useful to a world that is desperately in need?