IT is one of those classic ‘great when it works but horrible when it’s broken’ things in life. But it’s helpful when trying to ‘make the most of every opportunity’ the Lord has given the Evangelical Union at Sydney
University. EU students and staff are seeking to proclaim the gospel to a community of around 60,000 people on campus. For example, in the first semester, there were 96 small group Bible studies that had 114 visitors and 746 regulars. It would be much harder to provide great pastoral care without some assistance from IT.

The EU loves to embrace abundance and we have two websites! The first is simple, colourful, informative and open to all who view it. It is run by the EU’s Communications Team and is designed to engage and inform everyone in the uni community. I am part of the IT Team and we run a very different second site. It requires an account to log in, is mostly black and white and focuses on administrative support for the activities of the EU. We provide services in several areas: managing the process of connecting a newcomer to the EU community, attendance rolls for small groups and training groups, and online registration for events and conferences.

We try to keep in mind that each of these services has a pastoral purpose. Just like Paul’s reasoning about beautiful feet, there’s a practical component to the spread of the word. The IT Team has worked to help make it possible that everyone who enquires and shares their contact details with the EU will get a prompt and friendly response from the appropriate EUer. Online registration and payment for events minimise handling of cash and reduce temptation. Its convenience helps students act on their good intentions to attend a conference.

The IT Team has a member of the EU Staff, a Senior Student and several student volunteers. The students aren’t just science nerds. Nerds are found in every faculty! We look for students with a commitment to Jesus and the objects of the EU. They also need to be willing to dive into an unfamiliar IT context and learn whatever they need to work with it. This takes perseverance and tolerance of a steep learning curve. We’re very blessed to have students with the competence and capacity to take this on. It has become more challenging over the years to recruit students as they seem to feel increasingly time-poor. I’m impressed that all our Senior Students have not only given generous amounts of time but have also cared for their fellow team members. Pray that the Lord would continue to bless us and help us recruit new members.

The IT Team’s year has four seasons of work. The semesters are seasons of user support as a new generation of students and staff come to grips with using the admin features and find things that we need to fix. The mid-year winter break and end-of-year summer break are a time for projects like bug fixes, version upgrades and new features. IT is always changing, and we need to continuously upgrade and adapt to new standards. Recently, we’ve been working on the EU Event module, which manages online registration and payments. The calculation of GST payable is quite complicated for religious conferences, particularly for part-time attendees. We have improved the clarity of the documentation and plan to improve the emails that are sent to those registering.

– David Steele, EU Senior Staff