The Assimilation Team

My church is Geek-Friendly. That's not the reason I love my church, of course--there's a great pastoral staff, great people, and it's a great time worshipping. Just the same, I appreciate our church's commitment to ministering to those of us who fall into the Geek category.

We have more than just the usual TVs and DVDs, and all the gadgets make my geeky heart happy. We are blessed with a sound system that has more buttons and levers than some small radio stations. I'm assured that they even all work and are not there merely for decorative purposes. The sanctuary computer runs the Powerpoint slides. The slides are used to display the lyrics to songs we sing that are still Too Cool To Go Into The Hymnal. In addition, the pastor uses it for the different sermon points. This is A Good Thing (tm) because at any given time, my mind can go off on a variety of tangents, including but not limited to different Bible verses, a variety of historical thoughts, fanfics, Star Wars, writing, tornadoes, blogging...you get the picture. The outline on the screen lets my brain beam back down to where it belongs.

The church has a website, including MP3 downloads of the pastor's sermons. I imagine they'll be podcasting soon, which I think would be delightfully geeky. They also have a wireless network, which means I can log in when I bring my computer to the Welcome committee. Since I'm the secretary for the committee, this means I can type up the minutes at the meeting, spellcheck, and email them as soon as the meeting is done. This is good because then I can't get distracted by friends, Star Wars, blogging, writing, tornadoes, etc., and forget about it until about 32 minutes before the next meeting. Of course, this also means I've now become very accurate in reporting the minutes, which may or may not be a beneficial thing for other committee members. :D

I knew, however, that we had achieved True Geek Inclusiveness when I opened the church bulletin today. There was a list of the new names for the teams, which are replacing committees. I scanned down this list. One team is designed to help new members become involved in the church, and I was in heaven when I saw the name.

It's called the "Assimilation Team."

You can imagine my first thought. "We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile!" How many churches do you know that include sci-fi in their team names? I just thought that was seriously cool. Until I had another thought. Since I'm the secretary for the Welcome-Committee-Turning-Into-Assimilation-Team, did that make me a Borg Queen? That was disturbing. Even though I am not a vain woman, mechanical implants and a bald head are just not good looks for me.

You know what would make my church just uber-Geeky? Changing our mission statement to "We are Immanuel Baptist Church. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile!" I have the distinct feeling that having my family and me as members means the Church has already met its uber-Geeky quotient, and further geekiness would make it explode or something. We wouldn't want that to happen, now, would we? We should keep the old mission statement in that case. :)