Tim Young
Lightsys Technology Services Inc — Red Wing, MN, United States
Tim is a field consultant in Information Technology; he travels from ministry to ministry, helping out the technical folks. Patricia helps out with everything else (painting, paperwork, babysitting, mowing lawns, etc.) They have worked with over 180 organizations in 18 countries.
During their traveling season, they travel most every weekend to a new mission organization, working there for the upcoming week.
A standard day for Tim includes things such as helping upgrade servers, talking through their backup strategy, troubleshooting network glitches, planning service migrations, and the like.
Because Tim leaves at the end of the week, it is vital that the people in the organization knows all changes that happened on their systems and why. So he tends to be a "professional coffee drinker." They show Tim around (and he drinks coffee), they talk about the issues they are facing (and he drinks coffee), and they talk about solutions to the problems (and he drinks coffee). Then, Tim will often walk them through the solution, with them doing the actual work (while Tim drinks coffee). In the end, they know what changed, and why.
Tim often explains his ministry by saying, "consider me your techie friend." He knows a lot, but the techies in the mission are ultimately responsible for their own infrastructure. Tim is a great assistance, but functions as a friend, not as an outside consultant who will maintain the tech for the next year.
A side result of Tim's ministry is that the techies are encouraged. Having a techie friend they can call on makes them feel much more capable, while still being in charge of their own tech.
