The recent storms in Oklahoma have gotten so bad and caused so many issues with airport delays and other damage that it appears the MinistryTECH conference and the Church IT Roundtable have been canceled, or at least postponed to the near future. This is unfortunate, but organizer Terrell Sanders was quoted as saying, “It’s disappointing, with all the success that MinistryCOM has enjoyed in recent history, to have to do such at thing with the TECH conference at the last minute. It’s devastating to see all that planning go down the tubes, really.” Jason Powell, the originator of the first Church IT Roundtable and a major participant and organizer in each Roundtable since, was supposed to facilitate the Roundtable this Saturday, but when I talked to him late this morning about the cancelation he seemed to be sad, but his spirits seemed higher than he tried to sound, probably because he was secretly happy about being able to stay home and gorge himself and not have to walk around airports with such a full stomach now that the Church IT Biggest Loser contest is over.

Terrell was concerned that the weather had caused enough disruption with local communications that he has so far been unable to call or email everyone scheduled to attend the conference, and hasn’t been able to get his internet access to work long enough to update the MinistryTECH website with an announcement, and hoped that putting the word out through blogs would be enough to alert everyone.

Hopefully the airlines and hotels will be understanding of the situation created by the weather and refund people’s tickets and reservations, or it may be difficult to afford travel when the events are rescheduled. Unfortunately, airlines are known for making up reasons for not giving refunds in such circumstances, but we’ll see how it turns out in this situation. An alternate idea might be to contact the government and see if they can assist with disaster relief funds, although this might be limited to people attending from organizations without any religious affiliation.

I was really looking forward to attending these events this week, but I guess there’s always the Roundtable this fall to look forward to…as long as there aren’t any hurricanes in the Carolinas this October!