I was scanning notes and recent reading to get an idea to expand upon when I spotted a page in my notebook (paper written with a pen, yes, you can still do that) “intelligence hub.” I couldn’t get that phrase to leave.
The idea behind this intelligence hub is that it is a software application that resides on some sort of computing device connected to all the sources of data in a factory. It doesn’t care about running the machines or the processes. It has an insatiable need to connect to every sensor and every device that through wires or radio waves can send some kind of digital data.
Of course, no one would buy that app if that were all that it did. Who would care about an ever-growing database that just sucked up resources to file that data.
People buy is (the creators hope) for…intelligence. It sorts the data, thinks about the data, finds patterns and anomalies in the data, and displays the results in ways that help humans make better decisions to operate the factory better.
What does that little discursion into the world of industrial technology have to do with spiritual discipline?
I ran into someone in a store in my small town once whom I had not seen for a while. “I haven’t seen you around church for a while.” “We left the church. We weren’t getting fed.”
So, were they (as an example for all of us) like that database just collecting data from teaching and reading? And they just looked for sources of compatible data to feed the database?
Maybe we should look at ourselves as spiritual/intelligence hubs. We connect to multiple sources of information—God, teachers, thinkers, writers, nature. But we don’t stop there. We process what we learn. Then, as Andy Stanley likes to say, we make better decisions and live better lives.
Faith Venture 
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