Friday, 19 March 2010 13:55 Last Updated on Friday, 19 March 2010 14:13 Written by admin

Some officers, executive secretaries, office secretaries, directors, and district pastors of the different conferences and missions in the central philippine union conference territory, gathered at West Visayan Conference to attend an eight-hour e-roster seminar last March 12. This seminar aimed at equipping our conferences and missions with knowledge on securing exact, accurate, and complete church membership data.

During the devotional, no less than CPUC's Executive Secretary, Pastor Elmer P. Pagunsan, gave the message.  He said that we have tried securing an exact church membership data, but always fail.  Maybe because we do not have the right system to use.  But with e-roster, he further explained, relating it with the Bible text he quoted, we again have the privilege and prospect of securing exact, accurate, and complete membership data.  So, strengthening his point on maximizing the use of the e-roster program, he concluded by saying we have to practice what we were given.

Designed by Engineer Sam Pimentel, e-roster carries multi-function features and capabilities.  And as designed for Adventist membership data system, the instructions, functions, and the program flow bear Adventist themes.  For example, the password for logging in speaks of our Adventist practice like "worship" or "sabbath."  And one cannot just log in as he pleases.  One can access the program, depending on the task he must undertake.  This measure seeks to secure the data and not mess with the information being encoded.

When asked about the assurance on the efficiency of the program, Engr. Pimentel said that because the encoding is in the local church, say 50 baptism or 100, that can be easily handled and done in no time.  But if the encoding takes place in the conference, where baptismal reports get to over a thousand, the secretary will not have a way of completing it.  This is why, he further said, the encoding must be in the local church.  This is the only way this could be done.  And this is the way e-roster works. Encoding of membership takes place at the local church, and then gets reported in the district, conference, and up. E-roster produces its own encrypted report, and gets a small file size that can be emailed to where it must go.

First approved and used in North Philippine Union Conference (NPUC), e-Roster now becomes the approved membership software of the division.  Important as the data themselves, the database needs to be considered.  Other programmers would use limited-space database, like Access with a limit of only 5 Gigabytes; but with e-Roster the database gets without limit.  When asked why, Engr. Pimentel said because he makes his own database.  "Your database is as big as your hard disk," he further said.  So, if your hard disk gets the space for only 80 Gigabytes, e-Roster will contain data up to 80 Gigabytes, which, he said, is extremely more than enough for a single church membership database.

A light-weight software of 35 Mb, the e-Roster can be obtained by the church from the district pastors who also received the training from the conference.  And here at West Visayan Conference,the one who did the training, though not for all district pastors, was the developer himself.  But the heavier responsibility rests in the local district, where the church clerks, responsible for the baseline encoding, must be also taught well of using the software.

A civil engineer by profession, Engr. Pimentel says the reason why he at present engages into software programming: "It started with a curiosity on having to make the computer obey what you wished it will do.  Now that it does, I got to use it for our advantage."  And he offers the e-Roster to the Adventist church for free. He said, "This is but my simple way of giving back...of saying thanks to God for having gifted me with knowledge."

Married and blessed with one daughter (now married to an Ilonggo), Engr. Pimentel at present resides in Dasmarinas, Cavite.  He works for a living as a freelance software programmer.  He designs software for banks and schools.