Any one who has ever lost their way driving to a new church will likely appreciate the solution devised by Seventh-day Adventist pastor, Victor Hulbert, who lives and works in Britain.

Using computer technology, Hulbert has loaded the locations of 254 British Seventh-day Adventist congregations into a Tom Tom, which is a car-mounted Global Positioning System, or GPS. Step-by-step directions, narrated in a friendly voice, steer the user to his or her desired destination.

“I’m in a different church every Sabbath,” Hulbert, secretary of the church’s South England area, told Adventist News Network. “[When] I go to a church, I [had] to look up the church, [and] enter the address [manually]—now, I just push three buttons, and I know how long it will take me to get there.”

Available in cars and as stand-alone devices for much of the past decade, GPS production value globally is expected to grow at more than US $30 billion in 2008, up from US $13 billion in 2003, according to RNCOS—Research & Consultancy Outsourcing Services, a market research firm in New Delhi, India. According to the online reference Wikipedia, “The Global Positioning System, usually called GPS, is the only fully functional satellite navigation system. A constellation of more than two dozen GPS satellites broadcasts precise timing signals by radio to GPS receivers, allowing them to accurately determine their location (longitude, latitude, and altitude) in any weather, day or night, anywhere on Earth.”

Portable devices such as those made by Tom Tom can be enhanced with customized “points of interest” lists, Hulbert explained. When the latitude and longitude of a church can be obtained, either from a computer-based site that looks up British addresses via postal codes or by taking a direct reading outside a facility, those listings can be used to steer travelers to a church’s front door.

While Hulbert admits a “selfish” motive for his technological venture—“It helps me get around” his church area—he also began to see another possibility: by posting the latitude and longitude for church locations on various Web sites, travelers and vacationers can find worship locations with ease. Hulbert has worked with John Surridge, communication director for the Adventist church in Britain, to add a “church finder” on the official Web site, http://www.adventistchurches.org.uk/nearestchurches.php which, will give people a choice of 10 churches within a given postal code area.

“There’s no reason why this can’t be extended to every church in the world,” Surridge told ANN. “All you have to do is get the precise longitude and latitude, either from a good map, satellite image, or GPS, and you can do a whole load with it.”

About the only limitation users may encounter is whether or not their specific device can accept customized “points of interest”  listings. The Tom Tom device can, while Magellan-branded GPS systems sold in the United States cannot, spokesmen for both companies said.