Mobile Ministry Magazine: An Outreach Technology

Seeing mobile technology through the lens of Scripture

Welcome and thank you for visiting Mobile Ministry Magazine. Here, we explore the use of mobile technology and how it can be used by ministers, missionaries, and many others as a means to augment their abilities to share the Gospel. Read more about our mission to educate and edify at the intersection of faith and technology.

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Friday, August 04, 2006

An Outreach Technology

I was just viewing a website about an upcoming conference called the National Outreach Convention and noticed in the section titled Outreach Technology, there was nothing stated about using mobile phones and PDAs as part of an outreach technology solution.

There are two types of Outreach Technogies:

Communication Facilitators are those devices and products/services that help you organize and maintain communication that is already established. Usually, they are an adjunct in emergencies, but normally not the primary means by which communication would occur.
Communication Integrator devices would be those devices, products/service that would be used as a first-step engagement towards a person or group. That technology would also be used for maintaining communication, but it would be used for first contact as well.

Now of course I am not offened, here in the US, the idea of mobile phones and PDAs are as communication faciliator-type devices, not communication intergrator-type devices. In the US, we use mobile phones and PDAs as a means to maintian communication with people that we already know. And while mobile phone companies are trying their best to get us out of that mindset by making video services and bundled media services thru our mobile devices the norm rather than the accepted use. The point is that culturally, we are very personally engaging, and to use technology to engage someone else before first meeting them is backwards for many of us.

I wonder what that conference, and others like it will look like in a few years where the US will be mobile-connected. I wonder if then will people see the usefulness of ecards that can be sent from phone to phone as an encouragement tool, not just an "I forgot it was your birthday tool." I believe very much that mobile devices are an untapped outreach technology. The thing is to tap it and convene with Christ no matter what mountain you are on.